IYC: Oscar nominations

[Bob Jersey]

https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2023 (link)

Reactions here.

B

[Mark Jeffries]

I was going to do a summary of the nominees that basically began life on streaming, but since Warners ended the day-and-date on HBO Max policy, there isn't all that much to report.  The only streaming nominee for Best Picture is Netflix's new adaptation of "All Quiet on the Western Front," which besides Best Picture is nominated for International Film (Germany), cinematography, makeup and hairstyling, original score, production design, sound, visual effects and adapted screenplay--tied for second in total nominations with "The Banshees of Inisherin" and just behind "Everything Everywhere All at Once."  Other streaming films in the major categories are AppleTV+'s "Causeway" (supporting actor Brian Tyree Henry--sorry JLaw), Netflix's "Blonde" (Ana de Armas as Marilyn), Amazon's "Argentina 1985" (international) and Netflix's "Glass Onion:  A Knives Out Mystery" (adapted screenplay--because of characters that were in the first film).  In addition, three of the five nominees for animated feature--Netflix's "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio" and "The Sea Beast" and Disney+'s "Turning Red" from Pixar--had their initial wide release on streaming.  You can look up the short subject nominees yourself.

And yeah--Bitch Slapper Willie didn't get nominated.

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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[PGage]

At first glance I am most interested in the best actress nomination for Andrea Riseborough. I can’t remember if this has been discussed here; she is a little know actress in an extremely low budget and little noticed film (“To Leslie”), whose non-existent Oscar chances suddenly blew up in late December when a gaggle of A-List actors began tweeting superlative praises for her performance, seemingly spontaneously, culminating in Cate Blanchett name checking her in a gush during her acceptance speech for her Critics Choice Award last week. I first noticed this on my own Twitter feed with a tweet from Ed Norton, which seemed peculiar enough that I searched for, and found, many more.

I have not yet seen the film (but will, as I try to see all films nominated in major categories every year), perhaps the social media blizzard is justified solely on the merits, though if so this would have to be the most impressive acting performance in history. More likely it is a good enough performance (I have seen it described as rather showy by less effusive reviewers) that got the social media celebrity supercharge treatment via Riseborough’s representation by CAA, which also reps a number of the Tweeting stars. The film had zero budget, and could not afford a single ad, and it doesn’t require too much imagination to picture CAA asking it’s top talent to watch the film and post something ice, and then initiating a perfect storm of romantic crusade for the poor underdog plus Puckish delight at pulling one over on the public and big studios, with perhaps some old AIDS ribbon era Hollywood conformity leading some fearful of being left out for jumping on board. 

Even so there was widespread speculation that the push was too little too late, and now that she actually got the nomination I wonder if some are sorry, as it must have pushed some established actress out of the nominations, perhaps a friend to some of the social media amplifiers.

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[Adam Bowie]

I suspect that I've read the same Puck pieces on Andrea Riseborough and "To Leslie" that PGage has. I believe the film got a very limited UK release back in October, but it completely passed me by at the time. But Riseborough isn't an unknown in any way, at least in the UK. For instance, she has a part in David O Russell's Amsterdam which came out around the same time (that film was a disappointment for me...) and has won various smaller awards over the years. 

The film seems to be available to rent on the usual streaming services, so I'll check it out too. 

Of the Best Picture noms, I've only seen four of the ten so far. In the UK, three are on streaming platforms - The Banshees of Inisherin on Disney+, Everything Everywhere All At Once on Prime Video and All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix. Elvis and Triangle of Sadness are available to rent. Avatar: The Way of Water and Tar are in cinemas now (Tar only came out a week or so ago), and The Fabelmans and Women Talking have yet to be released here! The Fabelmans comes out this Friday, and I think Women Talking a couple of weeks later.

Personally I hate the winter rush to release all the good stuff at once. It seems self-defeating, but there you go.

In tangentially related news, the BAFTA film awards are partially fixing something they've not managed to do for years - and be broadcast live on TV... a bit. For unknown reasons, the BBC has not shown the awards live for years now, instead showing them on a delay. But in a time of social media, it means every single award is "spoiled" if you stray near your phone or laptop. This year, they'll still be on a delay until they aren't. The final four awards will be live. I assume that some editors somewhere will be judiciously removing animated short awards and so on for a package at the end, meaning that a three hour live show that starts at 6pm and finishes at 9pm will be compressed into a TV show that has to hit a live point at about 8.30pm or something to hand out the final four awards live. I'm sure there'll be some kind of in-room 15 minute intermission to cover over the gap.

Adam

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[Mark Jeffries]

Well, here's where you can see the Best Picture nominees in the US right now:

ALL QUIET--Netfilx

AVATAR 2--theaters, IMAX preferred--coming to both HBO Max and Disney+

BANSHEES--HBO Max

ELVIS--HBO Max

EVERYTHING--Showtime, which does stream for cord-cutters

FABELMANS--Theaters and PPV, will probably play on Peacock before the Oscarcast

TAR--PPV now, on Peacock Friday

TOP GUN 2--Paramount+ and MGM+, the former Epix

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS--PPV now, but Hulu seems to get most arthouse titles

WOMEN TALKING--Theaters now, but will end up on MGM+ and Amazon

[PGage]

 Did read that Puck News piece, but also scattered other pieces of news and gossip. She was unknown to me (though I saw Amsterdam, and am one of the few people I know who enjoyed it; I did not know she was in it. Still I doubt anyone thinks that without the celebrity Twitter campaign she would have been nominated for an Oscar.  Notice by end of today (Tuesday in US) gripes are starting to roll in about actresses who presumably got bumped to make room for her, including Viola Davis.

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[Kevin M.]

I liked the Elvis bio-pic, but not as much as everyone else did. 

I liked the Batman movie script, but the acting and lighting issues make me not want it to win anything.

I liked Glass Onion. But movies with that much comedy typically don’t win. 

I would’ve expected more from The Menu, not because it was great, but because it was different, and different usually gets more academy notice. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

So, now Puck News’ Matt Belloni is reporting that the Academy is investigating whether it’s rules governing Oscar campaigning were broken. There is a precedent for nominations to be withdrawn when rules violations were confirmed: 2014, Best Song nomination for Bruce Broughton, “Alone Yet Not Alone” when “he was found to have ‘improperly lobbied’ more than 70 members of the music branch via email.” Another rule forbids specifically mentioning the names of potential rivals in a negative way.

I have always really liked Mary McCormack, married to the “To Leslie” films director, who appears to be at the center of this. But it is a bad look that she seems to have messaged to her famous friends that they should list Riseborough first on their ballots, since “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work.”  Except (Yikes!) the only to African American women on that supposed lock list are the ones who did not get nominated, and Riseborough appears to have taken one of their slots. There will be pressure to do something about this, and lots of bad feelings either way it goes.

Below is an excerpt from Bellini’s piece from yesterday:

“Mary McCormack and friends emailed and called tons of members of the Academy’s actors branch, begging them to see the little-watched alcoholic drama and post online about Riseborough’s searing performance. The result: dozens of influential stars—Gwyneth, Jen, Howard, Cate, Amy Adams, Ed Norton, and many, many more—sang her praises and helped win her the coveted nomination. 

But the shock nom has created a brewing shitstorm within the Academy because Riseborough seemingly pushed out Viola Davis (The Woman King) and Danielle Deadwyler (Till), two actresses of color that were backed by well-funded campaigns by Sony and MGM/Amazon, respectively, and were widely predicted to score honors, yet presumably do not have access to a network of powerful (and, let’s be honest, white) friends in the Academy to campaign for Oscars on their behalf. To some, it was the worst kind of racially-tinged cronyism, where the connections outshined the work. “We live in a world and work in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating and unabashed misogyny toward Black women,” the Till director Chinonye Chukwu posted on Instagram.  

I’m not sure I agree with that—after all, what gets nominated is always a complex mix of quality, positioning, and politics—but the controversy raises a key question: Did the Riseborough effort violate Oscar campaign rules? I’m told the Academy is looking at this issue, and that it will likely be raised at the board of governors meeting on Tuesday. (The organization declined to comment.)”

On Tue, 24 Jan 2023 at 5:23 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Did read that Puck News piece, but also scattered other pieces of news and gossip. She was unknown to me (though I saw Amsterdam, and am one of the few people I know who enjoyed it; I did not know she was in it. Still I doubt anyone thinks that without the celebrity Twitter campaign she would have been nominated for an Oscar.  Notice by end of today (Tuesday in US) gripes are starting to roll in about actresses who presumably got bumped to make room for her, including Viola Davis.

On Tue, 24 Jan 2023 at 8:21 AM Adam Bowie <ad...@adambowie.co.uk> wrote:

I suspect that I've read the same Puck pieces on Andrea Riseborough and "To Leslie" that PGage has. I believe the film got a very limited UK release back in October, but it completely passed me by at the time. But Riseborough isn't an unknown in any way, at least in the UK. For instance, she has a part in David O Russell's Amsterdam which came out around the same time (that film was a disappointment for me...) and has won various smaller awards over the years. 

The film seems to be available to rent on the usual streaming services, so I'll check it out too. (SNIP)

Adam

On Tue, Jan 24, 2023 at 3:31 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

At first glance I am most interested in the best actress nomination for Andrea Riseborough. I can’t remember if this has been discussed here; she is a little know actress in an extremely low budget and little noticed film (“To Leslie”), whose non-existent Oscar chances suddenly blew up in late December when a gaggle of A-List actors began tweeting superlative praises for her performance, seemingly spontaneously, culminating in Cate Blanchett name checking her in a gush during her acceptance speech for her Critics Choice Award last week. I first noticed this on my own Twitter feed with a tweet from Ed Norton, which seemed peculiar enough that I searched for, and found, many more.

I have not yet seen the film (but will, as I try to see all films nominated in major categories every year), perhaps the social media blizzard is justified solely on the merits, though if so this would have to be the most impressive acting performance in history. More likely it is a good enough performance (I have seen it described as rather showy by less effusive reviewers) that got the social media celebrity supercharge treatment via Riseborough’s representation by CAA, which also reps a number of the Tweeting stars. The film had zero budget, and could not afford a single ad, and it doesn’t require too much imagination to picture CAA asking it’s top talent to watch the film and post something ice, and then initiating a perfect storm of romantic crusade for the poor underdog plus Puckish delight at pulling one over on the public and big studios, with perhaps some old AIDS ribbon era Hollywood conformity leading some fearful of being left out for jumping on board. 

Even so there was widespread speculation that the push was too little too late, and now that she actually got the nomination I wonder if some are sorry, as it must have pushed some established actress out of the nominations, perhaps a friend to some of the social media amplifiers.

[JW]

Good: "well-funded campaigns by Sony and MGM/Amazon"

Bad: “Mary McCormack and friends emailed and called tons of members of the
Academy’s actors branch"

Shrug.

Of course, the most damning part of all of this is that nobody seems to consider the possibility that Riseborough actually deserved the nomination.

[PGage]

Well, always good to keep in mind we are talking about the Oscars, which is something inherently unimportant. But in its context, I think there is a difference between the two things you cite. Any actor in a film knows going in that they will have the benefit of the Oscar campaign resources associated with the studio and producers of the film they signed up for. That’s not an equal playing field for all actors, but it is somewhat standardized, and governed by a set of rules and conventions (sometimes violated to be sure). But only certain kinds of actors have the friends and connections to benefit from the kind of campaign McCormack ran. And it tends not to be actors like Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis.

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[PGage]

So I paid my $6.99 to rent and watch “To Leslie” this weekend (I try to watch all the films with major nominations every year, and figured I should watch this before the controversy around it made it impossible for me to form my own opinion). Also read the Wikipedia entry, and a little more Googleing

This film, apparently shot in less than 3 weeks on a shoestring budget, is clearly a labor of love by Director Michael Morris, from a screenplay by Ryan Bianco. I could not find out much about Bianco, other than the story is informed by his mother’s life.

Morris has a solid resume of work directing okay-to-very-good TV and streaming shows and was the show runner on “Brothers and Sisters” (which I recall but never saw). Clearly that career, plus the similar level acting career of his very likable wife Mary McCormack, has built up a lot of goodwill and a supportive network in the Hollywood community. There are a lot of good actors in “To Leslie”, including Allison Janny, Stephen Root and Andre Royo (“Bubbles” from The Wire). For my money the really stand out performance is given by Marc Maron, who is also listed as an Executive Producer, which I suppose means he contributed some of the money to get the film made. The film has his hard-earned wisdom about addiction baked into it.

Riseborough is English, playing a Texan alcoholic, which I guess earns points in the acting community. I can see why people look at her performance and think it deserves Oscar recognition, though like any role grounded in scenes of substance induced intoxication and humiliation it is viewer’s choice between acting excellence and showy melodrama. Let’s just say a lot worse performances have been nominated for, and for that matter won, an Oscar in the past, so hard to say she does not deserve hers.

I also watched “Blonde” this weekend, for which Ana de Armas also got an Oscar nomination. The films could not be more different in terms of the glamour attached to the role, and the budget and buzz surrounding the films, but the roles both called for a showy vulnerability by the actresses (in de Armas’ case including a lot of nudity and physical assault and degradation), for which actors are often rewarded at award season. Of the two films I know I liked “To Leslie” better than “Blonde” (the only kind of film we need less than another standard addiction film is another Marilyn Monroe psycho-biopic); I think I liked Riseborough’s performance better too.

The performance by Riseborough (to my mind) does not justify the effusive, over the top praise parroted over and over on social media by A-list actors over the last six weeks, but it is a good one, and I can see why famous actors felt inclined to amplify it to make up for lack of marketing budget and media buzz. It would not at all have been surprising if the same film, with a budget 50 or even 100 times as large as it had, led to a Best Actress nomination in the normal course of events (as I say, I think Maron might have got some consideration as well). Still, one of the things #oscarsowhite means is that black actors in Oscar worthy roles do not have the social capital to spend on an effective but cheap Oscar campaign, while so many white actors do. That is something the largely liberal, good-intentioned Hollywood elite probably did not factor in whey they decided to get together and try to get their friend an Oscar nomination.