[TV orNotTV] Worst Film Nominated for Best Picture [Was:: Being The Ricardos

[PGage]

This is a much more difficult call than naming the best film ever nominated for Best Picture (obviously, The Godfather). I did a quick Google search and saw a lot of different nominees, some of which I thought were ridiculous (I really liked JoJo Rabbit). It’s hard to go back in time to judge just how bad old films were. I have seen “Greatest Show on Earth”, and it’s not good, but I’ve seen Ivanhoe too and it’s not clear to me it is that much better. Dr. Dolittle has been my go to worst Best Film nominee (I hated it even as a kid in the demo when it came out). More recent films in contention for me are Prince of Tides and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

But I finally got around to watching “Don’t Look Up” this evening and, wow, is it bad. It is basically a mediocre 4 min SNL sketch stretched to 2 hrs and 20 minutes. I don’t often agree with Sikula, but in this case he has been understated in his criticism. I write this as a huge fan of Vice and, especially “The Big Short”, which is one of my favorite films of the last 25 years. DLU may not be the worst film ever nominated for Best Picture, but if it’s not it is in the top three.

I’m not that surprised the film stank; they took a big swing and whiffed. It happens. I think it would have been a lot better had they played it straight, as in Big Short, but it’s easy to say that after the fact. But I am shocked it got nominated. Why did that happen? Who thinks this is a great movie? Even if you thought it was sporadically amusing, like Anchorman II, you can’t really think it is good. I laughed at one joke, which paid off during the credits, and that might just have been relief that it was finally over. 

It strikes me that the thinking behind nominating this film is the same as that behind nominating other stinkers like Green Book, Blind Side and The Help. Lazy arm chair liberals mark it as somehow making a socially significant point, and they want to pat themselves on the back for getting behind it.

On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 11:03 PM daves...@gmail.com 

Let me just say that, after enduring the grisly "Don't Look Up" tonight, I owe Mr. Sorkin an apology. McKay's effort (emphasis on the "effort") is so inept as to make Sorkins' look like a 30's Paramount comedy.

--Dave Sikula

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[Dave Sikula]

"Don't Look Up" is indeed terrible, but there have been lousy nominees aplenty over the years. I actually kind of like "Greatest Show;" it's not great, but once one gets a sense of DeMille's directing style (it's especially apparent in "The Ten Commandments," in that he never stopped directing silent pictures; he just added sound), it's tolerable. I've seen a lot of worse pictures that were supposed to be "important."

There are plenty of dogs that actually won. "Cimmaron" is generally ranked among the worst, but it's just dull, not bad. For sheer lousiness, though, it's hard to beat either "Cavalcade" or "How Green Was My Valley," though I'll stipulate that I don't like that one because I can't stand John Ford (especially "The Quiet Man").

As for McKay, the more films he does (and I liked "The Big Short"), the more obvious and smaller his bag of tricks becomes. I'm thinking particularly of "Don't Look Up," with its overripe "aren't we outrageous to tell truth to power this way?" vibe, but also the atrocious "Winning Time," about the Lakers. Too much talking to the camera, outright lies about people and events, and ramping everything up to eleven. Farrell (who would have been awful as Jerry Buss) should consider himself lucky that he got edged out.

--Dave Sikula

[Tom Wolper]

I’d never want to participate in a best/worst film of all time discussion because in the era of streaming I have the ability to see movies that I saw decades ago that disappeared from screens both big and small. There are films I thought were mind blowing years ago that I now see as trash and there are films I thought were boring years ago that I now think are brilliant.

When I got DVDs from Netflix years ago I got Argo after it won best picture and I realized what Academy voters consider a good movie has nothing to do with what I consider a good movie.

To make this relevant to the thread, I heard the WTF interview with Guillermo Del Toro where they spent a lot of time talking about Nightmare Alley. I saw that Criterion Channel had the 1947 Edmund Goulding version (it’s gone now). I watched it and then I watched Cronos to get a sense of del Toro’s style. A week later the new Nightmare Alley turned up on Hulu so I watched it. It was by no means a bad movie but outside of budget and technology related improvements it wasn’t as good as the original. I was surprised to see it got nominated.

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[Jim Ellwanger]

Better hope the vengeful ghost of Alex Trebek doesn't take note of a former "Jeopardy!" champion calling "How Green Was My Valley" lousy. (I have no opinion about it, because I haven't seen it... in fact, all I really know about it is that Alex always said it was his favorite film.)

[Brad Beam]

Merv Griffin, invoking the Zbornak Rule: “No parting gifts!”

https://youtu.be/BPlBYUaxcyM

On Mar 26, 2022, at 12:11, Jim Ellwanger <trai...@ellwanger.tv> wrote:

Better hope the vengeful ghost of Alex Trebek doesn't take note of a former "Jeopardy!" champion calling "How Green Was My Valley" lousy. (I have no opinion about it, because I haven't seen it... in fact, all I really know about it is that Alex always said it was his favorite film.)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/2A0D5C48-6D84-46A7-9451-C38DB4DD0A75%40ellwanger.tv.

[daves...@gmail.com]

And Robert Osborne loved "This Is Spinal Tap."

There's no accounting ...

--Dave Sikula

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