Oscars

[calimac]

The Oscar nominations have, as usual, snuck in on little cat feet, in contrast to the hoopla attending the announcement of the actual winners.

Of the movies nominated this year, I've seen 5 so far. None of them make me wonder, "Why did it get nominated for that?", though I didn't like all the movies. Lincoln and Argo, which I saw because of my weakness for putatively accurate historical dramatizations, were both pretty good movies. Les Miserables, which I saw for the music at B's suggestion, was pretty good too. The Hobbit was impressive in the technical categories in which it was nominated, no doubt about that. And Brave, which we watched on DVD, again at B's suggestion, was gorgeously animated, and well-enough paced on a scene-by-scene level, but the overall plot was stunningly lax, sloppy, and meandering. It would have been better at half the length. But that's also true of other well-regarded animated features of recent times, like Ratatouille.

What astonishes me is my lack of interest in seeing any of the other major-award nominees. By this time, I've seen 11 of last year's major-award nominees, mostly on DVD, but this year there are only a couple, like Life of Pi or The Master, that I've been thinking I might rent on DVD so that I can turn them off if I don't like them. (I saw the previous movie by the director of The Master in the theatre, and wished I could have turned it off, I don't care how many Oscar nominations that crappy movie subsequently got.) But that's about it. Particular aversion towards the possibilities of Silver Linings Playbook, a movie whose mere existence had previously escaped my attention, and which sounds like exactly the sort of domestic drama filled with repellent and nonsensical characters that I most dislike.

Comments

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Life of Pi is well worth seeing in the cinema - in fact I'm not sure it'll work on DVD at all.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I would have done so if the tiger had been a real tiger. When I learned it was CGI, I lost interest.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I've seen 5 of the Best Picture nominees. The ones I haven't seen are Argo, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, and Les Mis. I've been meaning to see Les Mis, although the intention has been weakening over time. I'm mildly interested in Argo. I keep thinking about Silver Linings Playbook and not getting beyond thinking about it. Not much interest in Amour.

Of the Animated Feature films I've only seen The Pirates! Band of Misfits, and it was okay. In Documentary Feature only Searching for Sugar Man, which I enjoyed.

For what it's worth, Moonrise Kingdom was my favorite film of the year.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

"Moonrise Kingdom" got something, but "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" was totally shut out.
One again Oscar proves it's not worth bothering with.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, for me it's nice if something I like gets recognition, but other than that I don't care much about the Oscars.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm concerned about the Oscars because I use the list of nominees for major awards (much more useful for that purpose than the list of winners) as an aide-memoire list of movies I might want to consider seeing, catching up on especially in later years on DVD. The fewer movies that I already saw and liked that miss the list, the more useful for that purpose the rest of the list is likely to be, and the fewer films I should see that aren't on it.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Oops, I was wrong about one thing: I also saw ParaNorman in the Animated Feature category. I was completely underwhelmed. Part of the reason I went to see it was that it was the same production company that made Coraline, and the animation was fine.