Monthly Archives: January 2024

Oscar Nominations 2023

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The good news is that Oppenheimer has been winning every Best Picture award so far so the odds of another insane Oscar debacle like last year’s disaster “Everything Everywhere All At Once” happening again this year is highly unlikely. “Barbie” and the horrendous “Poor Things” are nominated for best picture, rather than “Air”, which was released in April. This is downright ridiculous, but very typical of the insane voting for the Oscars in recent years. In my opinion, Air is by far the best picture this year. Emma Stone will most likely win best actress for the terrible Poor Things, because she has won most of the previous Best Actress awards. Unfortunately, this means that Annette Benning or Lily Gladstone will not win and they are far more deserving and are in good movies, not the mess that Poor Things is. Life is unfair, especially when it comes to winning awards.

Best Picture

American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Best Actress

Annette Bening, Nyad
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Emma Stone, Poor Things

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Best Supporting Actress

Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
America Ferrera, Barbie
Jodie Foster, Nyad
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Best Supporting Actor

Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Best Director

Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest

Best Original Screenplay

Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Maestro
May December
Past Lives

Best Adapted Screenplay

American Fiction
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Best Original Song

“The Fire Inside,” Flamin’ Hot
“I’m Just Ken,” Barbie
“It Never Went Away,” American Symphony
“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People),” Killers of the Flower Moon
“What Was I Made For?” Barbie

Best Cinematography

El Conde
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Original Score

American Fiction
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Editing

Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Production Design

Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Costume Design

Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Golda
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Society of the Snow

Best Sound

The Creator
Maestro
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Oppenheimer
The Zone of Interest

Best Visual Effects

The Creator
Godzilla Minus One
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Napoleon

Best Animated Feature

The Boy and the Heron
Elemental
Nimona
Robot Dreams
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Animated Short

Letter to a Pig
Ninety-Five Senses
Our Uniform
Pachyderme
War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

Best Live-Action Short

The After
Invincible
Knight of Fortune
Red, White and Blue
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Best Documentary Feature

Bobi Wine: The People’s President
The Eternal Memory
Four Daughters
To Kill a Tiger
20 Days in Mariupol

Best Documentary Short

The ABCs of Book Banning
The Barber of Little Rock
Island in Between
The Last Repair Shop
Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó

Movie Review: I. S. S.

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The new movie “I. S. S.” is about an outstanding story idea about what would the Russian and American astronauts do if while they were circling the earth in the International Space Station, a major nuclear war broke out between the United States and Russia. What would happen, how would the Russian and American astronauts react if they were ordered to take over the space station, including killing all on board from the other country? Unfortunately, this is one of those films that took a great idea, iand turned it nto a ridiculous movie, because the screenplay is so bad. After the nuclear war began and it was obvious that the planet Earth was almost completely covered by fire, nothing but irrational and idiotic events occurred, starting with the Russian woman scientist going insane, even to the point of trying to blow up the space station. Why would anyone do this, was never explained, and given the circumstances made absolutely no sense.

What follows are some hand-to-hand fights, some for completely unexplained explained reasons. While sitting through this almost 2-hour movie, I was amazed at how bad the story was, including the motivations of 6 astronauts under the most extreme circumstances. This movie represents a huge “opportunity lost” for a screenplay, that should have brought the message that in the event of any nuclear war, nobody wins. With nuclear war, everybody dies either immediately or over time, due to radiation and nuclear winter. Six human beings on opposite sides on a space station circling the Earth during a huge nuclear war are a microcosm of the obvious fundamental concept – “how can there be a winner if everybody is dead?”. The other obvious storyline missed in this film is that in the event of nuclear war, everybody on the space station also dies because there is no world to ever return to once the war is over. This is a film that probably could have been rescued because of the great idea, and all it would have taken would have been about 5 more rewrites of the screenplay. Under circumstances like this, we all want to believe that intelligence will always win over insanity.

The cast of I.S.S. includes Ariana DeBose as Dr. Kira Foster, one of the 3 American astronauts and the only well-known actor in this cast.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of a low 62% are this time around, correct. I agree with this rating and rate this film a solid pass, due to the stupid story direction that ruined a great idea for a new movie about space travel.

Movie Review: Mean Girls

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For the second time in recent weeks, another popular-well-remembered-cult movie has been produced, this time “Mean Girls”, first released in 2004. The hook once again is to remake the original as a musical to generate more interest. This is also the case with the recent remake of “The Color Purple” with both new movies starting as musicals on Broadway.

In every case, the idea behind remaking a well-known film is name recognition, and remaking the original as a musical is intended to bring in additional people because they are curious about the musical numbers. This idea might fail and succeed because there are a great many people who hate musicals but love the original film, and people who love musicals but hate the original Mean Girls. This movie, just like The Color Purple was very close to showing too many musical numbers, and unfortunately a high number of the musical numbers were not only not that good, but seemed unnecessary.

The reason why the Mean Girls movie from 2004 was so popular is that we all can relate to the cruel insanity of bullying that comes far too often with childhood. The lead bully Reginal George is about as cruel and vicious as they come. What is it about individuals like this, who derive so much sadistic pleasure from trashing and humiliating other human beings? Very often it is young girls who are far more cruel than young boys in middle school and high school. Bullying is a major problem around the world with too many young children committing suicide as a result.

There are several famous lines and scenes from the original movie that are repeated in this remake with three original cast members Tina Fey and Tim Meadows reprising their roles and Lindsay Lohan appearing at the end as a math contest moderator. What is the point of showing so many scenes from the original movie? Why not have a whole new series of new scenes and ideas, much funnier than the original? Then not worrying about disappointing the rabid fans of the 2004 version, who just want to see mostly the same movie again? Adding some musical numbers will never change a bad idea into a good one, regardless of any Broadway musical.

The new cast members, despite the musical numbers, were not as funny or effective as the original cast, including Angourie Rice as Cady Heron, Reneé Rapp as Regina George, and Avantika as Karen Shetty. While this entire new cast is not bad, they are also not different or funny enough to warrant any sense that this new version was worthy of the first film. I was surprised that after 20 years including a Broadway musical and so many script updates and rewrites this movie was at best, not funny enough, different enough, and only average. For all fans of the original Mean Girls, released in 2004, see that movie, because this new one is just not worth 2 hours of your time.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this film is a low 71%. I agree with this rating and do not recommend this movie.