So if you feel like you're in a whirlpool, you feel like you're going home

[sovay]

1. Yesterday's mail brought my contributor's copy of Animal Day II, the latest annual not-Not One of Us publication. It contains my poem "кот древнее и неприкосновенное животное" along with fine work by Steve Toase, Barbara Rosen, Holly Day, and Suzanna Hersey among others; I recommend both picking up a copy and sending work for the spring issue. My poem was inspired equally by reading Bulgakov and living with two black cats who like opening doors and eating dessert.

2. Last night I finished watching The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) with spatch, who had never seen it. It remains one of my favorite movies I have never really written about. I can recognize now all the ways in which Hardy Krüger's Heinrich Dorfmann is a deliberately difficult character with his cold equations and his monofocus and his stubborn arrogance that's just as dangerous as the threatened traditionalism of James Stewart's Frank Towns, but he was my favorite character from the first time I saw the movie and remains the one I gravitate toward, maybe because he's the outsider (the one German in a mixed American, British, and French cast: "That's it, then, that's why they never won—they didn't have old Heinrich!"), maybe because he's intelligent and anoraky and his people skills are so terrible that calling them ass would be an insult to the human posterior. I love that his chilly, rational, logical plan is the craziest dream of all, if only the rest of the cast knew it. Also I just like watching people build things. I would have loved The Finest Hours (2016) if it had just been the high seas and on-the-fly engineering of real life instead of a shoehorned—and invented—love angle which sticks out just as awkwardly as the hallucinated belly dancer in The Flight of the Phoenix.

3. David Cairns writes in memory of Dorothy Malone and then overthinks that scene in The Big Sleep (1946).

4. So, yes, the Oscar nominees. I don't understand the prominence of Darkest Hour, which looked from all the reviews like a thoroughly traditional biopic with a lot of Churchill clichés (if you must have your WWII mythmaking, at least Dunkirk was weird), and I fully expected to see at least a costume design nod for Wonder Woman and its practical Amazons, but I can't remember the last time a genre film was nominated for Best Picture and I would be fine by which I mean delighted with either Get Out or The Shape of Water; if they split the vote, at least may Call Me by Your Name or Lady Bird take it instead of any of the more obvious fallbacks. I haven't seen enough of the nominees to say much about Best Leading/Supporting Actor/Actress, but Daniel Kaluuya for Get Out would be as unusual and welcome as the movie itself for Best Picture, I have heard nothing but praise for Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and I liked Richard Jenkins very much in The Shape of Water, but I'd have given that nomination to Michael Stuhlbarg. (I am pleased Octavia Spencer received hers.) Coco should take Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, no questions. I suspect Hoyte van Hoytema will win Best Cinematography for Dunkirk even if his shaky-cam annoyed me. Either Jordan Peele, Greta Gerwig, or Guillermo del Toro would please me for Best Director, even if their chances are probably sketchy against Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson, and all three of them (and Vanessa Taylor) could also clean up on the Original Screenplay front as far as I'm concerned. Paul Denham Austerberry et al. would be entirely justified in taking Best Production Design for The Shape of Water. The rest of the categories, I don't have enough information for opinions, but apparently this is a year in which I have a stake in the Oscars. I think it's because it feels like the Hugos. More years should.

5. The Strange Horizons 2018 Prize Draw is now live. Check it out!

So that's most of what I wanted to post when I got the news about Le Guin; I wrote about her instead and then I wrote about a noir I'd seen on Saturday and then I held the cats a lot. (Oh, God, I named my ancient and now somewhat precarious laptop half after one of her characters. Now I feel even more protective toward him.) I forgot until now that I dreamed of watching a nonexistent and impossible movie starring Leslie Howard at twenty-eight, at which age he looked and sounded like a dorky student. There were no sound films in 1921. Leslie Howard didn't even come to Hollywood until 1930. I would ask what the hell, brain, except I think it's as simple as my brain really appreciating all those pictures of Howard where he looks like a thoroughgoing nerd.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks]

I was pleased to see Logan get a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay, as that's a first for a comic book movie and it definitely deserves it. And I want Willem Dafoe to win Supporting for his career-best performance in The Florida Project, which also should have been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Cinematography, Lead Actress, and Supporting Actress. Basically remove The Darkest Hour and swap Florida Project in with some changes, and we're good. Other than that I'm pretty much where you are.

Still failing to cope with Le Guin.

[gwynnega]

I would be so happy if Get Out won at least one Oscar, though I guess it's a long shot.

David Cairns writes in memory of Dorothy Malone and then overthinks that scene in The Big Sleep (1946).

These are great.

I think it's as simple as my brain really appreciating all those pictures of Howard where he looks like a thoroughgoing nerd.

It makes sense to me!

[thisbluespirit]

I forgot until now that I dreamed of watching a nonexistent and impossible movie starring Leslie Howard at twenty-eight, at which age he looked and sounded like a dorky student. There were no sound films in 1921. Leslie Howard didn't even come to Hollywood until 1930.

It's a good week for dreams? Even if not for some other things...

[tree_and_leaf]

with a lot of Churchill clichés

And a number of egregious misportrayals of the history, at that. (I can sort of see why they made Halifax ambitious and scheming, because no appeaser* is going to come well out of a modern film on the subject, and they probably shouldn't, but they completely airbrush out the important contributions of Attlee, which is at best irresponsible given how the British far right is weaponising WW2 at the moment).

* In fairness to Halifax, he was less spineless than Chamberlain at Munich, but that's a low bar to clear.

in which I have many unpleasant opinions and should probably just drop out of the whole thing

[kore]

I was really delighted at the quadruple noms for Get Out, and the noms for Octavia Spencer, Denzel Washington and Margot Robbie; greatly annoyed at the Bladerunner sequel, Darkest Hour and Dunkirk; and downright angry about Nolan's nomination and the entire shutout for Wonder Woman. Not that happy that TLJ got subpar noms either -- Score and f/x are pretty much gimmes, and it wasn't nominated even for costume design or overall design, which the Canto Bight casino scene alone should have secured. I did think that Hamill should have gotten supporting actor.

I also thought Fisher should've been nominated for best actress period, which led to various people lecturing me that her part wasn't big enough (//points silently to Anthony Hopkins ((and Judi Dench)) ), she wasn't that good of an actress, her part wasn't that important, &c &c. Because I am me I am also annoyed Shape of Water is getting a lot of press that Crimson Peak didn't, but that starred two women and was specifically about women's experiences and that apparently doesn't count for a whole much this year, despite what's going on outside Hollywood. Or even inside Hollywood, with the Weinstein and #metoo movements. (Oh yeah yeah, poor James Franco, "the first casualty of #metoo" as I saw him described. Gahhh. And first woman cinematographer ever! And yay for Greta Gerwig, FIFTH woman to be nominated as Best Director, in 2018. Truly we are a progressive land. She won't win, it's a sop nomination because the movie's actually popular, for an indie film; it made more money that Moonlight, in fact the most money for A24, and the year's best opening weekend per theater average. Women will pay money to see movies, who knew! Not Kevin Feige. There was some other popular movie about a woman, something something wonderful? wondrous? what was it, now....)

It's interesting how genre fans will always pull back and say "oh but this movie is just fluff, it doesn't deserve Best Picture," when infamous crap like Forrest Gump and Crash and all the other infamous examples are out there. I mean, Robbie should've gotten a nod for Suicide Squad, which was a terrible, terrible movie, but it was a breakout performance that put her on the map. But God forbid rewarding the actual performance rather than a "deserving" movie. Whatever.

But I am very happy for Get Out. I don't think it'll win Picture, Director or Screenplay, tho, because Moonlight won big last year (and what a fustercluck THAT was), and so "we should pick something else now." Because I know that's how the Academy thinks. But I would be absolutely completely delighted to be proven wrong and for it to have a sweep, because it really deserved it as a movie, as a well-made theatrical experience and an artistic refraction of society.

[kore]

Anyway sorry to be so goddamn grumpy, and in a wall o'text to boot. One of the feelings I had on Le Guin's death was a surprising RAGE she didn't get the Nobel, which is proving surprisingly hard to get rid of. But that + the Carrie thing + the Wonder Woman shut out just all kind of combined, and I was PISSED. Apologies for splashing that about on yr blog....

[drwex]

Congrats on the publication. In his blog on the Oscars, Scalzi said that they've gone to a ranked-preference voting system that makes "split the vote" outcomes less likely.

Having just seen Shape of Water (and no others) my feeling is that del Toro should not win for directing - the film's direction is prosaic. However, for best original screenplay he'd be hard to beat.

[kore]

Also, did you see the piece about Roman puzzle locks? https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fashion-mystery-roman-puzzle-locks-rings-jewelry-money