In the heart of every storm there's a quiet night

[sovay]

I slept nearly ten hours last night. I am unclear as to precisely why my brain took this as an invitation to an anthology of nightmares, but here we are. Next time I had better at least get Rod Serling as a host or something.

spatch and I wanted to make feijoada for dinner, but due to a shortage of sausage and black beans we ended up making chili con carne instead, if you can make chili with lentils and smoked paprika. Whatever it was came out spicy, savory, and very filling, served over buttered rice. We had sequestered Autolycus the Mooch, but that left room for the stealthy Hestia to put one casual paw upon the dining room table and then another, just taking the air, not too close to the food, nothing to see here, move along. (She was tragically, discourteously removed.) I think we did all right.

I did not expect The Shape of Water to win Best Picture! I had my fingers crossed for Get Out and would have been happy with Lady Bird or Call Me by Your Name, but I had braced myself for something safely prestigious like Darkest Hour or The Post. Instead: fish people. This was a surprisingly congenial set of Oscars. When the nominees were announced in in January, I did not expect that anything I cared about would actually win. But Coco won for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, Jordan Peele took Best Original Screenplay for Get Out, Guillermo del Toro pulled off Best Director as well as Best Picture, and Paul Denham Austerberry et al. really did take Best Production Design for the rain-stained, river-rippling world of The Shape of Water. I would have liked to see Daniel Kaluuya as Best Actor instead of Gary Oldman and Willem Dafoe as Best Supporting Actor instead of Sam Rockwell. Frances McDormand was not a surprise as Best Actress, but she did nice things with her speech. I am fine with Dunkirk winning its two awards for sound design: it was very well done. I am ambivalent about Roger Deakins winning Best Cinematography for Blade Runner 2049 because of my feelings about the movie, but at least it didn't go to Hoyte van Hoytema (and since Rachel Morrison shot Black Panther as well as Mudbound, with any justice in the universe she'll return next year). I didn't realize I had a stake in Best Adapted Screenplay until I was delighted to hear about James Ivory and Call Me by Your Name. Ditto Best Foreign Language Film and A Fantastic Woman. I could have lived with Peele and del Toro splitting Director/Picture between them, if that was who the votes came down to, but I am fine with Christopher Nolan not walking off with either. I am very sorry that Lady Bird won nothing at all; it did not look like my kind of movie, but it looked like a very good one of its kind, not to mention a written-directed-starring female triple threat. Next year.

In short, the 90th Academy Awards: BITE IT, LOVECRAFT.

Comments

[gwynnega]

I was genuinely surprised that The Shape of Water won Best Picture. If any of the other nominees had won over Get Out, I would have grumbled that it was robbed, but I was fine with this choice, especially since Get Out won for Best Original Screenplay.

I'd liked Lady Bird a lot less than I'd expected to, but I was still surprised it was completely shut out.

[kore]

I was gloomily thinking either Dunkirk or The Post would take it, and was pleasantly surprised in that department. I really didn't think Three Billboards or Ladybird would win, but I thought Get Out was a longshot.

The shutouts were, as far as I could determine, Mudbound, Last Jedi, Baby Driver, The Post, Victoria & Abdul, Beauty and the Beast, and Ladybird. Get Out, Call Me By Your Name and I, Tonya got one each, but they were pretty big ones, so that wasn't so bad. Ladbybird got five noms, though, and nothing. Is the nomination process so different from the voting? Shape of Water was the winner in both noms and awards, but it's a pretty big change from 13 noms to 4 awards....Or maybe I'm just a fossil for still expecting one anointed film to grab everything. I still remember being shocked when they finally split Best Picture/Best Director.

[gwynnega]

Amusingly, in my neighborhood (where there are probably lots of Academy voters), someone had put up very DIY-looking handwritten fliers asking people not to vote for Three Billboards! I wish I'd taken a photo of one.

[kore]

Hah, nice!

I didn't see it and therefore shouldn't comment but I will anyway since it's the internet, but that movie looked dreadful. Especially the OTT performances and horrible accents. It also kind of looked (again, I haven't seen it) mainly about the terrible effect of racism on the white male character, which....no.

[gwynnega]

I haven't seen it either, but that's been my impression of the film as well.

[kore]

I'm not Southern at all but ever since hearing that NPR feature on horrible fake Southern accents (which I can't find now), it's like I'm allergic to them. YOU ALL DON'T SOUND SOUTHERN. YOU SOUND LIKE YOU'RE IMITATING WOODY HARRELSON, WHO IS FROM MOTHERFUCKING TEXAS. AND IN THIS MOVIE HE SOUNDS LIKE FOGHORN LEGHORN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14NeD4UMU9M ahem

(Let us not even talk about Pentecostal preacher accents, which I DO know and the only only accurate rendition I have ever heard is Robert Duvall in The Apostle - clip. I remember sitting through Great Balls of Fire for some reason* in utter dismay at Quaid and Baldwin's accents.)


*probably in pre-internet days it was on cable and I was mildly curious and bored, which is how I have seen other regrettable films

[sovay]

It also kind of looked (again, I haven't seen it) mainly about the terrible effect of racism on the white male character, which....no.

spatch saw most of it and it sounded from him mainly about the terrible effect of the absence of justice on a mother whose daughter's rape-murder is still unsolved, done as a kind of dig-two-graves black comedy with a real point of anger about closure, grief, and systemic failure; it made me wonder if Sam Rockwell's character just kind of sucked up the critical oxygen. I haven't seen it myself, so can't speak to the accents.

[sovay]

I was genuinely surprised that The Shape of Water won Best Picture.

It's not at all the Academy's usual sort of thing. And now I'm seeing people call it the "safe" choice and it's like, all right, in a year where it was up against a radical racial horror-satire, a women's coming-of-age story, and a non-tragic, non-biographical queer male romance, maybe I can kind of see how a het fairy tale would get that? But it's still a movie where the villain was explicitly toxic masculinity and the lady fucked the fish! In three or four simultaneous genres! And Technicolor!

If any of the other nominees had won over Get Out, I would have grumbled that it was robbed, but I was fine with this choice, especially since Get Out won for Best Original Screenplay.

Yes. And that was well deserved. (I still think he could have gotten Best Director and nobody would have died.)

I'd liked Lady Bird a lot less than I'd expected to, but I was still surprised it was completely shut out.

I heard very good things; I just didn't hear very good things that made me want to run out and watch it. What about it didn't work for you?

[kore]

in a year where it was up against a radical racial horror-satire, a women's coming-of-age story, and a non-tragic, non-biographical queer male romance, maybe I can kind of see how a het fairy tale would get that? But it's still a movie where the villain was explicitly toxic masculinity and the lady fucked the fish!

And it had a female lead and a Mexican director no less, who has made a career of dark fantasy films often centered on women. 'Safe' choice my ass.

[sovay]

And it had a female lead and a Mexican director no less, who has made a career of dark fantasy films often centered on women. 'Safe' choice my ass.

I know. And who dedicated his acceptance speech to immigrants (and quoted James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, which unreasonably warms my heart). I don't know that any art exists that can deliver flawlessly on all axes of social justice at once, but it is not as though this particular art fell down on all of them. People . . . need to learn that zero-sum games are rigged games. And not to play them.

(EVERYBODY QUOTE WARGAMES NOW.)

[kore]

Actually one of my fave quotes from that is "No, Wonder Woman, I can't swim! Okay?"

[sovay]

"No, Wonder Woman, I can't swim! Okay?"

"What kind of an asshole grows up in Seattle and doesn't know how to swim?"

[kore]

"What kind of an asshole lives on an island and he doesn't even have a boat?" (CHARACTER MOMENT)

(BUT HE DOES HAVE A BOAT) (ANOTHER CHARACTER MOMENT)

[kore]

-- Also is it true that Broderick's character is about the age Joshua would have been, or does the math not work out? I don't remember.

[sovay]

-- Also is it true that Broderick's character is about the age Joshua would have been, or does the math not work out? I don't remember.

I don't know because I haven't seen the movie in ten years, but I think if nothing else the echoes are there.

[kore]

Wow, it's neat to be able to pull it up archivally like that.

[sovay]

Wow, it's neat to be able to pull it up archivally like that.

The digital age is an archival black hole, but I have kept continuity with LJ and I will hang onto these mirrored posts until Dreamwidth turns out the lights.

[kore]

Yeah, I deleted my LJ partly because my stepsister found it and mostly because of the persistent e-stalkers. Still wish I hadn't, but oh well.

[gwynnega]

I usually love teenage-girl-coming-of-age stories, so I was surprised Lady Bird left me so cold. It is visually beautiful, but I wasn't engaged by the main characters nearly as much as some of the minor ones. In particular Stephen Henderson gives a heartbreaking performance that has stayed with me ever since I saw the film, although he probably only has about ten minutes of screen time.

[sovay]

In particular Stephen Henderson gives a heartbreaking performance that has stayed with me ever since I saw the film, although he probably only has about ten minutes of screen time.

I agree that sounds like the wrong intensity of foreground to background, but can I ask about him?

[gwynnega]

He plays Father Leviatch, one of the teachers at Lady Bird's school. He's directing the students in a production of Merrily We Roll Along, and he challenges them to a game of "the one who cries first wins." None of the kids can cry on cue, but then we see that he's the one weeping uncontrollably and apologizing to his students. The moment is funny, but I also found it the most genuinely affecting moment in the film. One of the girls tells Lady Bird that his son died of a drug overdose, and we see him struggling with grief and depression in a couple more scenes. But then he sort of falls out of the movie.