Pic of the Day: “Inherent vice in a maritime insurance policy is anything that you can’t avoid. Eggs break, chocolate melts, glass shatters, and Doc wondered what that meant when it applied to ex-old ladies.” (10th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “I’m going to run. You can’t stop me. I’m going to run even if I don’t get a single vote!” (75th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Great moments are born from great opportunity. And that’s what you have here, tonight, boys. That’s what you’ve earned here tonight. One game. If we played ’em ten times, they might win nine. But not this game. Not tonight. Tonight, we skate with them. Tonight, we stay with them. And we shut them down because we can! Tonight, we are the greatest hockey team in the world. You were born to be hockey players. Every one of you. And you were meant to be here tonight. This is your time. Their time is done. It’s over. I’m sick and tired of hearing about what a great hockey team the Soviets have. Screw ’em. This is your time. Now go out there and take it.” (20th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “I thought we were gonna get television. The truth is… television is gonna get us.” (30th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “I’d like to make one good score and back off…” “Back off to what?” (55th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Can you be so cruel?” “Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters.” (75th Anniversary)
And the Nominees Are… (2023)
I’m sure I said the same thing last year, but I had no idea what to expect with this one. Last year I was in the middle of life chaos and all of a sudden it was like “time for awards season!” This year, no chaos, but all of a sudden it was December and January and these things were out and I had barely finished watching things from the year and had to scramble to get halfway caught up on the shorts and documentaries and foreign films (and even then, I’m not sure I got to halfway) and then, within the span of like, three weeks, find out where everything was at and find the time to throw together nominations guesses.
I posted my predictions article yesterday without having had the time to look over anything a second time, convinced I was gonna do horribly. I thought, “Okay, if I can go 68-70%, I can escape feeling okay.” Both fortunately and unfortunately for me, it’s been the same 10 films all over the ballot. Which is good, since it cuts down on having to think about random stuff getting on and makes you feel like you’ve got a baseline of doing okay. But it’s also bad bad because you can fall into the trap of accidentally guessing the same five films to get more nominations than is reasonably possible.
I saw the nominations, but I haven’t yet gone through and seen what the totals are for everything and looked at the big picture. And I bet, once I do, we’ll end up with everything largely in the range of getting a number of nominations that ‘make sense’ for them. And that’s mostly what I’m gonna be looking for here, since, by and large, there weren’t a lot of ‘oh WOW’ moments for me. A couple of snubs, a couple of ‘oh, okay, they nominated that’. But, to me, the only nomination or omission that moved the needle for me happened in Sound. So it seems like a pretty straightforward year and I’m sure I didn’t actually do as horrible as it felt like I did. As I say — there’s always a certain percentage of this that’s going to be unknowable chaos. You have to expect that. So anything within the chaos range is understandable.
Anyway, let’s take a look at what was nominated and what it all means going forward (and, most importantly, how I did in guessing everything). (more…)
Oscars 2023: The B+ Nominations Ballot
Oh, hello there.
Guess it’s time to be picking Oscar nominees again. Better put on my cardigan and lace up the old sneakers.
This year feels even stranger than last year. There was a time about five years ago where, if I hadn’t seen every single movie by December 30th (even the insignificant ones), I was freaking out (I once went to a theater on December 28th to see Just Getting Started in 2017. That’s how much I had to make sure I saw everything). Now I’m like, “Ehh, haven’t seen two or three of the top films? Fine. The Top Ten list can go up in February.”
But in terms of this stuff — I’m at the point where I basically just roll out of bed for it. Not totally, because I do love it, so I do try to track it as much as I can and talk about it as often as I can. I just don’t have the time to devote to it like I did previously, so a lot of tit just gets rushed. Which is a shame, but at least I still get to do this. I do really enjoy this.
Fortunately I’ve been doing this for so long (and so much of this is based on empirical data anyway) that quite literally almost anyone can do this well if they care to. It’s 70% precursors, 20% doing it enough to know how things usually go (and learning to remove what you want to see from the equation as much as possible) and 10% unknowable chaos that’s gonna happen no matter how much you try to prevent it. I’m here because I love this and because I hope people, through reading this, can see how not difficult this is to do well even with a minimal amount of prep.
So, as we always do, let’s try to guess all the nominees tomorrow and see how well we do. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “You know what I think? You’re stealing gold, that’s what I think. We’re fighting Saddam and dying, and you’re stealing gold.” “You’re wrong.” “They have half a million men in the desert and they send four guys to pick up all this bullion? I don’t think so.” (25th Anniversary)
Oscars 2023: My Nominations Ballot
If I were able to select the entire Oscar ballot, this is what I would nominate:
Best Picture
Asteroid City
Barbie
The Boy and the Heron
The Holdovers
The Killer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest (more…)
Pic of the Day: “Vernon, would they let you dance alone? Because, if they would…” “Do you think I’d want to dance without you?” (85th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Both my wife and daughter think I’m this gigantic loser and they’re right, I have lost something. I’m not exactly sure what it is but I know I didn’t always feel this… sedated. But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back.” (25th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “I’ve been sent here to take over what has come to be known as a hard luck group. Well, I don’t believe in hard luck. So we’re going to find out what the trouble is. Maybe part of it’s your flying, so we’re going back to fundamentals. But I can tell you now one reason I think you’ve been having hard luck. I saw it in your faces last night. I can see it there now. You’ve been looking at a lot of air lately… and you think you ought to have a rest. In short, you’re sorry for yourselves. I don’t have a lot of patience with this, “What are we fighting for?” stuff. We’re in a war, a shooting war. We’ve got to fight. And some of us have got to die. I’m not trying to tell you not to be afraid. Fear is normal. But stop worrying about it and about yourselves. Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. Once you accept that idea, it won’t be so tough. Now if any man here can’t buy that… if he rates himself as something special, with a special kind of hide to be saved… he’d better make up his mind about it right now. Because I don’t want him in this group. I’ll be in my office in five minutes. You can see me there.” (75th Anniversary)
2023: The Lists
Okay. For lack of keeping this article from coming out any longer, I’m posting it now.
For those who’ve been around for a while, usually I posted this list mid-December, before I’d seen all the performances of the year. It was just a ‘here’s what I’ve liked to this point’ kind of deal, in anticipation for the Top Ten List and the Oscar picks and all of that. Now, the Top Ten List isn’t even out and we’re quickly approaching Oscar nominations. So I’m not waiting.
Couple of changes I made this year — I cut out the ‘overrated, underrated’ lists. I don’t care at this point. I just wanna talk up the stuff I liked. So it’s just the Hidden Gems, Performances, Posters and Scores. And, for the performances, I truly didn’t have a whole lot I loved this year and couldn’t get my usual list of 15-20 each, so I’ve just cut it down to one list of 25 lead performances and 25 supporting performances. So there you have it.
I also still haven’t seen a small number of films, so there’s a chance a couple of performances could end up being ones I really like, but this list is really just a short term fix, so it doesn’t matter. In the end I will make it known which performances I really loved from this year. So, if a performance or two from high profile films doesn’t appear (and that film came out within the past eight weeks), chances are it’s because I haven’t watched it yet. That’s what this next week is for, and if I’m worried about this article I’m not watching stuff.
So here we are. Hopefully some people will either not have seen a bunch of these or know what they are and maybe want to check them out because of this. That’s the only goal here. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “Customs had said to Billy and the gang, ‘You need to pay us $175,000 in cash today for us to release the water.’ I went down… well, Billy called me. I’m gonna speak completely, you know… this won’t go that far, I’m sure, but… Billy called and said, ‘Andy, we need you to take one big thing for the team.’ And I said, ‘My gosh, I’ve been taking something for the team every day.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re our wonderful gay leader, and we need you to go down. Will you suck dick to fix this water problem?’ And I said, ‘Billy, what?’ And he said, ‘Andy, if you will go down and suck Cunningham’s dick, who’s the head of Customs, and get him to clear all of the containers with water, you will save this festival.’ And I literally drove home, took a shower, I drank some mouthwash. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m really…’ And I got into my car to drive across the island to take one for the team… and I got to his office, fully prepared to suck his dick.” (5th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “You want the good news or the bad news?” “The bad news, always.” “All right. We installed the 450 radial, but the struts won’t take the vibration. The minute we fire her up, the struts start cracking at the attach points.” “What’s the good news?” “There isn’t any.”
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