THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
WE ASKED THE GURUS to step beyond the boundaries of the forecasting field, just this once, for their Three Little Wishes for upsets that would cap their personal Oscar night; the Gurus’ dearest wishes are right below the Best Picture chart.
Nomadland stays its journey, while The Chicago 7 militate their fracas to the number two spot; Minari is still holds savor and sentiment toward Mank topples.
| Rank | Last Chart | Best Picture | Adams | Bahr | Ellwood | Howell | Johnson | Karger | Morales | Patterson | Poland | Pond | Rogers | Sneider | Stone | Votes | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
Nomadland |
2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 13 | 103 |
| 2 | 2 |
The Trial of the Chicago 7 |
1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 2 | 13 | 85 |
| 3 | 3 |
Minari |
3 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 13 | 72 |
| 4 | 4 |
Promising Young Woman |
5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 13 | 62 |
| 5 | 5 |
Judas and the Black Messiah |
7 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 13 | 51 |
| 6 | 8 |
The Father |
6 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 8 | 13 | 33 |
| 7 | 7 |
Mank |
4 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 13 | 31 |
| 7 | 6 |
Sound of Metal |
8 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 13 | 31 |
Three Little Wishes
Thelma Adams: Director, Thomas Vinterberg; Best Adapted Screenplay: The Father; Andra Day
Robyn Bahr: Anthony Hopkins; Best Adapted Screenplay, The White Tiger; Best Animated, Wolfwalkers
Gregory Ellwood: Riz Ahmed; Vanessa Kirby; “Fight For You,” Original Song
Peter Howell: Paul Raci; Quo Vadis, Aida?; Wolfwalkers
Mark Johnson: Minari; Original Score, Minari; Vanessa Kirby
Dave Karger: Paul Raci; Olivia Colman; Original Song, “Husavik: My Home Town”
Michael Patterson: Anthony Hopkins; Olivia Colman; Best Song, “Hear My Voice,” The Trial of the Chicago 7
David Poland: Carey Mulligan; Riz Ahmed; Collectiv
Steve Pond: Leslie Odom Jr.; Best Film Editing, The Father; Best Animated Short, Opera
Nathaniel Rogers: Best Film Editing, The Father; Wolfwalkers; Paul Raci
Jeff Sneider: “I hope Sound of Metal comes out of nowhere to win Best Picture. I hope Paul Raci upsets Daniel Kaluuya for Best Supporting Actor. I hope Frances McDormand upsets Viola Davis and Carey Mulligan for Best Actress, simply because I thought she gave the best performance.”
Sasha Stone: Cinematography, Mank; Director, Mank; Andra Day
Your Friendly Neighborhood Gurus
Thelma Adams: Author, Top Critic on Rotten Tomatoes, Oscar Expert Twitter
Robyn Bahr: Freelance (Washington Post, GQ, Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, Guardian) Twitter
Gregory Ellwood: The Playlist Twitter
Peter Howell: Toronto Star Twitter
Mark Johnson: Awards Daily Twitter
Dave Karger: TCM, IMDb Twitter
Wilson Morales: BlackFilmAndTV.com Twitter
Michael Patterson: Michael’s Telluride Film Blog; Twitter
David Poland: Movie City News Twitter
Steve Pond: The Wrap, Twitter
NathanielR: The Film Experience Twitter
Jeff Sneider: Collider Twitter
Sasha Stone: Awards Daily Twitter
-30-
May 1, 2022
"Netflix, the great disrupter whose algorithms and direct-to-consumer platform have forced powerful media incumbents to rethink their economic models, now seems to need a big strategy change itself. It got me thinking about the simple idea that my film and TV production company Blumhouse is built on: If you give artists a lot of creative freedom and a little money upfront but a big stake in the movie’s or TV show’s commercial success, more often than not the result will be both commercial (the filmmakers are incentivized to make films that will resonate with audiences) and artistically interesting (creative freedom!). This approach has yielded movies as varied as Get Out (made for $4.5 million, with worldwide box office receipts of more than $250 million), Whiplash (made for $3.3 million, winner of three Academy Awards), The Invisible Man (made for $7 million, earned more than $140 million) and Paranormal Activity (made for $15,000, grossed more than $190 million).From the beginning, the most important strategy I used to persuade artists to work with me was to make radically transparent deals: We usually paid the artists (“participants” in Hollywood lingo) the absolute minimum allowable by union contracts upfront, with the promise of healthy bonuses based on actual box office results—instead of the opaque 'percentage points' that artists are usually offered. Anyone can see box office results immediately, so creators don’t quarrel with the payouts. In fact, when it comes time for an artist to collect a bonus based on box office receipts, I email a video clip of myself dropping the check off at FedEx to the recipient."
Jason Blum Sees Room For "Scrappier" Netflix
| April 30, 2022
"As a critic Gavin was entertaining, wry, questioning, sensitive, perceptive"
Critic-Filmmaker Gavin Millar Was 84; Films Include Cream In My Coffee, Dreamchild
April 29, 2022
| January 24, 2022
DP/30 Audio: Bombshell, Jay Roach
| December 13, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jonathan Majors
| December 4, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
| December 4, 2019
Weinstein, Rudin…..yes, we know. Hollywood gives money and power to assholes. It’s how we got Trump. My wish is they would stop.
Cancel the assholes…… it’s worth all the whining.
Apropos of nothing in particular…. I was checking through the blog archives yesterday for nothing but idle nostalgic curiosity., and…. what happened to JS / IO? Did he finally take his ball and go home at the suggestion that Avengers Endgame might be somehow less than Tokyo Story? Was he revealed to be a Matt Groening character all along? I was never entirely sure if he was a parody account (I’m leaning to no, but his epic Last Jedi meltdown makes me wonder), but wherever he is I hope that he found some peace and tranquility. Sincerely.
This is a fine philosophy that directors including Wes Craven and Steven Soderbergh have endorsed. Craven and his producing partner Marianne Maddalena were following the “No Assholes, Ever” philosophy before the phrase was appropriated for a management book.
—I do not want to leave this under the April 18 posting about the TV show “Them.” But it is about race relations. If the editor(s) think I should not have posted this, take it down. Here goes:
—In 1966, advertising in magazines and television commercials was, as it had been going back decades, mostly white people selling products to other white people. In 1967, under pressure from protesters, the advertising agencies started putting black people in advertisements.
My thought is, maybe the black people should have been grateful that they were not being hit with advertising, in 1966.
A description of the 1958 book, “The Hidden Persuaders”:
“A classic examination of how our thoughts and feelings are manipulated by business, media and politicians, The Hidden Persuaders was the first book to expose the hidden world of “motivation research,” the psychological technique that advertisers use to probe our minds in order to control our actions as consumers. Through analysis of products, political campaigns and television programs of the 1950s, Packard shows how the insidious manipulation practices that have come to dominate today’s corporate-driven world began. Featuring an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller, The Hidden Persuaders has sold over one million copies, and forever changed the way we look at the world of advertising.”
If most of the criticisms of advertising in the 1950s was about what the majority were seeing in magazine advertisements, and television advertisements, then black people were not part of it.
I have never heard anyone say that a marketing study done in 1955 said that advertisements featuring white housewives would sell more laundry soap to black audiences than an advertisement without people in them. Or that a red haired white housewife model would sell more laundry soap to black audiences than a black haired one. Or a white woman with platinum blonde hair would sell more laundry soap to black audiences than one with a red haired model. And so on.
So when a black woman model appeared in an advertisement for laundry soap, it sold more laundry soap to black people, because the advertisers were finally practicing ” insidious manipulation practices” on black people?
Or did it turn out that a black model selling laundry soap in `1967 sold more laundry soap to white people, especially white women with platinum blonde hair?
The advertisements for the tv show “Them” seem to be set in the 1950s United States of America, so that was one motivation for writing the above, the way it was written.
—I used a “bing” search engine for advertisements for Tide Laundry detergent. I found a black girl in a 1965 advertisement under the title “A $12 dress ruined.” And a black woman in a 1968 advertisement under the title “A ‘Towel Sandwich’ Proves Dirt Can’t Hide From Intensified Tide!”
—That is a very limited amount of evidence for this subject, and the 1965 advertisement pre-dates any 1967 protests. But the readers can look up the advertisements on bing, for themselves.
—I assume you will not miss reading the article, below, but I liked the thoughts, below:
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/04/anonymous-oscar-ballot-director-1234631409/
In some ways, it’s good. Some films are the little-engine-that-could that do well and might not have done well with blockbusters in the mix. The Academy wrestled with “Should we have a Popular Oscar?” No, for “Black Panther” that would be a bronze medal; it wants to compete for Best Picture. But this year, we don’t have big-grossing “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” or “1917.” We don’t have any of these movies. In a straw poll, “Judas and the Black Messiah” was the one with the most awareness, but it was still under 50 percent. That’s a tough year.
Going in, everybody knows the ratings won’t be great, because the public doesn’t really know the films. Even when films are on Netflix and anyone can watch them, you can’t find them on the homepage. Sometimes they get released and disappear into a sea of stand-up specials and cookery shows. Where are the Oscar nominees like “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom?” Send me eight screeners, but the public needs to see it, too. I feel for these movies: There was some good stuff in the year that nobody came [to see].
clarification:
I should have said “I think you will read this yourselves, later in the day. But I liked what it said about popular movies and the Oscar television show.”
— I think I asked if either the Golden Globes or the Oscars would thank the government for bailing out independent movie houses and independent music venues during the telecast. I know I asked if the would do the Oscars as a telethon for COVID 19 relief for people in other countries. I wonderif those will happen on the telecast on Sunday night?