by notesfromachair

One Oscar After Another

One Battle After Another is that rare American film that simultaneously speaks to and skewers the times we live in.

It’s original, unique, twisty, bizarre, seriously political and hysterically funny.

Call your friends. Tell them to see this movie.

And it’s going to get a boatload of Oscar nominations and likely win more than a whole handful.

Not that this kind of thing much matters given the times we’re living in.

Just for a minute, let me think about awards shows!

But let’s discuss it anyway, since right now I’m tired of speaking to the fascistic moment of the day.

Not to mention, One Battle After Another does it far better as we watch a real band of left wing radicals, who seem like lunatics but aren’t, take on a white Supremacist-powered American military hellbent on rounding up, killing or simply sequestering into truly crumbling sanctuary cities, every single person, especially those of color, who are not 100% onboard with its own even more radical agenda.

Yes, it’s a fictional, pushed reality world of the 1980s and 90s that Anderson started writing some years ago, partly inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, but you don’t have to use your imagination much, if at all, to believe this is documentary footage from secret pockets of today’s America or its very near future.

That is what great filmmakers can do. Make you think something is or could be happening right now and cause you to think about whether you want that reality and those consequences.

And within that group there are a small chosen few that can even get you to uproariously laugh about the absurdity of the times we’re living in and the sheer narcissistic, animal destructiveness of what we’re doing.

There is an even smaller number, perhaps up to three, who can also pull this off using the tropes of a traditional family drama/love story.

But let’s get back to what really matters – whether PTA will win finally win his long-awaited, and very long overdue, Oscar(s) for his troubles.

It’s hard to imagine Paul Thomas Anderson, an ELEVEN time nominee who has never won an Academy Award, is sitting around wondering whether this will be “his year.” That’s the purview of the press and everyone else who works in the industry who longs to win one.

This is not to say PTA doesn’t want to win or won’t be there to accept the one or two or hopefully three that might be coming his way.

But when you’ve made so many memorable films, worked with the best in the business and remain one of a tiny group of truly successful and critically acclaimed American auteurs over the last thirty years that continues to swing for the fences every time you’re up at bat (Note: Yes, even I can do baseball metaphors when they apply), the surprisingly weighty little gold statuette, cool as it is, is more for the rest of us fans of the guy, than the guy himself.

Having only met him briefly one time at the beginning of his career, I have very little real idea of how he’ll react. But I imagine him having a similar response to Martin Scorsese, when he finally won the award for The Departed, a solid film but pretty much no one’s top one or two films in his oeuvre.

After tumultuous applause there were numerous thank you’s and sincere words of being “overwhelmed” and “moved.” But what always stayed with me was his shout out to the many people who loved his movies for so long who were en masse pissed off that after Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Aviator (Note: To name only a very few) he had yet to be “officially” acknowledged by his, ahem, “peers.”

…I just want to say, too, that so many people over the years have been wishing this for me, strangers, you know. I go walking in the street people say something to me, I go in a doctor’s office, I go in a…whatever…elevators, people are saying, “You should win one, you should win one.” I go for an x-ray, “You should win one.” And I’m saying,”Thank you.” And then friends of mine over the years and friends who are here tonight are wishing this for me and my family. I thank you. This is for you.

Paul Thomas Andreson hasn’t been working nearly as long and has had a far different career. But speaking for those of us who marveled at, were inspired by or simply loved movies like Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master and The Phantom Thread, I gotta say:

He better f’n win one this time, and it’d be even more fitting for it to happen for one of his best and most timely films.

As I continue to express the sentiments of the many who will continue to channel their gargantuan political anger into this year’s Oscar race, let me add this tidbit from a person who has spent his entire adult life in and around the movie business.

I‘d venture to say it’s a lot harder to write AND direct so many interesting and outstanding films, much less get them made and released through the studio system these days, than it is to tear down a 250 year-old democracy.

Certainly, it takes a lot more talent.

Speaking of which, you don’t get to work with actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, who deliver some of their most memorable recent performances in OBAA, or draw award-worthy performances from lesser known onscreen performers like Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, if you’re not at the top of your game.

Nor will you get a major studio like Warner Bros. to back you, especially on a $150 million plus budgeted project (Note: That’s before marketing) that speaks to THE hot button political issue of the day.

I have a sense some people are not thrilled with Colonel Lockjaw

The right loves to tar all of Hollywood with the same broad “overly woke brush,” but if you check the release schedule for every major studio the real revelation is how safe and essentially non-political the vast majority of major studio financed and distributed films there are, none of which come close to fitting comfortably into that category.

Would that it were the case.

Because if woke means being “awake” and “alert,” especially when it comes to inequality, racism, sexism and homophobia (just to name a few), one can’t help but wonder – why would ANYONE, much less SO MANY, be so virulently against it?

Which brings us back to PTA and One Battle After Another and how he sets an example for any active or aspiring filmmakers out there.

Strip away all the successful films he’s made and all the awards he was nominated for and didn’t win, and you’ll find he’s a long-married husband to beloved comic actor/producer Maya Rudolph, and a family man/father of four biracial kids who sat down a few years ago to the same blank screen/page every creative person is faced with.

And what he came up with was a story of an interracial couple in a far right dystopian American landscape and what silly and horrible things could happen to them and theirs if one day…

Did you have machine guns + nuns on your bingo card?

Eh, better to let him show and tell it to you himself and see if it rings true to what you’re watching happen all around you in real time. And if you admire him for it.

As for the Oscar, well, that’s out of most of our hands. Though hopefully not his.

Music and Trailer from One Battle After Another

02.13.22

by notesfromachair

Change for the Good

America is part of a global multi-racial community whether the insurrectionists of Jan. 6 like it or not.

This is a fact and it’s not going to change. Ever.

If anything, thanks in part to social media and social revolution, we are only going to get more multi-racial and more global.

Despite all the bellyaching from those preferring to benefit from our traditionally white, male heterosexual power structure.

Numbers don’t lie no matter how many times those doing their best to suppress the truth tell us a fork is actually a spoon…or a salad bowl.

If you want to put politics aside, and who doesn’t right now, one way to consider just how much things have changed is to look at this year’s Oscar nominations.

Flee, a mostly animated movie that tells the harrowing story of a young gay Afghan refugee’s nail biting escape from his war-torn country, was nominated for best documentary, best animated feature AND best international film.

That’s a first.

Japan’s Drive My Car received four nominations, including breakout ones for best picture and director, and Norway’s The Worst Person in the World nabbed an unexpected screenplay nod aside from the one it got for international film.

In the acting categories, four people of color received nominations (down from last year’s record high of nine). But among those are top contenders like Will Smith in King Richard and Ariana DeBose in West Side Story, both of whom are favored to win in their categories.

Bonus points for the openly queer nominees!

Though before we start to believe we’ve truly toppled the Oscar Confederacy and, in turn, the international Confederacy of straight white, American maleness (Note: Don’t worry guys, we still want to include you always), here’s a very brief recent history of Oscar numbers to chew on.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences began a real diversity push in earnest more than five years ago when #OscarsSoWhite became a shameful international hashtag due to the lack of diversity among that year’s nominees and winners (Note: Not a single Black actor was nominated in either 2015 or 2016 in any of the 20 possible slots).

But this had a great deal to do with the voting members in the Academy. At that time 92% of the membership was white and 75% was male.

After a push to recruit a more diverse membership, these days approximately 84% of the members are white and 16% are non-white. Its female membership also increased to more than 32%.

The statistics among new members are a lot better. For example, of the 819 new people who became Oscar voters in 2020, 45% were women and 36% were people of color.

If the Academy keeps going at this rate, who knows, it might not even be news when a woman receives a nomination as best director (Note: Jane Campion actually became the first female in history to be nominated twice in that category this year for The Power of The Dog, following last year’s nomination and win for Chloe Zhao (Nomadland), the first female POC to be so recognized).

Though it still might break a few insurrectionists hearts when Ava DuVernay or use your imagination finally, finally, FINALLY gets their turn at the podium.

Still, we digress.

The real story of this year’s Oscar contenders, and inevitably surprising winners, really lies in the number of new international members welcomed into the Oscar voting fold during the last five years. For a deeper dive, check out these stories in the Hollywood Reporter, Vox and Slate:

But if you want to truly understand the slow but steady shifting tide of one of our top entertainment cultural signifiers – the Oscars – and, in turn, all the kicking and screaming and spitting up from Fox News watchers– here is one simple way in.

The membership of the Academy has swelled to just about 9400 active members in 2021 compared to the 6261 it had in 2016. That’s a 47% increase.

But even more interesting is that a significant portion of those new members came not only from a minority population but from outside the U.S.

In 2022, more than 25% of all Academy members (nee voters) are from countries other than America, vs. a mere 12% just six years ago.

This gives deeper meaning to what Oscar-winning writer-director Billy Wilder was famously quoted as saying to the cameraman on one of his movies way back when:

Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.

Closeups remained in tact, Norma, don’t worry.

Now I love Billy Wilder as much as the next movie fan, perhaps even more. But he was speaking at a particular place and time. And as a European immigrant who embraced the style of American cinema while helping to significantly redefine it with lacerating wit, strong characterizations and unrelenting social commentary.

The Academy these days has wisely decided, though long overdue, to actively move forward from his now somewhat provincial, though still cringingly funny, dated point of view.

Its slow, somewhat steady embrace of international cinema (Note: Starting with South Korea’s Parasite best picture win in 2020), as well as its recognition of various minority and female viewpoints among this year’s nominated crop of films and members, is a welcome change and, yes, love overdue.

And though I clearly can’t be sure, I’d bet, as an immigrant, even Wilder would fully endorse it.

Because ironically, when you think about it, it’s just about the most American thing the Academy, in its new and present form, can do to move the industry and the culture forward.

Evolution vs. insurrection.

Sebastián Yatra – “Dos Oruguitas” (from Encanto — Disney’s first Spanish language song nomination, second in the history of the Oscars)

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: Best Director

One Oscar After Another

Change for the Good