by notesfromachair

Pre Oscar Buzz

The Oscars will be held this coming weekend and it’s time for some random observations.

#1 – CHRIS ROCK AND THE WILL SMITH OSCAR SLAP ONE YEAR LATER

Well, we finally got our complete response from Chris Rock and it did not disappoint.

It was broadcast Saturday night on his live Netflix comedy special, Selective Outrage.

If you did not tune in, just know the entire set is great – smart, candid and brilliantly written and delivered.

But most importantly, it’s really funny.

Nevertheless, it was the last 10 minutes that viewers will most remember, one that built to a well-earned mic drop to the question most of us have been waiting a year for him to answer:

What was it like and how do you feel about being slugged really hard on live TV in front of 16 million plus people at the most prestigious awards ceremony in the world by one of the biggest stars in the world because he couldn’t take a joke?

Well, first of all – it REALLY HURT.

In terms of movies, think of it as the big guy who played Muhammad Ali (Smith) slugging the skinny kid who played Pookie (Rock) in New Jack City.

His words, not mine.

But that was just the start. Suffice it to say that in 10 minutes every ounce of massaged and manicured new age apology offered in pretty much any context by Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, was expertly shredded into origami and virtually shoved down their throats.

But more importantly, it served to neuter the need for whatever obligatory dumb jokes that had been scheduled to address last year’s incident on the show, thus freeing this year’s ceremony to be as clever, dull, silly or timely as it chooses to be on its own.

Score one for team Rock and know that the festivities will likely achieve only two of the above four.

#2 – EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE OSCAR NOM-NOMS – This film grew on me and deserves the best picture and director wins it is clearly going to get next Sunday night.

James Hong sealed the deal at last week’s SAGs

I confess that after I viewed it the first time, barely holding on to middle age me didn’t quite get all the hoopla. I mean, it was okay, but…huh?

However, after watching it a second time it quickly became one of my favorite films of the year and, by any standards, one of the most original.

Those of us who are not into multi-verse realities (Note: This includes myself AND most of my middle-aged friends) were a bit lost with EEAAO’s scattershot approach to reality.

But at its heart the film is actually nothing more, or less, than a very clever contemporary take on The Wizard of Oz. Who doesn’t want to run away from a family that doesn’t listen to them when they are never truly seen? On the other hand, what do you do when you suddenly realize that you are the one who is equally not seeing OR listening to them?

That’s one way to describe the multiverse

That’s a pretty good hat trick to pull off thematically, especially when the Mom who is substituting for Dorothy has to alternate between being a martial arts master, a glamorous movie star and a tired-looking working stiff, not to mention the voice of a googly-eyed rock.

A different kind of Oscar Rock this year

Here’s hoping that Michelle Yeoh makes history and wins a well-deserved best actress Oscar alongside the sure thing supporting actor Oscar win for Key Huan Quan as her sweet, put-upon husband.

I think she will and that we’re looking at a big EEAAO sweep of all the top honors it’s nominated for in the making.

#3- THE VAGARIES OF THE VAGUE – There is something going on with films in the last few years for this viewer, aka ME, and it’s much more than having to watch EEAAO a second time to truly get it.

It seems there is a groundswell among critics and many industry-ites, nee Academy and other guild members, to go crazy for movies that feel slow, undone and vague. Two examples this year are the multi-Oscar nominations for Tar and the near lock Women Talking has for the screenwriting award.

And we know how the Chair feels about ol’ Lydia Tar

Both films deal with the power struggles of women in unusual but incredibly obtuse ways. Both are interesting looking, well acted and well made. Yet both lack narrative details, drive and urgency, often choosing to stay mired in a miasma of talk and pretension.

It simply feels odd that Women Talking is a shoo-in for a best adapted screenplay win for writer-director Sarah Polley and that Tar’s Cate Blanchett is the top contender to snatch the best actress Oscar away from the more deserving Ms. Yeoh.

This is especially true when two far superior films about women and their struggle for and against power, She Said and Till, were totally ignored by the Academy,

Having seen all four films it’s hard not to conclude that the clear, well-crafted narratives of the latter two were judged not hip or happening enough for accolades by film critics and voters that believe something different always means something better.

I wonder what Miranda would have to say about this

For them I say, there’s a reason I can still wear the classic white shirt I bought at Agnes B a full 35 years ago but long ago gave away my beloved purple Armani suit that at the time I was convinced would be perennially flawless.

#4 – THERE IS NO BEST ACTOR THIS YEAR – All of the people in this category, not to mention in most categories, are great. But anyone who can say for sure whether Austin Butler will win for his startlingly shape shifting performance in Elvis or Brendan Fraser will take home the Oscar for his raw, heartbreaking acting turn of a lifetime in The Whale, is lying.

Some years it’s simply a tie. Or an upset for Colin Farrell, who could squeak in for his subtle work in the much Oscar loved Banshees of Inisherin.

Put a gun to my head and I’d say it’s probably Austin Butler’s ability to not only physically resurrect but also sing beloved Elvis Presley back to life. On the other hand, I’m not gonna publicly deny one of the best male performances I’ve seen in years, by George of the Jungle, no less, from getting his much deserved Oscar win.

Which brings me to:

#4B – Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale received a handful of Oscar nominations but has received middling critical reviews pretty much across the board. I don’t get it. It’s one of the best, if not most disturbing, movies of the year. It’s a tough watch but watch it. It’s the anti-hip and happening and vague film stylistically (Note: Lucky for us) though ironically it seems to me that its in your face emotional rawness is exactly what we need in the world right now.

And finally:

#5 – THE OSCAR ARE ICONIC BUT…As fun as they are for all the right and wrong reasons, at the end of the day they don’t mean a lot. And they’re often wrong.

I watched a double feature this afternoon on Turner Classic Movies of Born Yesterday (1950) and Some Like It Hot (1959).

They are classic movies at their best – superbly entertaining, perfectly crafted and more than able to stand the test of time against most of their contemporaries.

Judy Holliday won the lead actress Oscar in Born Yesterday for recreating her much acclaimed Broadway performance. But let’s remember in doing so she beat out Bette Davis, who gave one of the best female performances in film history as Margo Channing in All About Eve, and Gloria Swanson, who created one of the most enduringly iconic as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

As for Some Like It Hot, it’s a movie that has been consistently rated by writers, directors and critics as one of the top five comedies of all-time, if not THE top. Yet its only Oscar win was for best costumes and it failed to even receive a nomination for either best picture or best director.

The film that received the most Oscar nominations that year was, um,…Ben Hur. And it was awarded the best picture, best director (William Wyler) and best actor (Charlton Heston) Oscar, among others.

Try sitting through all 123 hours of Ben-Hur after watching Some Like It Hot. And if you manage to, report back to us on which one you liked best.

“Running Wild” – from Some Like It Hot

12.30.22

by notesfromachair

Adieu ’22

I avoid ever saying this is the worst about anything because to me that is tempting fate.

Invariably life will answer you back with, really, then try this, and you will find yourself wishing and dreaming and hoping of what you once thought was the worst because in retrospect you had no idea how truly “worst” things could get.

All that being said, 2022 was by no means a STELLAR year.

If it wasn’t the WORST, and clearly it wasn’t in case life is listening, it was by no means the BEST.

I will cop to the fact that it was better than sitting quarantined at home in an infinity number of Zoom chats, as we were in 2020 and large swaths of 2021. It was also preferable to the morning after Election Day 2016 or that time in 2006 when Crash won the Oscar for best picture over Brokeback Mountain (Note: March 5^th, somewhere between 8 and 9pm PST, to be exact. Not that I hold grudges. Much).

I watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever the other night and I quite enjoyed it. Or let’s say, it hit home with me and I wasn’t bored, which is more than I can say for the majority of critic’s darlings this year (Note: I still want my 12 hours back for Tar and the other 18 that I devoted to _____fill in the blank___).

Side Note: What is it with the length of movies this year, anyway? Why has more become more, and even more be determined to be even better??

Nevertheless Wakanda. At two hours and 41 minutes it is actually four minutes longer than Tar but to me plays like a short film by comparison.

And I guess that is the real point.

Taste, like life, or even year-end recaps and annual 10 best lists, is really all about point of view and perspective.

For me, Wakanda summed up a several year period of loss and gave us a comic book blueprint about moving on. If it wasn’t the best film of the year, and certainly it wasn’t even though that’s a pretty low bar, it certainly was one of the most relevant.

What do you do when the world, as you understood it, disappears? How do you survive when one of the people closest to you dies? How do you move on when your hero (or heroes) disappears and your moral compass is gone?

And what actions can you take when there is no one left to lead you but yourself and deep down you know you are nowhere near up to that task?

Wakanda answers that question in a reassuring, old-fashioned way. That, of course, none of us are by ourselves if we’ve ever loved and lost because the memory of that person, or the good that once was, is always inside of us. We merely need to go deep down and feel the joy, through the pain of what once was, and use it and all we experienced as the basis for a new path that we create for ourselves to move forward.

A kind of moral, even informational, blue print, if you will.

I heard some politician or theologian this year talk about the history of social movements as a relay race that one runs in during their time. You advance the cause as far as you can and then pass the torch on to the next generation, in hopes that they can go even further

The race never ends but neither does the spirit of anyone that has come before you, despite the inevitable losses.

That’s the way we move on and carry on and certainly it’s all far above the pay grade of anyone trying to summarize 2022.

Except, clearly, some people.

The horrific invasion of the Ukraine by Russia began in Feb. 2022 and continues through this very moment and beyond. Yet Volodymyr Zelensky, a former actor with little political experience, unlikely leads a shockingly strong and still standing Ukraine, and was just voted Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.

Dressed in fatigue colors and armed with the ability to stay charismatically on message as bombs drop all around him, Zelensky has somehow risen to fill a leadership gap in the world by merely stepping up in a moment. No more so then when he addressed the U.S. Congress a few weeks ago and proclaimed that the billions in military aid we are giving to Ukraine should not be seen as “charity” but an “investment” for freedom and all of our futures.

What could read like political tripe played as exactly the opposite merely because it was the truth and was said with conviction and a little bit of humor. And it got him a standing ovation from the vast majority of blue AND red politicians in the chamber. Not to mention the world.

To make a cheap comparison to movies – which is cheap because they are NOT real life despite what we think – it’s what happens when an actor so totally inhabits a role that the effect is undeniable. Austin Butler in Elvis and Brendan Fraser in The Whale. Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans and Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Four high points of many low points overall in 2022 cinema.

Actors, in particular, often get their moments in the unlikeliest of roles and/or in the strangest of times. And many of them, like many of us, never hit that jackpot in quite the way they or we imagine they would.

Nevertheless, we all continue running the race, as the mere fact of you reading this proves. And that is at least one other great thing about 2022. We are all still running.

I could tell you The Bear and Wednesday and Smiley brought me the most fun on streaming platforms in the past 12 months, and that the Jan. 6^th hearings were clearly the smartest and most interesting thing on network television but what would that prove?

… that you’ve been thinking about this dance for a month?

I can confess that re-watching select films on Turner Classic Movies this year probably gave me more pleasure than any other 2022 release (Note: I marveled at Paris Blues (1961), a perfectly imperfect movie, and cried once again at Jacques Demy’s classic Umbrellas of Cherbourg) but who really cares.

It’s even less important than admitting that I loved Mary Rodgers’ autobiography Shy a lot more than the 2014 Pulitzer Prize winning novel All The Light We Cannot See, which I tried reading over the summer but never finished because there is only so much description of items in a room (Note: Meaning, not much) that I can bear.

That fact is even less surprising than publicly stating I listen to almost none of the new songs and albums that made it onto music critics’ 2022 top ten lists (Note: I can’t anymore with Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé, though they and their admittedly oversize talents, should live and be well).

Still, in fairness I must state that I do love me some Brandi Carlisle and was really, really, really disappointed that the forever young and forever cool indie rock group, Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, had to bow out of the season finale musical guest spot on Saturday Night Live because one of them was ill.

They should live and be well (Note: When did I turn into my great-grandmother?) through 2022 and beyond, too.

As should we all and then some for what a new, potentially fabulous year could have on the horizon. Or not.

No pressure, 2023. At All.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs – “Spitting Off the Edge of the World”

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: the whale

Pre Oscar Buzz

Adieu ’22