2016 Oscars: Winners, Losers and Controversy

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
perhaps they should give Oscars for real life black acting - you know, the powerful performances by the likes of treyvon martin's supporters and Michael brown's supporters: "but they were just poor little children who wouldn't hurt a fly!"







I have no problem with blacks, latinos, asians, or whomever as characters in movies.


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Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
And Francis is heard from. Terrific insight, Francis. :plain:

Anyone have a pick for best picture from the nominees? I haven't seen Brooklyn or a couple of the others.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
I wonder if Stallone will say something about Creed and his costar being overlooked if he wins best supporting? :think: I wonder if voting members are wondering about that too.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
Nominations for Best Picture (descriptions courtesy of IMDb)

The Martian: During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.

The Big Short: Four denizens in the world of high-finance predict the credit and housing bubble collapse of the mid-2000s, and decide to take on the big banks for their greed and lack of foresight.

Bridge of Spies: During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers.

Brooklyn: An Irish immigrant lands in 1950s Brooklyn, where she quickly falls into a romance with a local. When her past catches up with her, however, she must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within.

Mad Max/Fury Road: A woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in postapocalyptic Australia in search for her home-land with the help of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshipper, and a drifter named Max.

Room: After five-year-old Jack and his mother escape from the enclosed surroundings that Jack has known his entire life, the boy makes a thrilling discovery.

The Revenant: A frontiersman on a fur trading expedition in the 1820s fights for survival after being mauled by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team.

Spotlight: The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
The Martian is a great film but I think it will be the Revenant as the winner!
People love it but it's the weakest reviewed film of the lot...I have a feeling Hollywood, feeling the race heat, may look to elevate a smaller film, like Room, over the bigger ticket contenders. If not, it might well work for Revenant, because DiCaprio is golden within and outside of the Oscar community and it would be harder to begrudge his victory lap.
 

genuineoriginal

New member
Nominations for Best Picture

The Martian

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max/Fury Road

Room

The Revenant

Spotlight

This list is exactly why I boycotted the Oscar, and it had nothing to do with race.

The Oscar committee keeps nominating movies I have no interest in watching.

The People's Choice Awards nominated these films:
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron
  • Furious 7
  • Inside Out
  • Jurassic World
  • Pitch Perfect 2
This is a list of movies I would watch.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
I've only seen the Mad Max flick and The Martian. I wasn't much impressed by the Mad Max flick. The Martian was good, though.
I just don't get the critical response to Max. Maybe because it was early in the year and a bit ambitious compared to a lot of the standard, cgi in lieu of compelling plot-line, fare in the genre. :idunno:
 

PureX

Well-known member
I just don't get the critical response to Max. Maybe because it was early in the year and a bit ambitious compared to a lot of the standard, cgi in lieu of compelling plot-line, fare in the genre. :idunno:
It seemed too long by half relative to it's story content. And mind-numbingly derivative of the others. I mean, I know it's part of a franchise, but giving the hero a vagina wasn't much of an inventive stretch.
 

annabenedetti

like marbles on glass
But you're a weirdo. ;)

Am not. :)

And... I was at the theater again, to see the Oscar nominated animated short films. My favorites were so close they might as well be a 3-way tie: Sanjay's Super Team, We Can't Live Without Cosmos, and World of Tomorrow. I'm not very good at saying why, they just captivated me - story, depth, humanness, poignancy, humor, sheer creative genius. I don't know, I just can't do them justice. Well worth finding a theater that's showing them. Bear Story just didn't do anything for me, and I didn't care much for Prologue. Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe it was missing something.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
Am not. :)

And... I was at the theater again, to see the Oscar nominated animated short films. My favorites were so close they might as well be a 3-way tie: Sanjay's Super Team, We Can't Live Without Cosmos, and World of Tomorrow. I'm not very good at saying why, they just captivated me - story, depth, humanness, poignancy, humor, sheer creative genius. I don't know, I just can't do them justice. Well worth finding a theater that's showing them. Bear Story just didn't do anything for me, and I didn't care much for Prologue. Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe it was missing something.
I thought there were a number of entertaining films this last year, but I wouldn't say I saw a great film among them. It's been a while since I could. A thin year for great.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
If someone dared to say (and I have no idea if anyone has) "No black person was nominated this year because, based on this year's crop, the acting of black folks just wasn't that good, sorry," the likely response would be, "Oh, didn't act WHITE enough for you, is that it?"

Just a guess.
It wouldn't be daring, it would be ignorant, looking at the Globes and the SAG awards and critical response to a number of performances by people of color, comparatively. But it's compounded by the omission of films featuring blacks, like Creed. Creed was better thought of, critically, than a number of films nominated and Jordan's performance in it was noteworthy. I don't think it's about willful racism. I think it's mostly about the composition of the membership coupled with a year in which there really weren't a lot of great films. A number of good ones, but not much more.

Take a recent winner to compare. Are any of the films on that list comparable to, say, Lincoln?
 

aCultureWarrior

BANNED
Banned
LIFETIME MEMBER
There's a lot of negative buzz about this year's Oscars and the apparent want of diversity in its product for the second year running, despite more than a few performances and a few (fewer) films of note that could have carried that flag. That conversation led to a recent look at the composition of the Oscar voters that had the Academy President scrambling to impact the composition in its wake.

The average Oscar voter is over sixty, white and male. Not exactly the most likely way to see Straight Out of Compton, Beasts of No Nation or even the refocused Rocky films light up the nominations. And no, I'm not jumping on the race wagon by noting that an older skewing, white male demographic isn't the group likely to identify as strongly with or support as readily a younger, more racially and culturally diverse product.

Last year's snubbing of Selma and its lead, among others, started a public conversation on this topic that became heated after similar calls for the above mentioned films and a few actors this year met the same cold Oscar shoulder...

With "Slumdog Millionaire" winning the Best Picture in 2008 and "12 Years a Slave" in 2013, I'd say that all of those alleged color blind liberals that are complaining about lack of diversity have nothing to complain about.
 
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