Oscars 2023 - Now With Less Slapping

It’s fantastic.

There’s always a few folks that get missed, but this year’s In Memoriam segment was crazy short. My wife even commented on its brevity.

They’d sneak in more if they didn’t spend a minute gazing at Lenny Kravitz playing piano.

They could’ve doubled up Paul Sorvino and Ray Liotta with a clip (or clips) from Goodfellas.

Watched it last night. It’s really good. The beginning totally was stressing me out which I mean was the point I guess. I’m kind of glad I watched it after the show since as much as I love JLC I think Stephanie Hsu’s performance overshadowed hers and not by a small amount. I’m perfectly fine with the fact that history of who she is also impacts how they decided, so shrug.

Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that JLC got a (long overdue) Oscar for being JLC.

Quite. It also did not go unnoticed that they gave the Best Supporting Actress award to the white actor. Must keep the quotas up.

Ennnh. I thought Hsu did a great job and probably deserved the award as mush as JLC, but let’s face it. The Academy voters are almost always going to go with the more recognizable actor with a long career over a relative newcomer unless that newcomer absolutely blows them away. In this case, JLC not only did a good job acting in EEAAO, she also did it while being completely frumped-up in makeup and costume, another thing the voters seem to be suckers for.

JLC is certainly going to start running out of chances of ever winning one so I think that was 100% the driving force. Honestly it’s a good movie, but the amount of awards it won seems kind of nutty. It didn’t blow my mind…

Unrelated, but I think my daughter would have smashed the tv if Turning Red won animated picture. I’ve never seen so much hatred for a movie lol. For some reason she thinks Puss and Boots was a masterpiece, but as ok with anyone aside from Turning Red winning.

Yeah, it was a weak year on the animated front. Del Toro’s Pinocchio may be better than the other clones, but it’s certainly no Coraline.

I was torn between Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis. I totally agree that Stephanie Hsu’s role had more emotional weight, but I think we also take actors like Jamie Lee Curtis for granted sometimes. She makes what she does in Everything Everywhere All At Once look easy, and it’s really not.

She’s a legitimate actor, but she’s also incredibly funny, and I think that role was a great showcase of her talent, so I’m okay with her getting the nod. Also because Stephanie Hsu will keep being awesome, and I fully expect that good things will keep coming her way.

A nomination for James Hong wouldn’t have been amiss either, that’s another actor that has been taken for granted for a long time, while having to endure a bunch of casual racism at that.

I would’ve liked to see screenplay go to The Banshees of Inisherin. I haven’t seen a lot of the other contenders, so maybe I’ll find something I like even more, but I thought it was the better written movie.

I could totally countenance an Oscar for this line reading alone.

(The guy from Son Lux said it wasn’t written as sung in the script, but when Hsu sang it, he made it into a tune on the soundtrack.)

Coraline is like her favorite thing ever. I personally don’t get why… We didn’t watch Pinocchio yet. Puss and Boots is very good. The villains are so good. The one is totally terrifying. John Mulaney kind of lost some luster for me by being a douchbag, but damn he is talented.

That’s a fair point, although I still think Stephanie Hsu should have been the frontrunner in the category. If I’m real honest, I don’t think either of them would have been in contention if not for Michelle Yeoh & Ke Huy Quan’s long coattails.

Here I’d have to disagree outright. Everything Everywhere All at Once was perfectly executed and creatively fresh. Banshees of Inisherin relied heavily on two very strong performances (Colin Farrell was robbed!) and felt pretty weak in the middle stretch. More than one of us here on QT3 nearly lost hope before it managed to stick the landing all the same at the very end.

And disagree we shall, sir! I feel the same way you feel, but about Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’m impressed by the ingenuity, and how well it fits together, but in terms of the writing itself, I think it works because of the performances.

The Banshees of Inisherin is convoluted, it’s both incredibly subtle and absurdly shocking. It’s a complicated movie about a complicated subject, and I assume that’s partly why it missed out. I had to watch it twice before I really got what was going on, and I think I might’ve missed it if it hadn’t been for the observations of other QT3’ers, but I think it’s spectacularly written.

There are parts of that movie that are gonna stay with me, and I can’t say the same for Everything Everywhere, even though I think it deserves every other award it got. Everything Everywhere is a brilliant spectacle, Banshees is brilliant literature in my opinion.

It still would have worked as a worthy spiritual successor to the original Matrix with those caliber performances, but the phenomenal performances (and writing!) elevated it to something with much richer emotional depth. (Remember how flat and forced the “romance” in The Matrix was?)

I did call it Blue Valentine for friendships, and I think it will remain in that same haunted corner of my memory, but it has less to say than that movie. It’s also overshadowed by their earlier collaboration on In Bruges, especially the use of subtext in service of story, rather than the other way around like it is here. That probably sounds more negative than I feel about it, but its central conflict feels all the more artificial for it.

I don’t think it’s about anything as banal as friendship. I see it as a movie about depression and self-perception.

Spoilers

Padraic is driven mad because he has this idea that he’s a nice guy, so it makes absolutely no sense that Colm wouldn’t want to stay friends with him, but the script reveals that to be a fallacy.

On an emotional level, Padraic is very inconsiderate. He never listens to people when they talk, he thinks his sister should just stop reading sad books if they make her sad, and he thinks Colm should just bury his depression “like the rest of us”, which is the actual reason Colm doesn’t want to be near him anymore, because what Colm is going through is heavy and real, and he can’t have a person as dimwitted and inconsiderate as Padraic near him in that state.

“None of it helps me, do you understand? None of it helps me”. Padraic doesn’t understand. Padraic isn’t listening to a word he says. Nor does the priest, who only wants to know if he has sinned, nor does the rest of the island. The only person who might conceivably understand is Siobhan, and she won’t allow herself to admit it (Kerry Condon is the overlooked genius of the movie).

In a brilliant bit of writing, Padraic keeps being called out by Dominic, the village idiot. He calls out Padraic’s for his self-obsessed mania about Colm, and he also call him out for not being as nice as he thinks he is.

Dominic is actually smart, and Padraic is actually the village idiot.

All of the characters are written true to themselves, which is why the movie is so hard to parse. It’s not telegraphed, and you can argue whether you think that’s the right decision cinematically, but either way I think it’s brilliant writing. Once I got what the movie was doing, I loved how those characters tricked me at first.

I think what makes the movie a masterpiece is Brendan Gleesons performance, and the way that is written for him. He’s been very open about his struggles with depression in the past, and I think he brings the entire weight of that experience to the movie.

I didn’t find any lesson there about friendship, but it is the best movie I can remember seeing about depression.

I think Colin Farrell outshines Brendan Gleeson in this one. It’s the best performance of his career.

I’m not sure you can properly explain the ending without addressing the subtext of the civil war. Or the fingers.

I don’t see any references to the civil war, beyond the fact that it’s happening in the background. Much like the banshees, I think it’s a macguffin?

Maybe we should move that to the thread itself, just to avoid putting too many spoilers in here.

Spoilers

The fingers is one of the criticisms I have of the movie, because it’s such an extreme reaction that it drowns out the point. The point is that Colm is in so much pain that he will do literally anything to keep Padraic away from him, but once he takes his fingers off, I think you start thinking about whether he might have a far more serious illness.

I think that’s the playwrite in Martin McDonagh going ham. It would probably play better on a stage than it does in the movie.

I have the same problem with friendship when it comes to the ending. If it’s a movie about friendship, then at that point nothing is resolved. We have no idea where their relationship is going.

It’s deliberately vague, but I think we’re just seeing where the characters are at that point in the story. Colm is smiling at the sun, which is an indication that he’s finally coming out of his depression. The demons have raged, and now they’re fading. He’s lost a few fingers, but he survived.

It’s a lot worse for Padraic, who has been far more seriously wounded by his own madness.

If he had just listened to wise young Dominic, none of it would’ve happened. “What’s this mope so mopey for? He’s just a fecking man, lads! A fat, ginger man!”.

Pretty solid take in my opinion. The thing that didn’t land for me was the middle bit, where everyone and Colm was just going on about themselves after he did the first big thing, that smacked a bit wrong. The relationship between him and Colin’s character seemed right, but the town just accepting it with total knowledge pushed me a bit.