Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Short Takes on Poor Things, The Zone of Interest, and a few other cinematic topics

Mad Science and Mad Men

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.  However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon.  (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)


My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the same name)


In that I saw both films reviewed this week just before the Oscars broadcast I wasn’t able to get to them until after the fact, so I’ll try here to provide their due without belaboring details too much.  (Shocking, I know.)  Speaking of the Oscars, since they’ve been awarded for the 2023 releases you can refer to my predictions posting to see what I got right (16 of 23, 70%) and wrong, which you can also compare to the experts at Variety where they got 15 correct for 65%.  Where I didn’t predict a winner the Academy only awarded 1 of my preferences (Poor Things, Makeup and Hair Styling) while Variety also got 1 preference (The Last Repair Shop, Documentary Short Film) when predicting something else, so I've come out about even with those who seemingly know more than me, ha ha!

           

SHORT TAKES

           

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.


                     Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)
                                             rated R   142 min.


Here’s the trailer:

        (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size; 

        activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)



 Clearly, Poor Things is the oddest, most extreme film of the 2024 Best Picture Oscar nominees (admittedly, even more so than the gloriously-created-world of Barbie [Greta Gerwig, 2023; review in our August 17, 2023 posting] my preference for Best Production Design), with a clear Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)-like-vibe as a mad-scientist-surgeon in what seems (mostly) to be late-19th-century London (with a stitched-up-face reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster, the result of his father performing experiments on him), Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), finds the body of a suicidal woman, Victoria (Emma Stone)—as we learn more about her later—with her unborn child, so, in his own strange experiment, he replaces her brain with that of the fetus, then reanimates her, but she’s highly attractive with the only scar on the rear of her neck under her extremely-long-hair.  At first, with her infant brain, this young woman, now called Bella, has no memory of her previous life but sees Godwin (whom she ironically calls “God”) as a sort of father as she struggles to find speech, balance, understanding of the world around her, even as she’s increasingly-irresistible to Godwin’s assistant, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), who proposes to her.  In the meantime, she discovers the sexual joy of masturbation, wants plenty of it, frequently, yet Max wants to save her virginity for marriage (he later learns of how she came to be), so instead she runs off to Lisbon with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a sleazy lawyer Godwin hired to draw up the marriage contract for Max.


 Bella’s brain begins to mature rapidly (I suppose it also grew to better lodge in her skull), resulting in rejection of Duncan’s attempts to control her so he turns to drinking and gambling, finally winning a huge sum, but she gives it to some shady crew members who promise to use it to aid the poor (as if!), leaving Duncan unable to pay for the rest of the trip; they’re dropped off in Marseille, make their way to Paris where she finds funds working in a brothel, with exasperated Duncan leaving her.  As events continue, Duncan ends up in a London mental hospital, Godwin’s about to die, Max finds Duncan, then goes to Paris to retrieve Bella with the wedding now on again.  However, the ceremony’s interrupted by General Alfie Blessington (Christopher Abbott), who tells Bella she’s actually Victoria, married to him, so she goes to his home only to find out how violently-cruel he is.  He tries to force her to drink a sedative prior to being genitally-mutilated, but when she throws the liquid in his face he passes out.  Godwin dies peacefully, Bella and Max operate on Alfie, putting a goat’s brain in his skull so that he now just peacefully munches grass while they have a happy life.⇐


 The costumes, makeup and hairstyling, along with the production design are all marvelously over the top, winning Oscars in each of these 3 categories (plus 8 other noms); however, the biggest win was for Stone who, surprisingly for many predictors—me and Variety included—won the Actress in a Leading Role award over the presumptive-favorite, Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023 [review in our November 9, 2023 posting]), who some say, despite her winning this award from the Screen Actors Guild, should have been competing for Supporting Actress given the amount of her on-screen-time in that lengthy film (but then she’d have been up against eventual-winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph from The Holdovers [Alexander Payne, 2023; review in our December 13, 2023 posting], so Gladstone faced a difficult path no matter how she chose to compete for an Oscar)Poor Things is still in 700 domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters even after 14 weeks, but you can also find it streaming free on Hulu, for rent on Apple TV+ for $5.99, yet a week or so ago when I saw it the only choice was a purchase for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple TV+, etc., so I did (you can celebrate your now-more-affordable-options; I'll celebrate that I now own it when it doesn't seem to be available for sale anymore).  It’s made $34 million at the box-office (prior to the Oscars), $108.7 million worldwide, may make more now as Oscar wins should stir up some curiosity.


 It’s #8 on my 2023 Top 10 list, with the CCAL highly in support—Rotten Tomatoes 92% positive reviews, Metacritic 88% average score.  If you’d like to know more about it, this video (10:09 [ad interrupts at 5:00]) does a marvelous job of exploring inspirations, symbolism, meaning, etc. without getting into the realm of Spoilers.  I’ll close with my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor, which, in this case, may be as odd as the film, but what came to me in an inspiration after watching a PBS documentary about my fellow-Texan-singer/songwriter was Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” (1963 album of the same name) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8Jz3VW7rYk with lyrics that could easily come from Max about his lost Bella just as they could come from her about her constantly-evolving/unresolved persona: In dreams, I walk with you / In dreams, I talk to you/ In dreams, you’re mine all of the time / We’re together in dreams […] In beautiful dreams.”  If nothing else, the content of this song (also used for spooky-impact in another “out there” film, Blue Velvet [David Lynch,1986]) speaks to the dreamlike presence of Poor Things, a unique trip I encourage you to consider taking.

                  

                   The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
                                    rated PG-13   105 min.


Here’s the trailer:



 The Zone of Interest is a marvelously-subtle-but-ultimately-disturbing film that implies the horrors of the Holocaust during WW II without directly showing any of those atrocities.  Somewhat based on a 2014 novel by Martin Amis, a fictional story inspired by historical people and events, this adaptation (written by Glazer) is even more historically-focused on the juxtaposition of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943, in his official and family existences.  We see Höss, his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, in another fine role from last year, in addition to her wife-accused-of-murdering-her-husband in Anatomy of a Fall [Justine Triet, 2023; review in our January 24, 2024 posting], for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress in a Leading Role), and their 5 young children living in relative luxury while just over the wall of their spacious garden we know that horrors are occurring on a daily basis, which we “witness” only from the audio of screams, gunshots, and a frequent noise buried in the soundtrack which sounds to me like a burning furnace.  Höss is fully dedicated to his assignment, even approving of the design for a new crematorium which will be more efficient, accommodating a larger number of victims, yet he also comes across as a caring father who frequently takes his children to the nearby river to play.


 To his disgust, though, one day on such an outing he finds human remains in the river, gets his children home quickly, then dresses down his workers for being so careless with their operations.  Based on his success at this post, Höss is promoted to be Deputy Inspector of all the concentration camps, but this forces him to relocate to Oranienburg, near Berlin.  As a compromise with dejected Hedwig he gets permission to allow her and the children to stay in their Auschwitz home where they have become comfortable in their surroundings, although when Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge) visits, she leaves after just one night, disturbed by the burning furnaces⇒Eventually, Höss is sent back to Auschwitz to oversee the execution of 700,000 Hungarian Jews, which delights this man, but as he’s leaving a going-away-party, he stops on an empty staircase and vomits, implying he’s aware at some level of the atrocious murders he’s developed such success with. Then there’s a cut to the present day where janitors are cleaning the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (I’ve been there, a most sobering, revelatory experience), then we cut back to Höss continuing his staircase descent.⇐


 When I faced the difficult task of ranking my Top 10 of the 2023 releases it wasn’t easy to assign numbers (after #1 Killers of the Flower Moon, #2 Past Lives [Celine Song; review in our August 31, 2023 posting]) because all those on the list have strong aspects in their various elements, but I finally decided to rank The Zone of Interest (the title never is explicitly explained, at least not to my understanding, but it does allude to interesting possibilities) as #10, although you can easily find arguments that could rate it higher at another of those intriguing videos (12:33 [ads interrupt at 4:50, 9:40]) which explores inspiration, symbolism, meaning, etc. without getting into the Spoiler zone.  One aspect of this film not noted there is that a rundown house near the camp wall was converted to this film’s upscale Höss residence, with a garden planted too, so that much of the footage was shot at Auschwitz, given further chilling authenticity to the final product, nominated for 5 Oscars, winning for Best International Feature Film and Best Sound. It’s been out for 13 weeks in domestic theaters (still in 534 of them), taking in $8.2 million so far, $24.2 million globally.  If it’s easier to stream than to find in the marketplace you’ll see it can be rented for $5.99-$7.99 at Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, etc. (here's another one I recently bought for $19.99, now no longer an option [?]).  It’s a quiet, slowly-paced, unnerving experience with beautiful visuals, greatly lauded by the CCAL with positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes at 93%, an astonishing 92% average score from Metacritic, so you’re being actively encouraged to see it, as long as you don’t object to the (necessary for many of us) subtitles, as the dialogue’s in German, Polish, and Yiddish.


 Hopefully, you also won’t object to my choice of a Musical Metaphor (which I admit is stretching it a bit), Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” (1979 album The Wall) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AXic upcf_4 as I think lyrics such as “Hey, you, out there in the cold, getting lonely, getting old / Can you feel me? […] Hey, you, out there beyond the wall, breaking bottles in the hall / Can you help me?”  could clandestinely be coming from Höss as he’s secretly-sickened by the ongoing tragedy just beyond his stately garden wall; I don’t want to give him too much credit for being revolted by his embrace of the Holocaust, though, as the actual guy this film’s based on after the war was convicted and executed for his crimes, but I want to hope that even in the darkest corners of the darkest humans there's some decency lurking, even if it has scant chance to rising usefully to the surface.  Or, if nothing else, the riot footage in this video speaks to what happens beyond Höss’ idyllic wall, even if what’s shown here isn’t exactly the same brutality as what he was so efficiently in charge of.


Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:   


A couple of options: (1) Netflix gets just 1 Oscar, Apple gets none; (2) The 12 most shocking Oscar upsets of all time (I'd probably add Emma Stone's 2024 win, no offense to her performance).


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Thursday, March 7, 2024

Oscar Predictions and Winners for the 2023 Releases plus Short Takes about a few other cinematic topics

Comments by Ken Burke

 The 2024 Oscar awards for films released in 2023 will be announced on Sunday, March 10, 2024, ABC TV, starting at 4 PM Pacific Daylight Time—so this week Two Guys in the Dark’s Ken Burke will make predictions, offer additional preferences in some cases.  You can find lots of speculations and other awarding-groups which may help narrow the films those Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences voters pay the most attention to as they weed through the many options/nominees to consider; however, the most useful indicators of how the Oscar votes may tally likely come from the various industry-related-guilds, with the ones I pay most attention to being the Producers Guild of America for Best Picture (producers get that Oscar), the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Writers Guild of America, simply because of overlap between these industry groups and Academy membership; yet, most Academy members (about 10,500), not just the ones within the Academy’s own corresponding guilds, can vote for finalists in most of the categories so a specific Guild win doesn’t necessarily equate to an Oscar (although they often do), but non-members of those various Academy guilds might be swayed by what their colleagues have chosen, most of which are known by now (results from those cited above are woven into comments about what I arbitrarily call the 8 “major” categories) except the WGA with their choices coming on April 14, 2024.


 With awareness of the above considerations, here are my predictions/preferences in all 23 of the competitive categories (I’ve seen no nominees in a few of them so sometimes I’m just guessing based on other predictors).  Color-coding key: red = my prediction, green = my preference, red + green = prediction and preference (gold + bold updated here next week = WINNER! [plus updated comments on my prognostications, taking credit or blame for actual results]).  In deference to my waning sanity and a desire to not clutter up this posting more than necessary (well, that’s a change!), I’ll skip my usual identification of directors, year of release, date of a Two Guys review, but you can see our Summary of Reviews to get such if you like—you’ll find the current nominees in many of the categories below, although not so much regarding the Animated, Documentary, International features (with just a couple of screenings a week I don’t claim to see everything that's released, even when available), or any of this year’s Shorts—however, please note you do have to scroll through the various star clusters (each one alphabetized) in the Summary to find what you’re looking for so it does take a little time.  (But results will be well worth it; where else would you find such brilliance?)


 When nominations are determined they come from various branches within the Academy (actors, producers, directors, screenwriters, technical areas) except for Best Picture which everyone can nominate, finalists up to a maximum of 10 for that top award, but when it’s time to vote in the actual categories most everyone can weigh in on everything (except a few may still require verification of viewing) so actors are voting on costume design, set designers are voting on actors, etc., allowing bandwagon effects to often sweep something along in a gush of popularity (with the counter-possibility of a well-liked-entry getting a “compensation” award [sorry, sound experts] in some technical category because it likely won’t succeed in what many [including me] consider the major arenas [though I seem to give more attention to scriptwriting than many others in determining what “major” means]).   Further complication for Best Picture: voting’s ranked, so it’s not just what finalist gets the most nods in a 1-round-tally but instead the 2nd, 3rd, etc. choices are factored in possibly resulting in a win for something with more down-ballot-votes than #1 choices.  It’s a crapshoot again!


 You can also see my Top 10 of 2023, appropriate numbers from that list following titles just below.


March 11, 2024—Now that the prizes have been awarded I'll update on how my predictions held up.  I got 16 of 23 for a 70% result (in the realm of how I usually come out) which makes me a bit better than Variety's predictions where they got 15 of 23 for 65%; the only category where I missed in a prediction but “won” with a preference is Makeup and Hairstyling where I predicted Maestro but saw the winner being Poor Things, a film I thought would win only 1 Oscar (for Production Design—it did) but ended up with 4, also taking Costume Design and—in the biggest surprise of the night for many predictors, including me—Actress in a Leading Role (a reasonable but tough choice over Lily Gladstone).  My other surprise is Oppenheimer winning only 7 of its 13 categories, not a bad haul at all, although I think many of us expected even more, but it was nice to see the wealth being spread around this year.  Yet, along with Maestro, my Top 2 of the year, Killers of the Flower Moon and Past Lives came away with nothing, a shame as I feel all 3 of these deserved something from the Oscar voters, but that's my usual complaint.  Onward to the revised nominations lists to see all the winners!


Best Picture


American Fiction [#4]                                                                                    Anatomy of a Fall [#9]


Barbie [#5]                                                                                                    The Holdovers [#7]


Killers of the Flower Moon [#1]                                                                    Maestro [#6]


Oppenheimer
[#3] WINNER!                                                                       
Past Lives [#2]   


Poor Things [#8]                                                                                         The Zone of Interest [#10]


 Unlike much of the past, for the 2024 Best Picture nominees their 10 finalists match my Top 10 of 2023 (with additional consideration from me for The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Asteroid City, but, ultimately, I had to drop them from consideration)Oppenheimer is clearly the front-runner here, with the extra help of winning the PGA award (producers, not golfers), but I still feel its running time is too long, doesn’t need to get into so much detail on the specific conflicts the bomb-maker later had with various political opponents, whereas Killers of the Flower Moon never felt as overdone to me.  All of the rest of them certainly have their strong points, although if you what you admire is subtlety in contrast to the overt dynamics of the other contenders I find Past Lives to be even more impactful than the implied horrors of The Zone of Interest (I’ve just seen the latter on streaming, will have a review soon, but the tediousness of posting this one takes up all my spare time/energy for now).  The SAG Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (their version of Best Picture) also went to Oppenheimer; with actors as the largest guild in the Academy I think this one’s a slam-dunk.


Directing


Justine Triet, Anatomy of
     a Fall


Martin Scorsese, Killers of
     the Flower Moon


Christopher Nolan,
Oppenheimer WINNER!


Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor
     Things


Jonathan Glazer, The
     Zone of Interest


There doesn’t seem to be much doubt about the winner of this category either, especially with the DGA going for Nolan; again, I find all of the contenders to be quite worthy, but as I agree it’s difficult to separate Best Picture from the person in charge of bringing it together, I’ve got to stay consistent with my … Flower Moon preference by advocating for another master of the current cinema, Scorsese.  Much has been made about the absence of Greta Gerwig here for Barbie, a justifiable consideration; however, despite the difficulty of not having her noted for such a remarkable achievement, ultimately I can’t replace any of these finalists with Gerwig.  I further considered Alexander Payne for The Holdovers and William Friedkin’s final film prior to his death for The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, yet I’ll accept Oscar's top 5.


Actor in a
Leading Role


Bradley Cooper, Maestro


Colman Domingo, Rustin


Paul Giamatti, The
     Holdovers


Cillian Murphy,
Oppenheimer WINNER!
     
Jeffrey Wright, American
     Fiction


The Oscars could easily save some time by calling Murphy to the stage for this award while projecting the names of the other nominees on screens while he walks up to accept his statuette.  All the fellow-contenders are award-worthy too (they’ve gotten nods from some other organizations; see IMDb to look them up individually [same with other nominees noted below]), but Murphy succeeded in a most-difficult role, earning him the equivalent trophy from SAG; I have no other contenders to offer here beyond the 5 chosen by the Academy so I’ll just say I’m glad I got the opportunity to witness their collective brilliance and Murphy’s especially.


Actress in a
Leading Role


Annette Bening, Nyad


Lily Gladstone, Killers of
     the Flower Moon


Sandra Hüller, Anatomy
     of a Fall


Carey Mulligan, Maestro


Emma Stone, Poor
Things WINNER!


Those SAG voters gladly gave Margo Robbie her due for Barbie (another source of widespread complaints when she didn’t get an Oscar nod), replacing Hüller as a nominee, otherwise made the same choices as the Academy, then gave their award to Gladstone, matcheing my preference as well, despite agreeing all of these women, plus Robbie, are fantastic in their roles; if anyone but Gladstone’s going to slip in to win this category it would probably be Stone who goes through an amazing transformation in the mad-scientist-flavored Poor Things (another review I’ll soon get to, just streamed it last weekend), but Gladstone seems deservedly-solid to triumph here; maybe she'll be the only winner for Scorsese’s latest powerhouse.


Actor in a Supporting Role


Sterling K. Brown,
     American Fiction


Robert De Niro, Killers of
     the Flower Moon


Robert Downey Jr.,
Oppenheimer WINNER!


Ryan Gosling, Barbie


Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things


In that the SAG award for this category went to Downey Jr., it clearly gives him an edge in taking the Oscar as well, although I’m continuing my bent toward Killers … with my preference for De Niro (always a favorite of mine).  The SAG nominees closely resemble the Oscar list, providing only a substitution from Poor Things by taking Willem Dafoe instead of Ruffalo.  I would tend to agree with that in choosing my Top 5 for this group, although I’d still give serious consideration for Matt Damon in Air over both of them; nevertheless, I doubt Downey Jr. has any true competition here, with a long-awaited Oscar likely coming his way after a couple of previous nominations, including Best Actor in a Leading Role long ago for Chaplin.


Actress in a Supporting Role


Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer


Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple


America Ferrera, Barbie


Jodie Foster, Nyad


Da’Vine Joy Randolph, 
The Holdovers WINNER!


Here again the SAG winner is the clear favorite to take the Oscar trophy despite serious considerations toward the other outstanding nominees, in my mind especially for Foster’s excellent contribution to Nyad, but given that she’s already won 2 Oscars for Actress in a Leading Role (The Accused, The Silence of the Lambs) along with another nom in that category (Nell) plus a well-deserved-nom in the Supporting category (Taxi Driver), it’s only fitting that someone else should win this award this year.  Ferrera has a magnificent scene (sometimes that's all it takes to triumph) detailing the impossible odds women face in our society, but for a sustained presence throughout her film I’m fully in support of Randolph. (A final note: As stated in my review, from The Color Purple I'd prefer Taraji P. Henson over Brooks.)


Writing—Original Screenplay


Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet and
 Arthur Harari WINNER!


The Holdovers, David Hemingson


Maestro, Bradley Cooper and
     Josh Singer


May December, Samy Burch


                                                                                                Past Lives, Celine Song


Due to the extended writers and actors strikes last year, the WGA Awards have an odd situation of not being finalized until about a month after the Oscars in 2024 so we don’t know yet how their winners will compare with those who take home Oscar statuettes; all I can tell you is the difference in nominees with WGA dumping Anatomy … and Maestro, moving Barbie into this category, and adding Air to their finalists.  Relative to the Oscar noms I’d be willing to trade May December for Asteroid City, yet I doubt any of this would likely alter what I perceive as the likely Oscar outcome because Anatomy … has a lot of general support (and some fantastic courtroom scenes) but probably won’t win anything else.   Still, in that Past Lives got one of my rare 4½ ratings last year (… Flower Moon got the other one), I’d like to see that fine film get something, at least in my private tally.


Writing—Adapted Screenplay


American Fiction, Cord Jefferson


Barbie, Greta Gerwig and

     Noah Baumbach


Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan WINNER!


Poor Things, Tony McNamara


The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer


Oppenheimer’s up for 13 Oscars (in 13 categories it could have competed for, with only Actress in a Leading Role, Original Screenplay, Visual Effects, and Original Song not truly options [along with Animation, Documentary, International features and the 3 Shorts), has a strong possibility of taking at least 8 of them in other categories (with 4 maybe going elsewhere in at attempt to make an effort to spread the wealth around a bit), so I don’t see that it would be at any disadvantage in winning this one as well.  (Although if sympathy for left-behinds has any impact here there might be some support for Barbie after the Academy insisted it had to be in this category rather than Original Screenplay; so the adaptation is from the doll’s long-presence in the marketplace?  Extremely arguable.)  This is the category where the Oscars and WGA differ the most, as the screenwriters organization only matches the Oscars with American Fiction and Oppenheimer, adding Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., Killers of the Flower Moon, and Nyad, although for me if Barbie has to contend for this Oscar I’d replace it with … Flower Moon (and give that one the prize), but likely would leave the others in place, while considering dropping The Zone of Interest for The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, with the understanding that if I can’t get … Flower Moon into this group then I’m content with Oppenheimer.


 As for the rest of these categories, all I can do is guess where the Shorts, International Features, Animated Features, and Documentary Features are concerned, so it’s not fitting I should offer a preference in any of these competitions.  For some of the technical categories I may have a preference, yet I really have no idea how Oscar voters may lean, possibly influenced by members of other professional guilds I haven’t cited, though I can remedy that a bit by saying the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) chose Oppenheimer for their Theatrical Feature Film award, the American Cinema Editors (ACE) chose Oppenheimer for their Best Dramatic Feature Film along with The Holdovers for their Best Comedy Feature Film, the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) honored Oppenheimer for its achievement in their Motion Pictures – Live Action category for Sound Mixing, and the Motion Pictures Sound Editors also honored Oppenheimer for their Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing for dialogue in feature films.  But, some Oscar voters just ride on various bandwagons for their choices based on publicity campaigns, friends’ recommendations, desires to help nominees unlikely to win in more-celebrated-categories—messing up my predictions.

              

Anyway, I’m now on the record (but I’d be cautious about using me for any office betting pools) with my preferences (in the categories where I can choose some) and 23 predictions (informed or totally speculative) for the upcoming 2024 Oscars.  After the awards ceremony this coming weekend, I’ll update this posting with winners and final comments; in the short meantime, please enjoy the show.

         

Oscar-trivia-buffs, I encourage visiting this site for an enormous dose of that sort of info, current through when I posted, likely to be further updated after the results for 2024 winners become public.  Finally, if after the awards event you’re intrigued by any of the winners (or nominees) you haven’t seen yet, consult JustWatch to see what’s available via streaming (or possibly in a nearby theater).


International Feature Film                       Documentary Feature Film

Io Capitano                                                                           Bobi Wine: The People’s President

Perfect Days                                                                        The Eternal Memory

Society of the Snow                                                             Four Daughters

The Teachers’ Lounge                                                         To Kill a Tiger

The Zone of Interest (I've only seen this one) WINNER!    20 Days in Mariupol WINNER!


Animated Feature Film                           Animated Short Film

The Boy and the Heron WINNER!                                      Letter to a Pig

Elemental                                                                           Ninety-Five Senses   

Nimona                                                                              Our Uniform

Robot Dreams                                                                   Pachyderme

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse                              War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of
                                                                                            John & Yoko WINNER!


Cinematography                                     Film Editing

El Conde                                                                            Anatomy of a Fall

Killers of the Flower Moon                                                 The Holdovers

Maestro                                                                              Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer WINNER!                                                    Oppenheimer WINNER!

Poor Things                                                                       Poor Things


Visual Effects                                           Production Design

The Creator                                                                         Barbie

Godzilla Minus One WINNER!                                            Killers of the Flower Moon

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3                                           Napoleon  

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One              Oppenheimer

Napoleon (I've only seen this one)                                     Poor Things WINNER!


Sound                                                       Original Score

The Creator                                                                        American Fiction

Maestro                                                                              Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny  

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One             Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer                                                                    Oppenheimer WINNER!

The Zone of Interest WINNER!                                         Poor Things


Makeup and Hairstyling                        Costume Design

Golda                                                                                Barbie 

Maestro                                                                            Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer                                                                   Napoleon

Poor Things WINNER!                                                    Oppenheimer

Society of the Snow                                                        Poor Things WINNER!


Live Action Short Film                          Documentary Short Film

The After                                                                          The ABCs of Book Banning

Invincible                                                                          The Barber of Little Rock

Knight of Fortune                                                              Island in Between

Red, White and Blue                                                        The Last Repair Shop WINNER!

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar WINNER!              Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó


(Music) Original Song


“The Fire Inside” (Flamin’ Hot)

“I’m Just Ken” (Barbie)

“It Never Went Away” (American Symphony)

“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” (Killers of the Flower Moon)

“What Was I Made For?” (BarbieWINNER!


And now, back to our regular programming …


Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:


(1) Possibilities of historic achievements with the 2024 Oscars; (2) What's new on Netflix in March 2024; (3) What's new on Amazon Prime Video in March 2024: (4) What's new on Hulu in March 2024; (5) What's new on Disney+ in March 2024; (6) What's new on Max in March 2024.


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