OSCARS 2022: A historic UPSET for Best Picture! (ranting & rating the nominees) | 050 - Mixed Media

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(00:00):
[AUTO-GENERATED CAPTIONS]Mixed media movies.
And welcome back to Mixed Media.
This is mixed media movies.
We're talking about the Oscar moviesthis week.
Pretty big week for cinemawith the Oscars and everything.
Maybe not so much of a big, big dealwith the ratings and everything
for the Oscars.
You know, for you know, the average personprobably hasn't watched it,

(00:24):
but a pretty big deal
nonetheless in terms of understandingwhere the industry is going,
where institutional money is going.
The notable people who are my
who might be coming up and all thiskind of stuff is all very interesting.
So I'll be discussing sort of the
a few thoughts I have about the awardsceremony as a whole.
I remember last year,I like probably ranted way too long about

(00:46):
just how horriblethe Oscars has become over time.
Not that it was anything,you know, perfect before, but, you know,
definitely losing its its appealto most people.
But this timeI wanted to take a targeted thing.
And it's mostly what I said on on discord,you know, really thinking
about it and understanding that.

(01:07):
Things don't have to be the way they are.
So that's where I'm going to go with it.
I'm going to start with thatand go down into the Best Picture nominees
and some other thoughtsabout some other films
that were nominated from other things.
And I probably won'tdo you more than a few sentences of review
for some of these films because they'renot worth talking about for too long.
Okay.

(01:27):
So yes.
So the Oscars as an awards show.
So I didn't watch it as a disclaimer.
I didn't watch it.
And I actually,you know, I made a conscious decision
to basically refuse to watch it until,
you know,this is my personal little protest.
Not not saying there should besome social movement or anything like that

(01:51):
to follow me or anything like that.
So you do as you please.
But personally,I can't really watch the Oscars
for more than 10 minuteswithout getting really mad very quickly.
And the reason is, isbecause cinema is not front and center.
And I really don't care about like,you know.
I don't mind.
That, you know, we have celebrities

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taking the line limelight, you know,because they're actors, right.
You know, they're a huge partof what we do in cinema
and that they're big figuresis not something wrong to me.
I would love to celebrate their craftas well,
and I don't even mind that we careabout what they're wearing that day.
I mean, if fashion is in itselfa whole world of,
you know, artistic creativitythat I have no understanding of at all,

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but I can appreciatewhy some people care about that.
What bothers me the.
Most is when it comes down to sit down
and talk moviesthat we're not interested at all in,
you know, promoting good craft to,
you know, audiencesthat actually understand the craft
well enough to understand what is goodand what is bad.

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And also, you know, who want to feelas though cinema is something
bigger than these people instead ofjust about these people, you know?
So until that changes.
I don't think I can watch withoutlike getting really agitated,
you know, the Oscars.
You know, it's something that I rememberwatching as a little kid
and feeling likeit was actually about the movies.

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Even if there was a lot of celebritydrama around it, it still was at
its core more about the moviesthan it was about the particular people.
So, you know, and you can see thatin the way the Oscars speeches are done
and everything like that,everything is sort of changed in tone.
But there's hope.
There's a lot of hope herebecause I have a lot to say.

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About some of the best picturenominees, some answers,
and on what I should say, surprising hope.
So we'll get to that in the end.
But yeah, there's there's more workthat needs to be done.
So the thing that.
You know, really caught my attention wasI was listening to someone who's around
like 45 years old talk about like, youknow, some of their childhood experiences

(04:02):
watching the Oscars and then growing up,how it became a family tradition.
And even after starting our own family
to sit down and watch the Oscars,have like a bingo card or not bingo
card, like a, you know, a fill outcard of who
everyone thinks is going to winbeforehand,
folded up, you know, put it awayso that no one can cheat or tamper.
And everyone would be excitedto watch all the films before going it

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going in, or at least a lot of them beforegoing in and seeing who would be right
about the best stuff and then arguingafterwards about the merits of the picks.
That to me is good cinema culture.
Even if you know this is an ordinary.
Family, by the way,this is not like, you know, a family.
Filmmakers are like film junkiesin any particular way.

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This is just a regular old family.
And I think this is a sentimentabout most people that he feels like
he can't watch anymorebecause he feels like
the entire thing is about lecturing himwhen they don't know him.
Right.
And it becomes more self-aggrandizing and,you know, than anything else.
And it'sjust not about the movies anymore.

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And then when you actually gowatch the movies, they're not very good,
which I can definitely attestto this time around.
And they're they're just they don'tthey don't feel like they're doing
they're adding to your life anymore,even if you don't have the vocabulary
to say in what waysthey don't add to their life anymore.
There's this overall
feeling that movies don't really addanything to people's lives,

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even if it's been adding to their livesfrom the time they were five until 45.
And now all of a sudden it's kaput.
So we'll we'll. Talk about that.
So I. Thought about what.
You're saying, and then I thought aboutthe idea of the old sort of tradition,
because you're saying that beforeit used to be that seeing all the films

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that were nominated was noton, was not hard to do.
Like you probably would have wanted to seeall the all the nominees by the time
the Oscars came around anyway,because these were the films of the year.
You know, thesethese got critical acclaim.
They got a lot of hypefrom audience and critics.
And so they were popular films.

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So there also were great filmsby all accounts.
So I went ahead and I looked at,you know, older nominees.
And so if I look back here, I haveI have the.
Wikipedia open of the Academy Awardwinner year by year.
So this year we have Coda Belfast.
Don't Look Up.
Drive My Car Doon. King Richard. Liquor.

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Ash Pizza.
Nightmare Alley.
The Power of the Dog and West Side Story.
Now, this is the modern listing in thatwe have ten.
You know, if you go back,
I think six or seven years,you have it goes down to five.
And that makes a lot more sense.
I mean, if you have.
Five films and those five films are.
Popular.
But potential classics,you know, at least some of them are

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certainly going to be classics.
You know, moving moving forward,that audience members
would have a good chanceof seeing almost all of them.
And so I would be interestedin the results for almost all of them,
because they just want to see them,naturally speaking.
So if we go back. Let's pick out a random.
So I have the discord.
I picked out onewhere there were still ten nominees.

(07:22):
Actually,it goes back to chess in ten, apparently.
But in 2010.
We have The King's Speech 127 hours.
Black Swan, The Fighter Inception.
The Kids Are All Right.
The Social Network, Toy Story three, TrueGrit and Writer's Bone.
Now, as a percent of films.
In academy that became classic.

(07:45):
This is a high percent.
Like you know, that became films
that are films that peoplewill be referencing for a long time.
I mean, we have The King's Speech,we have Black Swan,
we have Inception,we have the Social Network,
and we have Toy Story threeand we have True Grit.
So six out of the ten are filmsthat are impactful
to cinemaas a whole and audiences at the same time.

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Which is something.
That I thinka lot of people are insinuating.
We can't have.
We can't have both the audience lovingthe films and being well exposed to them,
and also a good celebration of filmas if they're somehow mutually exclusive.
You know, that the audience just doesn'tunderstand good films.
Well, I mean.

(08:29):
I mean, even the ones.
That aren'tinstant classics like 127 hours.
Let's see here.
The Fighter,I think those two films were popular.
Back then anyway.
And they're films that.
People still can name today.
Like, oh, I remember thatfilm won 27 hours and did this.
I, I didn't know this film from the timeperiod, but I spent 127 hours out loud

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and my wife Steph, she's like,Oh yeah, I remember that movie and.
Here's what it's about.
And I was like, Whoa,you know, most people probably can't.
Name the Oscar films of this year, right?
So that's that's a big, big difference,you know?
I'll just do one more.
2009 is is also,you know, pretty shocking.
The Hurt Locker, Avatar, The Blind Side,

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District nine and Education,Inglourious Basterds,
Precious based on the novelPush by Sapphire Aliens.
Really random to me,
a serious man.
Up and up in the air.
So out of these films, I mean, a lot ofthese films are just like canonical.
Like we have The.
Hurt Locker, Avatar, The Blind Side,

(09:36):
District nine, Inglourious Basterdsand up six again.
Out of the ten are filmsthat I would say are.
Impactful.
You know, two to cinema,they're they're historical films.
And six out of ten.
You know, is a pretty high ratio,I would say four for the nominees
going forward.
And it's not as if in the time we wouldhave understood them as classics per se,

(09:59):
you know, but they stood the test of time,six out of ten stood the test of time,
and then you. Go.Instead you go to look at.
Last year's Oscars and you find.
Nomadland, the Father, Judas.
And the Black Messiah.
Mank Minari Promising Young WomanSound of Metal.
The Trial of the Chicago Seven.

(10:20):
And I would say in termsof understanding the film community,
I think the only one that has a chance
or the only few that have a chanceof becoming sort of canonical
are Nomadland the Winner and Judasand the Black Messiah.
Then there's some buzzabout some of these other ones, but
some of them feel sort of recency bias,if that makes sense.

(10:41):
And so that's a big difference.
And so all I want to say is, if you wantto advocate for a better Oscars,
I think the best place to startmight be just say.
Look, we there is not actually.
This grand barrier between the artistand the audience, especially for cinema.
This is you know,this is the art form that

(11:03):
in here in the United Statesis pretty much like our art form.
Right. We invented it. We created it.
And we are the headquarters of itin the entire world.
And so Americans are actually pretty wellattuned to watching films.
It's a pretty Americana thing to do.
Go watch movies, you know, not to saythat's not it, you know,

(11:24):
I think internationally it'sjust it's tough.
A thing that. Is very specialto the American imagination.
And so to recover that, I thinkall we need to do is to say, no, there's
not actually this magical divide betweenthe audience and and, you know, audiences.
All kinds love Avatar, you know, love.

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I don't know, name, whatever, you know,best picture nominee from like, you know,
five plus years ago, because it reallyis that recent that this divide,
you know, startedhappening was around five years ago.
Despite the ceremony.
Perhaps this is the first place to start.
So that's just a little thought.
I want I want to put out therethinking about both what movies do well.

(12:07):
In. To. Audiences.
And also what movies are exemplifythe craft the most.
Not a popularity contest.
But like I said on the discord,a culturally cultivated contest,
you can have your cake and eat it too.
This is the short of it.
Okay, so now into the actual films.
So I, I

(12:29):
really started, I really.
Watched these films in the wrong order
because it got increasingly depressingfor me as I was watching them.
And then I had a few surprises at the end,which was, which was a good thing.
So the first Oscar.
Movie I watched was The Power of the Dog.
I'll go over it later,
but I really did not like that filmand that was really not a good start.
But one interesting.
Thing, as I was reviewingthe list of films that I had watched

(12:52):
because I haven't watched them.
All, is that a lot of them have.
Like have to do with familial stuff.
I don't know why that.
Is or if that's like somethere's some grander reason for that,
but they're all like,like family oriented dramas,
like at the core of them,which is very interesting to me.
But instead of starting.
With the order that I watched them,I want to start with

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one film in particularthat I watched today.
That literally I leaked out of my couch.
Where I watched itafter I finished watching it out of joy.
And that was. Coda.
The best picture winner and the upset,which will be.
Talking about the upset of whatshould have happened for best picture.

(13:36):
So let's just talk about Coda real quickbefore I do that,
just so you understand my compare,where am I comparisons are coming from.
I have not seen.
King Richardbecause I was going to see it today,
but it just was too longand I was kind of tired. To.
Drive my car because it was toohard to find how to see it.
Nightmare Alley wasn't worth my time.

(13:58):
West Side Story.
I love Spielberg,but also not really worth my time in this
in this circumstancebecause it's not an original film
and liquor ish pizzabecause I missed its run in in the theater
and they don't have it on streamingas far as I know, any place convenient.
So I have not reviewedI have not seen any of those.
I've seen half of them.

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So that's the context.
So anyway, Coda, a little summary.
Coda standsfor Child of Death of Deaf Adults.
Funny anecdote.
Last night I intended to watch Coda.
But I watched the wrong coda.
So here's how that happened.
I read the one sentence.

(14:40):
Synopsis of the coda that won Best Picturebecause I didn't want to know anything.
You know,if I know I'm going to watch a movie,
I don't, you know, ingestanything about it.
I just try to watch it called.
And the synopsis for Coda says.
Basically deaf parents musicsomething something music.
Right.
And I watched a different coda

(15:03):
by accident that came out in 2020.
Which is funnyenough, starring Patrick. Stewart.
Last night,I realized that about a third of the way
through that this was the wrong filmbecause I was like,
Where are the deaf people?
But it was about music because guess what?
Coda is also a musical term,and there happened to be a film
released a year before this one calledCoda with a star studded cast.

(15:27):
That I accidentally. Thought was the film.
I ended up finishing the The Wrong FilmCoda, starring Patrick Stewart.
It was a bad film.
It was very bad. Know.
What was that about?
I feel like I've heard of this, but.
It was aboutit was about a famous pianist who.
Develops stage fright.
It's like the the the really high, high

(15:49):
level view of that film.
And I really.
No, no, no. Yeah.
Patrick Stewart was great in that film.
Really riveting.
Literally everything about this part ofthe film is the opposite of riveting.
I found out Katie Holmes is a horribleactress, but that's a whole other story.
I ended up finishing it just because,

(16:09):
you know,I was like a third of the way through
and I was like , All right, fine,I'll just finish it.
I can't pick up any movie anywaybecause it's late at night. So.
So this morning I watched Coda.
And Coda is a story about a focusing
on a high school girl in Massachusetts.
Was the daughter of deaf parentsand has a deaf brother as well.

(16:30):
So, you know, assumptionis it's a genetic thing.
Both parents are deaf, deaf.
And she happens to have a deaf brother,but she herself is not deaf.
So she can hear reallythe plot isn't as important
as the themes that it ends up exploring,which is which is the interesting part.
But again, just a little just to geta little bit at a little bit deeper.

(16:51):
Basically,her parents run a fishing business
or actually her whole family runs
a fishing business out of the docksof wherever they are in Massachusetts.
And they are on the poorer side,you know, sort of.
And sorry.
Paycheckto paycheck in terms of functioning.
And she goes to a high schoolthat's, you know,

(17:12):
got all kinds of kidsfrom all kinds of backgrounds, etc..
But she is sort of bullied,doesn't have that many friends because
when she started school, public school,she had sort of a lisp
or a speaking impediment becauseshe wasn't used to speaking out loud
because she communicateswith her hands, with her family.
That's to say now that she's older,

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a senior in high school,you know, she's grown past that.
But the stigma has sort of stayed with heras sort of an outsider.
She works with her familyon this local business.
And this familyis having particular trouble
as of latebecause of basically regulations
that are being tacked on to fishersin the area for environmental concerns,

(17:57):
etc., etc., suchthat it's jeopardizing their livelihood.
And she also ends upfalling in love with singing.
Now she's well, you get the ideathat she really knows that
she likes to sing,you know, going into this film.
But as the film progresses,it turns into a passion.

(18:17):
As she joins the local court choiror not, the local the school choir learns
a few things that immediatelyturn her singing from good to amazing.
And, you know, because she wascompletely untrained before
and just absolutely fallsin love with music,
which is a smart writing device. Right.

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Because her parents,as her brother, cannot hear.
So that's that's that's the whole that's.
The gist of the world that we're in.
In terms of tone,
I would
say it's kind of I see some reviewsmentioning like a Disney Channel movie.
That's not entirely wrong.
I would say I wouldn't saythat's like, you.

(18:57):
Know, an unfair comparisonin terms of overall tone.
It's very much an endearing family movieand it's very much so high key in the way
it's lit, very sort of vanilla in the waythat it does its cinematography.
Very sort of interesting and, you know,sort of the teenage drama a little bit.

(19:18):
But putting that all aside, well,not putting that aside, taking that all.
And really elevating them to.
Their maximum, in my opinion.
So take your typical,you know, high key lighting
sort of scenes and feel good sort of.
Scenes and make them the best they could.
Possibly be.
Take your acting, you know, your actors,you know, from these

(19:40):
sort of Disney Channel movies and actuallymake them Oscar worthy actors.
You know, and take the entire.
Rating, which is nothing to me.
Like a Disney Channel movie.
If there's any comparison,it would only be in tone.
The writing is stellar
and phenomenal in of itselfand brings us on a fantastic,

(20:00):
endearing journey throughwhat is just family about family.
Now, what's so good.
About this filmand why did I leap out of my chair?
It's not the best film I've ever seen.
It's not like, you know, it's not goingto break my top 20 or anything like that.
And in fact, itprobably wouldn't have struck. Me so hard

(20:20):
if I hadn't seen so many terrible moviesbeforehand.
But what's so good about it
is that it actually treats its audiencewith dignity and.
Treats all of its characterswith dignity as well.
So it doesn't treatyou like you're stupid.
It doesn't treatyou like you know it's smarter than you.
Or has something so interestingto say that it's going to, you know, spend

(20:43):
10 minutes at a time at random, you know,close up shots of objects, you know.
And I don't say that to say that that,you know, I'm I love artists and stuff.
That's not the complaint.
It's when you're artistsand quote unquote, without reason,
which is just, you know,that's just pretension.
You know, that's not that's notbeing artisan at all, this film.

(21:06):
There's none of. That.
And instead, it focuses on universalvalues that literally everyone can.
Connectwith when they watch it. There's not.
A single human being on this planetthat would watch this and not feel some.
Endearing emotion. After.
After, after finishing the film.
And the reason why.
Is because it tackles a broad.

(21:27):
Spectrum of relatable problemsand relatable tensions.
It's about growing up.
It's about challenging circumstances.
It's not about deafness itself, really,as much as it's concerned with.
What kind of interesting problems.
And family dynamicsdoes that cause, right?
It's not about saying,oh, look at the good guys

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and look at the bad guysas much as it's about.
Oh, look at us human beings.
Try to grow up, you know?
You know, and all these challengesthat we have when we're growing up.
And to boot has beautiful singing.
I don't know who this man actress isbefore watching this this film.

(22:10):
She can sing, in my humble opinion,like I.
Was like shook when she opened her mouththe first time, for sure.
And there's some just lovely stuffthat that, you know, lovely.
Well-Crafted musical scenes
that put together her singing.
With all this imperfect singing of fourof her high school students.

(22:30):
But also.
It all comes. Togetherin such an endearing way.
It's very hard to explain.
And I just was so happy by the end of it.
Big smile on my face because
just a solid, good, good film.
A few themes that are.
Explored are about,you know, sort of class.
So, you know,you can imagine if you're wanting to enter

(22:53):
the music world, there are differentkinds of people than that are your family.
So that that causes like sort oflike a rift of understanding
between her family and her.
There's also a disability.
So, you know, her familycan't, you know, communicate very well.
Even in the fisherman space,you know, they're sort of outcasts
among other fishermenbecause no one can understand each other.

(23:15):
There's even themesabout the nuclear family
in light of sort of the government.
Right?
So like, you know, what what role doeswhat role does
government have in everyone'severyday life?
And there are themes about the ability
to forgive your family, about love

(23:38):
and what kinds of households producea loving environment
about privilege, even likebut in a much more intelligent way.
And like a and like a,what does privilege actually even mean?
You know, in this context,because here we have a girl who has blind
parents who is in a in a poor household,but her parents are madly in love.

(24:01):
In fact, that's played for humormultiple, multiple times
in interesting ways.
But her parents are madly in love,and she has a whole family,
even if they argue sometimes,whereas her love interest
does not have a whole familyand he's got a broken household,
even though he's richerand doesn't have deaf parents, you know.

(24:22):
So there's thisthis tension happening there
that's more interesting than just sayingyou have privilege and you don't.
Right. Much more interesting in that way.
And it really upset the natural winner.
And I understandnow why it was the natural winner,
which was the power of the dog.
The power of the dog was the.
Natural winnerbecause it was the return of a director

(24:46):
who was critically acclaimedfrom a movie called The Pianist.
She had been gone for, I think, tenor 15 years from from filmmaking.
She came back, backmade the power of the dog.
And also the themesand the power of the dog
are interesting,for whatever reason, Hollywood types,
because I didn't think there's anything
even interesting about those themesthat was teased out in the film at all.

(25:09):
And it had a A-list list of actors.
Benedict Cumberbatch, who I respect,but in this film, was not in the power of
dog, was not very good and a few others,
and sort of hadthis air of pretension, of good film team,
if you get what I'm saying,which is, oh, it's we're going slower.
Oh, show, not tell, quote unquote,you know, all those kinds of things.

(25:34):
And so I would have bet.
If I were to bet money,I would have bet on the power of the duck
any day over Coda,even though I liked Coda better.
This is a huge deal.
A huge, huge dealthat Coda won because Coda is unlike any.
Of the other films that I watched in the.
Sense that it really only hasa few predictive factors for for.
For it winning the Oscars.

(25:56):
And I can only name a few of them.
And this is.
Not to say, you know,
we should we shouldn't careor should care about these things.
I'm just talking about whatthe academy cares about.
The academy for this film.
This film is a Sundance film,which is a very low,
important importanceto who wins who wins the Oscars.
It's about deaf people, I guess.
So there's that sort of like aspectof different people that's,

(26:21):
you know,
I guess is importantin predicting these things.
Although that wasn'teven the point of the film.
And in fact, the.
Film kind of subvertsthose ideas by talking about the idea
of falling victim to your own problemsand how that can be extremely problematic,
you know, in of itself, like,you know, viewing your life in a negative

(26:42):
bubble was a problemthat her or her family has,
you know, and that they had to overcomein a few areas in this film.
So that wasn't. Even the point here.
And last one, I guess is important,is that it was a female director.
And that's the only onethat I can think of that actually.
Matters in terms of prediction.
You know, you know, for winning the Oscar.

(27:02):
Unlike the power of the dogwho has a female director who is.
Commenting on masculinity.
So we have a completely differentwe have a completely Upside-Down.
Versionof what would normally win the Oscar.
You know this
straight up.
Anyone can enjoy this film, film
and learn something from it.

(27:24):
And that to me is amazing.
And I hope that I hope what that means.
And I've I've fromthere are people inside Hollywood.
That I listen to and,you know, talk about their experiences,
talk about what's going onbehind the scenes.
You know, a few people say that there'sa lot of worrying happening
within the Hollywood
sort of executive, you know, level,that there's a lot of worrying about.

(27:47):
What kindsof. Things do they want to make.
And I've specifically heard about thisthis happening
particularly strong in Lucasfilmand in in Pixar.
Those are the two placeswhere I've heard the most from.
But I also heard whisperingsthat's happening everywhere.
But there are a lot of people who are.
Craftsmen.
Who are really upset with the directionthat movies are going.

(28:09):
They don't want to speak out on it,on, let's say, Twitter or something
for fear that they're goingto lose their jobs or something like that,
but that they're doing whatever they canto try to rescue the art form.
You know, whatever.
And I sort of discounted thisbecause I was like, yeah, whatever.
I mean, how how would I knowwhether that's happening or not?
You know, you're telling me, but,you know, who knows?
But this is the first piece of evidencethat maybe

(28:31):
that that there's something to thatmaybe there's something to that.
Because enough people, enoughpeople took away
the natural choiceand replaced it with one that had counter.
Themes to the natural choice,which is bizarre.
So that's the hope.
That's the that's the big hopethat I wanted to put out there

(28:51):
against the negative viewof what the Oscars currently is.
So that's the most I'll.
Talk about any particular film.
Now, we're not going to compareevery film.
Dakota Basically.
Oh, if you're curious on Letterboxd,I gave Coda
four out of five,which is a really great score.
Again, not a legendary film in my opinion,and maybe probably

(29:12):
not even a classic per se, but
just a really, really good film.
Oh, and I have to sayalso that Dad's performance phenomenal.
And he won the Oscarfor best supporting actor.
I literally like afterwardsit was like the dad.
Was freaking. Awesome.
Did you win the Oscar?
I looked it up.
He won the Oscar.
So that makes a lot of sense to me.

(29:35):
I just I don't know.
This is 100% accurate, but from whatI was reading, it's only been streamed,
you know, 1 million times,which is absolutely nothing.
I agree. Mostly.
Yeah.
Most of his films are like,I think Power of Dogs
3 million and Don't Look Up is 10 million.

(29:55):
Which means they're like.
Very lownumbers, but even within that very low,
you know, saying like ten timesmore views for don't look up than COTA.
Oh yeah, for sure.
And the.
Problem is this film, as.
Far as I couldtell, was a very tightly released film.

(30:16):
It was releasedpretty much exclusively on Apple
Apple TV,although it was shown in theaters.
And I think it's showing again,I'm not sure if that's spawned by awards
season or whatnot. I have no idea.
But this film was kind of.
Done dirty on distributionbecause of the push to streaming.
And I think this film would have been a.
Perfect cinematic cinema film, a perfectfilm to go to the movies, to see.

(30:40):
Everything from the bigsound of the theater to the.
Big screen
to bringing your friends and family withyou would have worked flawlessly
for this film.
And unfortunately it didn't getthat huge, wide release in in the cinema.
And I've talked about itbefore on the show.
There are many forcesthat force that to happen these days, that

(31:00):
despite the economic reasoning, not really
being fully there , you know,forcing things to lose more money
than they had tojust to try to drive things to streaming.
That's where we're at with things,which really sucks.
It's really sad, but is what it is.
So the first film that cameafter my to my mind,
other than well, the first woman that cameafter mine after I watched Coda.

(31:24):
Was actually. Encanto.
Even though it wasn'tI wasn't nominated for Best Picture.
What really bothered meafter I watched this film is.
So your excuse for having bad singing
was you needed good actors,but this film had both.
So what's your excuse?
Disney for the horriblesinging in Encanto.

(31:47):
For what, exactly? Like, I like.
I love watching this main characterin this film Flawlessly.
Act, you know, not, you know,I mean, you know,
maybe not the best person on screen.
But but she there's nothing I would.
Change about her performance.
Great job that she did.
And she also can sing.
So my question is, what the heck happenedwith Encanto Disney?

(32:09):
Because you essentially told mewithout telling me that you had to do it
because you needed, you know, voiceactors of a certain caliber and you
you casted for voiceacting more than you casted for singing.
But why?
Because those aren't mutually exclusive.
Clearly, if this much less budgetheavy film could do it.
So that's why I complained.

(32:30):
There with Encanto,
I don't think.
Is any excuse. And so I gave that film a.
2.5 out of five,which is actually a neutral score.
You know, it just meansthat is roughly forgettable film for me.
I think the music was the mostdisappointing part by far, and Encanto,
which is the part I want to enjoybecause I wanted to enjoy

(32:50):
some Colombian music throughoutand they did some weird stuff with
with their songswhere they, I guess, tried to do like.
Pop Colombian.
Music here and there,but it really wasn't even that.
It was just generic, you know, you know,
pop music, nothing Colombianabout a lot of these songs.
So the whole.

(33:11):
Thing, you know, I have strong feelingsabout Encanto for another day.
The next time I'll talk aboutis the worst film that I watched
and potentially one of the worst filmsI ever watched my entire life,
which was Don't Look Up.
Now, the saddest part here
is that Don't Look Up was made for $190

(33:33):
million, which puts it as the at the most.
Expensive Netflix film ever made
a record that it should not be proud of.
But it is like that because it hasliterally every A-list actor you could.
Possibly demandjust to shove into your project,
to give it some sort of legitimacywhen that film doesn't even understand.

(33:55):
How to even.
Make, I don't know, a competent movie,like a movie that like functions.
Is it is it true?
The worst movie ever seen?
I mean, like Burt Demick,
is it worse than that?
See, I grappled with this.
That's why I say one of the worst bird.
Demick is probably worse.

(34:15):
But the thing is,I actually have to think about it,
which is the which is the biggest problem
that shouldn't happen within Oscar's film.
I shouldn't have to think about.
Whether it's worse than Bird.
Demick
This film is so unorganized,and here's the worst part.
It was nominated for best editing.

(34:38):
That's the part that gets me the most,
is that not only was it nominatedbecause it fits the Oscar.
You know, Oscar bait,you know, thing to the T,
you know, it's probably the most Oscarbait movie out of them all.
But you don't have to give itbest editing nomination as well
just to jab the knife into.
Anyone with a break to knowthat this movie was very poorly made.

(35:01):
Like, I remember looking at.
Reviews when I was decidingwhich Oscar films to focus on.
I was looking at some of the comments onLetterboxd for Don't Look Up.
A lot of people were saying
the editing was horribleand I was like, Okay, yeah.
I mean, it still was nominated foran Oscar, so how bad could it possibly be?
Oh, boy.

(35:22):
2 hours and 39.
Minutes, I believe, of nonsense.
Literal nonsense. Like.
Is it that long?
It's that long. And. Okay, so.
So that night colorswhat I said about the music even more
because I didn't realize the filmwas that long with that little music.

(35:43):
Exactly.
So we startwe open up the film with a fun music
bit with the camera zipping aroundand this.
Really meme like acting from DiCaprio. And
what's your name? Jennifer Lawrence.
Doing this really like,you know, sort of like hokey performance.
That could be funny.
You know,I mean, it wasn't really that funny, but.

(36:04):
It was lighthearted.
And the music was was well done.
To the choreography of the cameraand the choreography of the actors.
Then we get long periods.
Of silence afterwards in terms of music.
And not very much. Else.
Going for it decides.
To tell you. Why the runtime is so long.
Here are the types of thingsthat had the runtime.

(36:27):
Whole new sequences like literally.
Like a whole new sequencemultiple times in this film.
So we'll cut to the TVand we'll watch the whole bit,
like from beginning of the segmentto the end for no reason.
Like literallynothing in it adds anything to the film.

(36:48):
Comment based on
the the titles of the trackon the soundtrack,
you know, seeing the length of itand then like seeing the tracks
to give you a very good sense,I think of the plot is I assume
this is like like an hour, like ten minutemovie, like a really tight plot.
Like it seems likethere's like a very few elements

(37:10):
to the plot that goon, you know, and like.
Oh yeah. That's how it should have been.
This should have been a maximum.
90 minute movie, maximum 90 minutes,you know.
And it just is filler.
And I don't understand why, because 2
hours and 39 minutes is abnormally longfor for a movie of this type.
So why the heck did you force itto be 2 hours and 39 minutes?

(37:32):
Why did you have to be whole new segments,literally from the beginning
of the animation, of the startof the new segment to when they say,
well, that's a wrap for that story.
Now on to the next one. The whole segment.
And if you can't tell, it drove me insane.
And so we get whole new segments.
We get stock footagerandomly appearing in this film, literal

(37:54):
stock footage,like literally I could probably go to a
what's it called Shutterstock.comand probably pull up some of these clips
that they usedfor these montages of birds, bees
, Pluto, asteroids.
Like literal, meaningless stuffthat's just like slap together rhinos

(38:17):
fighting no
semblance for why these imagesare being strung together.
It's just we're trying to say,look at life,
here's a bunch of random stock footage.
And we're not just going to flashthis across the screen for 10 seconds.
We're going to spend 5 minutes
on own stock footage.

(38:38):
Why does this get any music to troubling?
Are any.
Potentially more.
Musicthan the rest of the film in these in
this random segmentoops was a random here and then cut.
Back there we go. Yeah.
I don't even remember.
You know,there must have been like two or.
Three of these massive montages.
And I think a lot of themhad a lot of their.

(39:00):
Diegetic sound still in them.
So I could hear the waves crashing.
And so, yeah, I don't remember fully, butI can imagine the score being there for
the first like minute of, of the montageand then going into just the
the waves crashing and the birds chirpingand just meaningless stuff.
So if you don't know, this movie'ssupposed to be about a bunch of scientists

(39:25):
who find out that an asteroidis about to hit Earth,
trying to convince the president.
To do something about it.
That is. It.
That is literally the entire film.
And they're failing to do sobecause the president's.
An idiot, basically.
Or there's a whole bunch of
motivating factors that aren't,you know, saving the planet, which.

(39:47):
To try to understandwhat this film is trying to say.
You know, I yeah, I knew.
What this film was was going to try to saybeforehand. Right.
It was going to be an overt political.
Commentary on the last,I don't know, five years of politics
or something like that.
You know, it was going to be about,you know, global warming
and how we're all idiots for not doing X,right.

(40:07):
I knew that was going to happen. Right?
I did not understand that
this film would not even be ableto communicate that effectively.
It's like you couldn't even communicateyour satire.
Like it was insane.
I was like, literally, you're.
You're connecting imagesthat don't make sense together.
They're literally contradictory.
And I have no ideawhy I should even trust the people

(40:30):
that you set up as the main characters.
Literally,
the reason why we're supposed to believethe end of the world is happening
is because we happenedto be following this set of characters.
Instead of these set of characters,they're selected.
Does it make your point at all?
Like literallymakes zero sense at all. Why?
Why we're doing this. And it's just

(40:52):
a horrible, horrible
film and horrible acting,
by the way,from some people who should be better.
It'd be a lot better than what they are.
In this film.
It's, it's
if we get at the end.
Of the film.
Spoiler alert, I guess if you're goingto torture yourself by watching this.

(41:14):
We get the end
a scene where all the characters, I guess.
Learn the value of life,which is not in preoccupying oneself
with the with with the end of the world,but with sitting down
with your family and friendsfor one last dinner.
We just get them sitting there eatingdinner, talking about nothing meaningful.
These people have some of these peoplehave just met each other a few days ago

(41:37):
and they want to spend their last momentseating some random dinner.
It's all an asteroid.
It's literally landing.
And they're just like, yeah, whatever.
It's this whole film is just nonsense.
Nothing in it makes sense.
None of the character motivationsmake sense is horrible.
It was if I didn't have to review it,I would have literally turned it.

(42:00):
Off after.
Probably 20 minutes, which I don't do.
No matter how bad the film is,I always feel motivated to finish it
because I want to consumethe whole piece of art.
This was a challengeto not just turn it off because it was.
Just that bad.
So worst Oscarnominee of all time, probably.

(42:20):
And that did not go over well with me.
I was I was terrifiedof the rest of the films I'd watch.
So there's that bloated is the word
I would use and boring and pretentious.
Still, somehow, while also not beingsatirical at all, not even making a point.
Oh, and it teaches you.
Oh, your response to stressshould be taking sadness, apparently.

(42:42):
Anyway, that's a whole other topic.
Then we have.
The Power of the Dog,which is the first film that I watched,
which was.
Also tedious but in a lot of different.
Ways.
So whereas Don't Look Up was a lot of just
useless scenes that should have beencut out and chopped at the editing floor.

(43:03):
That didn't mean anything,didn't add to anything.
The power of the dog.
There are no. Scenes.
I guess we're uselessin the grand scheme of the whole film.
But there's just a lot.
Of wasted time over nothing.
So it was tediousand a little bit of a different way.
The Power of the Dog is a filmabout a family.
Do you rememberwhich state they're in, Ben?

(43:24):
Like Montana.
Montana? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Montana.
A family in Montana.
Poor ranchers, basically.
It sort of calls back to Westerns,I guess in some senses,
you know, these are cowboysand these are people
of varying backgrounds,which is interesting.
So we have the mom of a boy

(43:46):
who's spoiler, spoiler, spoiler,whose husband committed suicide.
And then we have
a. Spoiler that's been given to you in
like the first 2 minutes.
Yeah.
Along with everything.
Exactly.
We have Benedict Cumberbatch.
His character,who is the brother of a of a

(44:09):
I forget what his titlewhat is what is his job?
I don't know.
He's like he's a manager of some sort,basically.
I don't know. He's the owner of the ranch.
Then theythey're like co-owners on their bed,
like the other brother does,like all of the managerial staff.
Yeah.
He does all the actuallike hands on stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
So there are two brothers,

(44:30):
you know, one's a hands on guy,the other one's sort of a managerial type.
The managerial type ends upcourting the mother
of spoiler spoilers,spoiler of of the kid.
And you know, we end upseeing all that ensues afterwards.
The kid makes an unlikely, unlikely
friendship with the rude

(44:51):
handyman type dude who is BenedictCumberbatch's character. Who?
Spoiler spoiler spoiler.
Spoiler spoiler.
Spoiler
is gay.
Shocking revelationin the middle of this film
and it is really utterlynot shocking at all.
You know.

(45:13):
It is here.
It is transparently obvious from the very,very, very beginning of this film.
Exactly.
But it's played as if it's a.
Plot twist in the film in the waythat it's exposed, which is just.
You're not that clever. I'm sorry.
I'm not that clever.

(45:34):
Okay. So that's the gist of the film.
Now, this film was. A lot of nothing.
Basically, it wanted to talk about,I guess, toxic masculinity,
I guess.
But it had nothing to sayabout masculinity at all.
Pretty much.
It just kind of presenteddifferent broken people,
which at the end of the day came offas different broken people, not in.

(45:56):
Toxic. Masculinity or whatever.
Not reallyany particular meditation on masculinity
other than oversexualizing it, which was interesting.
And then there was.
Oh, yeah.
And about,you know, being closeted and being lonely
while your brother, you know, has a wifeand you have no one in your life,

(46:17):
you know, you're lonely,which that's pretty much the complexity
that there is therethat that's pretty much it.
And oh, there's a big plottwist at the end, I guess
if you didn't see that coming as well,like, you know, from 10 billion miles.
Away and.
We didn't get that film, literallythe first shot of. Oh.

(46:38):
It was given in the first shot.
And in the first literallyalso the first line of dialog.
It's it's so bad.
Yeah.
You know, the kid has. You know, issues.
I guess he's got daddy issuesand then he's
also being bullied,I guess, for not being man enough,
although this is notvery well explored either.

(47:01):
Nothing is very well explored and.
That's a good way of explaining it.
Yeah.
Really.
We lean intono characters would lean in to no one.
We get to know no one.
Well, they're just too many peopleand we drone on for so long on things
that don't matter.
And so we end up learning about no one
which teaches us nothing about life,which is great.

(47:23):
Acting was pretty much everyone except.
For the guy from Breaking Badwho is the actor.
That's how I always know him.
He's in Breaking Bad. The
the managerial husband.
That guy was phenomenal.
I thought he ate every scenethat he was in.
He was just has this weird, you know,

(47:45):
softness to him that is that
it was just very particular,very well executed .
It felt like he had something
to lose in this film in terms ofhow much effort he put into the character.
Unfortunately,the film didn't match his effort.
Everyone else was not very good.
The son was okay.
I think the son was pretty good, actually.
The wife horrid.
Horrid acting very bad.

(48:07):
Spider-Man's girlfriend, she.
Did not do very good in this.
That's how I know heras well as Spider-Man's girlfriend
from the SamRaimi films versions of Spider-Man.
And then Benedict Cumberbatch.
Dude, you can do a very goodAmerican accent, but you can't do you.
Can't do a montana accent, man.
It was painful to see.
You dip in and out of that accent,you know, because you couldn't hold it.

(48:31):
I was just like,
Why didn't they just write in thatyou have a straight American accent
and give you a reason for it,especially because.
The character went.
To like a prestigious college, I thinklike Harvard or something like that.
Yeah, he's. He. Yeah, he's
Phi Beta Kappa in classics from Yale.
Oh yeah.
Which is an actual.

(48:52):
Yeah.Which is actually apparently in the book.
Quite an important pointbut gets just said in one sentence
and tossed off, you knowthat is actually like pretty operative.
I was expecting it to be pretty operative
after it was mentionedand then nothing happened with it.
Yeah, they make like a naked joke,

(49:13):
like they reference itlike 2 seconds later than a joke.
And he comes in and says,
I think the governor's wifesays, like, I'm
just you swearthe cattle in Latin or Greek,
which is not beyond
the point of that detail being in there.
No. In the. Book.
Exactly.

(49:34):
And it was.
Yeah.
So so Benedict Cumberbatch, if you if youcan't do a montana accent, please ask.
Your director to write in that you havea straight American accent for a reason.
You know, like maybe you spent so muchtime abroad away from, you know, home
that you've developed, you know, amostly straight American accent.

(49:56):
That would have been, you know.
At least acceptable.
But instead, we get a horriblereproduction of a montana accident
where actually most other peoplein the film actually can pull it off,
which makes him look even worse.
So it just.
Didn't did not look very good.
Cinematography. It was nominated for.
Best cinematography, which bothers.
Me very much because I thoughtthe cinematography was so boring.

(50:21):
It was like the. Cinematographer.
Literally had.
No direction at all.
You know, he didn't know what to do, heor she didn't know what to do.
And so just wandered off
onto set to figure out what compositionsmight be interesting without meaning.
You know, because there's no.
Meaning in these shotsthroughout this whole thing.
The color grid is this.

(50:42):
Really obnoxious, like, gold by, like,just overwrought.
Like, it's just.
It's just too overwrought.It's too simple.
It looks too much like a, like,almost like a student film.
A well done
color of a student film that didn'treally have much direction with the color.
Visually speaking, boring.
It does try to do somethingclever with the opening shot, I guess,

(51:03):
and the closing shot and it just textbook,you know, opening shot matches.
Closing shot.
Okay, whatever.
That's that's that's not special.
So it's it's pretty bad.
So I gave that 1a2 out of five oh.
So didn't say that they gaveDon't Look Up.
I think I gave it a half star,which is the lowest I could give it.

(51:24):
On the box.
Let me do a quick.
Over of Dune because I saw it so long ago.
And it'll be quick because I dida whole mixed media episode on Dune.
You can check it out.
It's called Why Dune Disappointed Me,which you can tell from it
that it sort of disappointed me
again in two and a half out of five,which again is not a negative score.
That's just, you know, neutral.

(51:44):
I probably will forget everythingthat happened in that film
because it wasn't very inspiring inany particular way winning cinematography.
It was a shoo in for thatbecause it's such a gigantic film,
you know, like just literally justthe scale is hard
to comprehend of how you would even shootthese things that we're talking.
Massive, massive.

(52:05):
Blockbuster style. Gigantic.
That part was my favorite part.
So it winning best cinematography didn'treally bother me, especially because I
didn't see any better cinematographyin any of the films that I that I watched.
It was very visually competent
in terms of everything else,kind of boring in my opinion.
It had a lot of the same.
It shares a lot
with the power of the dog, in my opinion,and that had very little to say actually,

(52:28):
and then ended in a very
unsatisfying way,in a way that kind of annoyed me
in terms of how this film was marketed.
But that's a whole other thing.
Literally,the last one I watched was Belfast,
and I was going to watch King Richard.
Instead.
Of Belfast because Kingbecause Will Smith won the best
best actor,best lead actor award for King Richard.

(52:51):
And I've seen Will Smithbe phenomenal before.
And so I was kind of excited to see that.
But it's 2 hours and 20 minutes,and I had to watch it before
the show,and I would have had time for it,
but it would have made my timereally crunched.
So I was like, You know what?
I'd rather watch Belfast,which is a lot shorter
and won Best Screenplay and I.

(53:11):
Screenwriting is important to me.So I was like, You know what?
Let me let me watch that insteadand get my thoughts on that.
So Belfast was probably.
Not very good to watch after watching Coda
because I was so overjoyed with Codathat I feel like Belfast almost felt.
Flat to me.
Which
again is probably somewhat of an effect ofof watching them back to back.

(53:35):
And I actually enjoyed Belfast.
So overview again.
Belfast is a.
Film about a Northern Irish family.
I don't know the time periodand that's kind of part of
what probably would have made the filmeven better to me if I understood
the history of this of the time perioda little bit better.
But it's a Northern Irish.

(53:56):
Family who are Protestants who.
Are living in Belfast during a timewhere there are these mobs
that claim to be Protestantpromoting mobs.
The best way I could put it, you know,they use the label of Protestantism
to carry out their mob,

(54:17):
you know, offensesagainst the Catholics around.
And so it's about the oppressionin this very mixed neighborhood between
Protestants and Catholics of the Catholicsin that neighborhood,
by this,you know, marauding Protestant gang.
But this family who has a young child,a really young child,
and then sort oflike a middle school age boy

(54:38):
and then two parentsand then two grandparents.
This family is a Protestant family.
That is not about it.
Right. So they're not about, you know,
discriminatingagainst their Catholic neighbors.
In fact,you get the sense when you watch it
that pretty much no one,no normal person is really about.
You know, it'sjust kind of sort of a pretext for the mob

(55:00):
to to to riot and loot,you know, more than it is
any ideological sort of problemin Belfast.
So. Sounds very historicalbecause it is very historical.
I know nothing about it, unfortunately.
Even though I am Catholic, very much so.
I am not very familiar with the eventsthat happened here,
so I can't really commenton that part of things.

(55:21):
But the film was very good.
It was a very slice of life
familial tale about this.
You know, average Northern Irish family
that is trying to handle raising children
in such a tumultuous timethat sort of randomly crops up.
So that's very important

(55:41):
that they were living a normal lifeuntil all of a sudden, you know,
this violence breaks outthat is disrupting everyone's lives.
And the question is,they don't have much money.
They are so tied to Belfast that they know
literally everyonefor the next like mile in any direction.
Everyone knows who they are.

(56:02):
They know who everyone else is.
Their kids can play out on the streetand there's communal parenting happening.
That's the kind of place this is.
And yet they feelthat they're forced to leave
because of all the stuffthat's happening in Belfast,
because they can't raise children there.
I think this film might have.
Been somewhat autobiographical forKenneth Branagh because it felt that way.

(56:25):
There's a citation that's titledAutobiography Biographical Film
of Belfast.
So that is a surprise to mebecause it felt extremely personal.
It felt like Kenneth Branagh mighthave been that little kid in that family
that was trying to make ends meetin such a tumultuous time.
Whether he experienced this timeperiod or not, I have zero clue.
But what I can sayis that the personal ness of the film

(56:49):
really contributed to how good thisfilm was, because we really got
to understand what these sorts of thingslook like from a child's perspective.
And the film is not really interestedin larger themes at all.
And pretty much its largertheme is really just roughly
people are people, you know, no matterwho they are, where they come from.
Funnyeven really harped on that very much.

(57:11):
So it's much more about the slice of lifesort of thing and watching this family
deal with the different problemsthat arise in this scenario.
So in terms of the stuffI really liked about it,
the acting is phenomenal, reallyvery great acting.
The child actor.
My goodness, I could not understandhow to direct a child to be that great.

(57:33):
Like, I just.
He has to.
Be the star of this entire film from.
From front to end, because we're.
Watching everything through his eyes.
And yet.
He's riveting.
And that's that'syou know, that's a great thing.
So good job in terms of cinematographythat also stood out to me.
So the film was done in black and white.

(57:53):
Now, I assume this.
Film was done in black and whiteon a black and white digital camera
because there are black and whiteonly digital cameras.
And there's a reason for that.
And I was going to talk about thetechnical interesting stuff about that,
but it turns out that this was not shoton a black and white digital camera.
It was shot on a color cameraand then just made black and white after
which which is interestingbecause, you know, there are so many

(58:16):
there's like a movement in
cinema tech around these blackand white digital cameras.
That's really interesting.
So I don't know whythey went with a color Cameron set
and then just made itblack and white after.
I have no idea.
Maybe it wasn't even the idea at the front
to make the whole filmblack and white, because.
The film.
Does not need to be in black and white.
There's nothing about it that, like,you know, called to some sort of time

(58:38):
or blah, blah, blah.
It wasn't even emulating film,you know, it's very digital.
It was just black and white.
And I loved it.
You know, it was just a creative choice.
That added a lot of texture.
When you make this black and white,you focus more on texture and shape
and composition. And light. Contrast.
You know, you startyou get much more direction of like

(59:00):
where your eye moves throughout the screenbecause there's less distraction
in the color of the film.
And so in that, the cinematography is.
Very, very well crafted, very intentional.
Every shot is very intentionally done,just the kind of cinematography
I really like.
Was it the,you know, groundbreaking cinematography,

(59:21):
anything particularly super creativethat I was like, surprised?
Maybe not.
You know,there are a few shots here in there
that felt like there would be iconicfor this film,
but not not not to too much,but very competent cinematography
felt like I was in good handsthe moment I started the film.
The edit was very intentional acting,very intentional screenplay,

(59:42):
very intentional
and cinematography very intentional,which makes you feel like you're in like
warm hands.
You know thatthat feeling is very important to me
at the start,feeling like I'm going to be taken care of
for the rest of this runtimewith at least.
But Nancy, other than that, I really don'thave much to say about the film.
Without you watching it.
Like you just go watch itif you're interested.

(01:00:03):
Because there's actually not that muchto say because as a slice of life
personal film, it'snot really trying to it
doesn't really have any particular point
other than to say these things happened.
And this is what it didto these respective people,
you know, which is not a bad thing,especially with the way it was done.
It was entertaining.

(01:00:24):
That's about it. So I give it a threeand a half out of five.
Not as good as Coda, in my opinion.
So out of all the films that I watched,
to meCoda was the best picture out of them all.
Is Coda like, you know, a best picturein the grand scheme
of like all the best picture nomineeswe've had in the grand scheme of cinema?
Not really.

(01:00:44):
But given what's in a.
Cinema has been like, Coda reallyshocked me that this was the winner.
This was the upset that it won
such an endearing film,and I highly recommend you watch it.
That's very much what I.
All I have to say on that, I'mpretty sure. Oh.
I didn't want to say thisbecause I also watch tick, tick, boom.

(01:01:05):
So with tick, tick, boom.
I had very mixed feelings about.
This is the hardest two and a half.
Stars I've ever given to a filmbecause it's not like every other two
and a half stars I've given to other filmsin that it was just forgettable.
It was two and a half stars in the sensethat there are
so many great things happeningand there's so many really.

(01:01:25):
Bad things happening
and I didn't know what to do with that,so I ended up at two and a half.
Stars.
It was really, really a rough watchbecause it should have.
Won best film editing. This.
The editing is phenomenal.
Like it's very hard to.
Do with this film did in thatit was unique in the way it's structured.

(01:01:48):
Going from sceneto scene, the way that music,
you know, flowed from scene to scene.
We have so many. Modes of. Narrative.
We have the musical mode of narrative,we have the voiceover mode of narrative.
We have the sort of like in the.
World mode of narrative.
We sometimes get a little bitthird person with it.

(01:02:09):
We have so many modes of narrative andit all works, which is crazy like that.
This for Lin-Manuel.
Miranda, Miranda's directorial debut.
This had to be in his vision.
This is not something that the editorjust came up on there with on their own.
This is in the writing.
This is playing from the beginning.
And that sort of beautiful flowbetween different types of.

(01:02:33):
Narrative. Is so commendable.
I was sitting there like.
Lin-Manuel, if this is your director.
Director's voice,I want to see this every single time,
you know,I want to see it every single time.
But talk about putting a.
Or not executing it very well.
Not very not using that sucha unique voice and executing it poorly.

(01:02:56):
So if you got critiques, Lin-Manuel,for this film, please.
The thing you don't change is
this style of directing is so refreshing.
I want to see more and understandhow it works better
because I could probably watch it againand just sit there and.
Analyze what the heck is going onto make it work so well.
It's in it's.

(01:03:17):
A typical sort of three actstructure screenplay,
so it's not really the screenplay itselfthat's doing it.
It's the way that you've craftedyour music.
And with the editing in with the scenestructure,
it's just phenomenal.
Unfortunately, there's a lot this bad,
so a lot of the dialog is horrible.

(01:03:43):
There's a lot of Twitter people in this.
In this movie, a.
Lot of people who speakas if they're tweeting.
And that should never happen.
It is cringe it.
I literally literallymy face literally cringed
when actors just step into these horridlines, you know, like
and I feel bad for the actorbecause I'm like, it's not your fault.

(01:04:04):
I know it's not your fault.
You're just stepping into a horrible line.
So there's no way this line could makeyou look good.
And Andrew Garfield is is killing it?
Killing it?
If he won best actor for this film,even though this film wasn't
very good to me,it would make complete sense anyway,
because he absolutely disappeared
into into his character phenomena.

(01:04:26):
I've been impressed with.
Andrew Garfield for a few years now,and I think he's growing to be a legend
as an actor, coming from his Spider-Mandays.
You know, he's really grown a lot.
He is a phenomenal actor.
The and the other bad.
Stuff is this film'smessaging is just all.
Over the place.
This film doesn't know what valuesit wants to impart onto its viewer.

(01:04:50):
It complains about one thing.
Then embraces the same thing.
It complains about another thing that it.
Racismthe same. Thing. Just pick something.
Because I think what ended up happening.
To be honest, is that.
Lin-Manuelwanted to celebrate the composer rather
of of the original stage play,the stage musical.

(01:05:12):
He wanted to celebrate him.
But the problem with it.
Is that celebrating him required ignoring
a lot of flaws that were not resolvedby the time this guy died.
So this clash happens where
we start celebrating these obvious flawsthat.
Like no one would understand the filmas promoting

(01:05:36):
from the start of it,which was weird, very strange.
The central relationship in this filmwas horrible.
It was.
It was almost useless,if not for the. Last.
Act, where it becomesjust hard to watch this.
Relationship.
Continue in this absurdmanner, unrealistic and not even start.

(01:05:58):
It was just. It was just so bad.
The actress for his loveinterest is horrible.
I'm sorry. She's not very good.
Especially it
standing next to Andrew Garfield,who's murdering it.
You know, it really did not bring outthe best the best of image of her.
It was not very good.
Cinematography went from being brilliantin some scenes

(01:06:21):
to being commercial in other scenes,which is really weird.
Like all of a sudden I.
Felt like, Am I in a Hallmark movieor in a Clorox commercial?
All of a sudden, you know,you're going through a different sea.
And I'm like, Oh, okay.
I guess now we're stale and boring,
you know, and just just uninspired.
And then this other scene,we have great choreography between the

(01:06:44):
the set, the actors, the costume,everything.
Coming. Together to make. Great.
Cinematic images.
Such ahard film to watch all the way through
because it's just so many differentfeelings going on at the same time.
And as someone who is
attuned with the technical,
I found a lot of the technical thingsit was doing really well.
So interesting.

(01:07:05):
Which probably means the.
Average person didn't really like it,you know, ended up getting lost in the
the bad parts is what I would assumebased off of after after watching it.
You know a lot of peopleprobably got lost in the bad.
Music.
Was great like just a bright spotin the film for sure.
Which makes sense because the music is allfrom the original stage.

(01:07:29):
Stage play, that's the stage musical.
As far as I know.
It's literallyall from the the the musical.
Andrew Garfield
is not the best thing in the world,but he can actually sing.
Encanto
definitely not the best singerin the world at all, but he didn't
need to be autotuned into oblivion. So.

(01:07:51):
You know, big difference there.
And Lin-Manuel also did a lot of the songsfor Encanto, which were terrible.
So then I'm just confused.They're sitting here confused.
But then I was.
Like, Wait, he also didn't do the musicfor Tick, Tick, boom, technically. So
maybe that explains that. I don't know.
So, yeah, those arethose are my thoughts, I think.
Tick, tick, boom.
Probably should have one editing otherthan a instead of dune

(01:08:13):
because I have no idea why on earth dune'sediting would be noteworthy.
I think it's just the big imagesin Academy voters not understanding
the difference between cinematographyand editing, what contributes to what.
So yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah.
So overall, I would just recommendCoda Belfast if it particularly interests
you and tick tick boomif you want to see something very unique.

(01:08:35):
Everything else was really bad.
But. There is hope.
And that's what I want to leave off withbecause Coda won best picture.
I have no idea why,but maybe the cavalry's coming
and we'll get great cinema again.
You know, in the Oscars, I have zero clue.

(01:08:57):
To be honest, I've somewhat you know, it'sbeen weighing on my mind
the way things are going with filmbecause I'm a filmmaker and it really is
demoralizing to even try anymore,you know, because it just feels like
things are just so. So
bad with both the theaters
and types of movies that we're gettingand the ways the audiences are

(01:09:19):
are angered awayfrom from from from cinema as an art form.
And, but they have no place to go.
So then there's just this
sort of anxiety, you know,that's that's building and audiences.
And but this hopefully.
Means maybe goodthings are to come if if Kodak could win.
So if Kodak a win,maybe I can make movies.

(01:09:40):
That's the conclusionthat I came came with afterward.
So if you enjoyed that,if you're listening to this and post it,
thumbs up button.
Something I always forget to say isif you're on Apple Podcasts
at all, you know, a consumeron their ratings, on Apple.
Podcasts, be honest.
Because I want to know what the heckyou know how we're doing over here.

(01:10:02):
And please leave a comment
if you're going to read itespecially is going to rate it. Lovely.
Please leave a detailed comment belowas to.
What we could change and fixand do to be better with.
There are some content that I noticegets a lot more attention on podcasts
and others, but then there's not so muchof a pattern over time.
And so it confuses me a little bit.
So really, without the feedbackfrom the audience to tell me

(01:10:23):
this is what I really lovedand this is why I didn't
really love as much, it's hard for me toto duplicate that sort of success
going forward so that we can give youwhat you guys like.
Besides that, we have discordif we're wrong about anything.
If you hate my take on Don't Look Up,because there are some people
who feel very stronglythat it's a great movie. But
if Letterboxd.

(01:10:44):
Can't even get behind a filmthat is supposedly ideologically.
Aligned with mostmost people on letterbox,
which it is a very particularbunch of people on on letterboxd if.
They can't get with most a lot of people,letter box can't get behind it.
I think I have you know.
I have grounds to say what I saidabout, about, about
don't look up.But if you. Think completely.

(01:11:04):
Otherwise, get on our discord linkin the description.
If you think Ben is crazy for anythinghe said, do the same and we'll interact
with you there and probably react to iton the show afterwards.
And then finallywe have our locals account,
which is the way you support us on mixedmedia dot locals dot com,
where you can drop us a tip

(01:11:24):
for spending money on these films,a lot of which are really horrible
and I probably wouldn't have spent moneyon to begin with and taking the time to
to give you this contentand also get a whole bunch of perks.
So with that,thank you so much for watching.
Thank you so muchfor spending so much time with us.
And we'll see you next Monday at 9:30 p.m.

(01:11:45):
Eastern Time.
And thanks for listening and watching.
Look, tell a man no trouble.
I don't want beef, man. I just want five
big men like me.
No need for the telephone.
I got too much getting on line one rulethen that I'm on side
wrong move up and they go rightno need for the telephone.
Now, no need for this news.
This big whip outSaddam throws a big stick inside.

(01:12:07):
No news then better watch outfor the slick and Judases.
Don't ask them who the Syrians are,but they know where they're moving
in a better show.
We're into a damn.
How are you going in the news again?
How you hate and my five.
Why you wasting my timegetting hype on my line to the man?
I don't want feedback, I just morerelaxed, brand new way to tone.
I need that brand new hit, you know,like lean back, brand new bits I live in

(01:12:29):
we back, manyou never gonna like us getting more
and more like that waythey know it more, right?
Just sick of my life.
I'm never know, right?
I'm nice,you know? I'm a right little like twice.
No need for the hypothetical telephone.
Five plus.No need for the telephone by bus.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}OSCARS 2022: A historic UPSET for Best Picture! (ranting & rating the nominees) | 050