Oscar Symposium Day 3: Big Finale Remix

Previously on the Symposium: Nathaniel was talking about Tarantino's mastery of 'The Moment' and how it excuses his messy indulgences elsewhere. As a filmmaker he's a perfect match for our DVD chapter-menu culture


Guy Lodge: I think it's a spot-on point, and I'm both intrigued and troubled by the idea of Basterds being a success story of latter-day audience inclination to edit their own movies. My problem is that, while I'm as capable as anyone else of filleting out treasurable moments -- -- "Attendez la crème!" -- from the sheer morass of stuff in the film, my brain can't blithely discard the missteps as you imply others can. For much sorrier reasons, the wincingly awful appearance of Eli Roth burns as brightly in my memory as that exquisitely extended opening sequence, so much so that one can't eclipse the other.

But I think you've latched onto a selectivity that has boosted the fortunes of a number of contenders this year besides Basterds: everyone has cut out and stuck the 'Married Life' sequence of Up into their cinematic scrapbooks, but who really wants the rest? Precious, whatever your take on it, is made for mental re-editing -- Joe Klotz's baffling nomination notwithstanding.

Tim Robey: What we're basically saying here is that a lot of these movies are screener-friendly. They can be browsed. And I have to say this faintly depresses me as an old-fashioned, packed-audience-on-opening-night, communal experience sort of guy. This is where I think the 3D selling point of Avatar is quite a canny ruse -- a trick to get people going back out to the movies rather than waiting for the inevitably diminished experience on their home TV -- and it's a ruse for which I have some respect. Did Cameron send out screeners for Avatar? Did he need to? To lesser extents, Up and District 9 (and to be fair, even The Blind Side) are films that audiences discovered together in their first few weeks of release, whether in a mall in Kentucky or the Odeon Leicester Square (where The Blind Side has yet to be unveiled, actually -- Sandy or no Sandy, UK distributors are understandably never in much of a hurry to release anything to do with American football. We get confused! Don't ask me what a Tight End is.)


Read the rest at Day Three of the Symposium
In which we discuss "the Ten", The Hurt Locker, Where the Wild Things Are, the scores, missing foreign films, screeners vs theatrical and wrap up this three-day party with Meryl Streep vs. Sandra Bullock and Nathaniel's favorite movie game "Re-Casting Couch"

Return and comment. It keeps the conversation going!
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Oscar Symposium Day 2: (500) Basterds In the Bright Starry Loop

Nathaniel R: I led with the Reality Television problem yesterday because I'm trying to work through some, um, "personal issues". I actually snapped at two friends this week for no reason other than that something they said reminded me tangentially of reality television and how much I hate it and inbetween these outbursts I sat through the entire new episodes of Amazing Race, Project Runway and RuPaul's Drag Race on my DVR. I'm part of the problem! So I needed to binge and purge the reality television issue before moving on. My chief problem with its dominance is the samey samey ness of everything. Art thrives on variety and so often the pop culture pie -- of which the Oscars are my favorite slice -- comes in only one flavor at a time.

And Peter landed on the category that, invariably, I find the most difficult to stomach year in and year out for the exact same reason: Supporting Actor. They seem to use this category as a dumping ground for "types" even more so than the other categories. This will be three years in a row they've gone with a psychotic/charismatic killer for the win... and meanwhile they fill out the category with aging man career tributes. I won't attempt to argue that that winning threesome (Javier/Heath/Christoph) aren't worthy choices but there's something more to it than just coincidence, yes?

Psycho Killers, Qu'est-Que C'est?

Maybe this psycho-killas and revered old men category is actually a metaphor for the glamorous brutality of Hollywood -- they're always trying to kill you but if you survive for any admirable length of time they're sure to kiss your ass...

I'm stretching but anything to take my mind away from this category!

And to take my mind away from Bringing Down The House's blinged up homie --uh, thanks Tim-- because that leads me right back into The Blind Side territory. Racial landmines ahead!



Speaking of... Precious. What Tim said. But the issue of who-gets-credit, which he briefly alluded to in regards to the performances, is so fascinating here (and elsewhere). But for my money, Tilda Swinton in Julia aside, Mo'Nique gave the one performance this year that I can't even wrap my head around fully it's so titanic.

Guy Lodge: Best Supporting Actor may be a dumping ground for "types," but that's no excuse to make it a dumping ground for bad performances too, which is precisely what they've done this year. If they really found Anthony Mackie and Alfred Molina that hard to accept (despite apparently liking everything around them), perhaps they should have applied their new Best Original Song rule to this category, and curtailed the number of nominees. Because, frankly, I'd rather see a two-strong field than have to scratch my head any longer over who was actually impressed enough by Stanley Tucci's sweaty psycho kvetching, or Matt Damon's (more justifiably sweaty, at least) approximation of Afrikaner hulkiness by way of Opie, to place them at the top of their ballot. Because someone did.

Read the rest of DAY TWO
Wherein we move on to individual nominations and snubs that delighted and confused us, what makes some movies click with Oscar or miss entirely, that weird relationship in Crazy Heart and the internal conflict of Inglourious Basterds.

Then return and comment. Continue the conversation.
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Oscar Symposium Day 1: 'I'm an Oscar Winner, Get Me Outta Here'

Nathaniel: Welcome to the 5th annual Oscar Symposium. Each year I invite a handful of smart movie types into my virtual home to decipher, debate and occassionally defenstrate the choices made by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. This year's illustrious panel unintentionally mimics the general geography of AMPAS (Los Angeles / New York / London) if not, one feels free to assume, their psychology. Please welcome: Peter Knegt, Guy Lodge, Karina Longworth, Tim Robey and Sasha Stone.

But we aren't hear to predict.

Who doesn't know that Jeff Bridges, Mo'Nique, Kathryn Bigelow, and Christoph Waltz are taking Oscar to bed on March 7th? The Academy received its Bachelor of Arts And Sciences from The School of Redundancy School.

We're here to gab.

Here's a kick off. Adam Shankman of Hairspray, So You Think You Can Dance and Bringing Down the House fame, who is producing the show this year, has promised to play up the horse race aspect of the show, declaring that the Oscars are really "the best dressed reality show competition on the air". Never mind my distaste for the ubiquity of reality television... if we're really going to play it like that, let's play it like that. Shouldn't they have started filming the potential nominees months before the show, sending cameras to invade their every private moment (er, wait. that's called "paparazzi") and watch the triumph or heartbreak when they do or don't make the finals? A So You Think You Can Act? face/off might be the only way Meryl Streep can ever win a third Oscar, so let's do it. And if we're playing it like this, why can't we vote people off? You're the judging panel... so who are you jettisoning in the first episode, and who gets a "raise your game or go home" stern warning?

Guy Lodge: You break my heart with your talk of sure things, Mr. Rogers. Does this mean that I should withdraw my bet on a Lovely Bones write-in sweep of every category, including a Gordon E. Sawyer Award for the technological achievement of Susan Sarandon’s wig collection? Clearly, I haven’t been keeping up. It’s hard, after all, what with the dearth of film awards reporting on the web. Someone should really create a site for it. I’m sure it’d do quite well.

"how'd I get dragged into this?!?"

Read the rest of DAY ONE
Topics include but are not limited to: nominees we're not comfortable with, the soulless campaign machine, what the Oscars are *about* and potshots at Nine, James Cameron, The Blind Side and Invictus.
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Oscar Symposium Begins Tonight !

One of The Film Experience's big traditions each Oscar year is to invite an esteemed panel of web voices over for a few days of Oscar chatter. I'm pleased to announce this year's six-shooter panel...

• Peter Knegt, IndieWire
• Guy Lodge, In Contention
• Karina Longworth, LA Weekly
• Tim Robey, The Telegraph
• Nathaniel Rogers (c'est moi), The Film Experience
  
• Sasha Stone, Awards Daily
  

Who are they bringing to the Oscars and who are they rooting for?

The six of us have already begun our e-mail volleying... but if you have any questions, you're dying to ask, now would be the time in the comments. I might incorporate some of your inquiries in the chatter. The first day's conversation will go up later tonight.

P.S. If you've been missing Joe & Katey, my Oscar podcast buddies, fear not: The new one will be up in the next few days. We're finally (almost) back... I'm just working on the editing. It's only 11 days until the big night. There's sure a lot left to cover.
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February. It's a Wrap

The shortest month of the year has gone bye-bye. It's always a crazy month with Hollywood's High Holy Night in the mix. In case you missed anything, here were my ten favorite posts from the month that was...

Ripley, Hanna and Maggie the Cat lounge at Big Daddy's estate

Movie Art: Aliens ~ I love finding weird internet treasures.
Colette ~ Someone ought to make a biopic of the wondrous author of Chéri
77 Appropriate Ways to Celebrate Elizabeth Taylor's Birthday ~I hope she lives longer than Methusaleh. I love her more than you! Quit slacking. Rent some of her movies.
Amy Adams Interview ~Bless her for answering those Buffy questions.
9th Annual Film Bitch Awards ~the obsessive tradition continues.
Oscar and the Jesus Year ~ 33 year old Oscar winners.
Oscar Symposium ~I love doing this each year. Hope you enjoyed.
Breakfast with Thelma & Louise ~ 'I finally got laid properly!'
Doll House and Dollhouse ~movie dolls and Joss Whedon's return.
There is Nothing Like Two Dames ~Judi Dench and Jude Law (in drag) in Sally Potter's latest


Coming in March: Watchmen, Kristin Scott Thomas, Alice in Wonderland and Phoebe in Wonderland, British Actresses, Swing Time, the return of "Breakfast With..." and "Tuesday Top Ten", Se7en, pots of gold, Hunger and The Hunger, trips to and from Witch Mountain and another round of Actress Psychic.
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Finding a Silver Lining. The Oscar Symposium Wrap

On Day One of the annual Film Experience Oscar Symposium we grouched about the dull Best Picture race but got excited about Best Actor. By the time we hit Day Two we were deep in the doldrums of Oscar's unimaginative comfort zones, the lack of cocktail chatter movies as great as 2007's critical champs, and the public's disinterest in non-escapist fare. Will things ever change? Is the celluloid sky falling? So on Day Three we used "Poppy" (Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky) as avatar to guide us out of our despair.

DAY THREE ~ WRAP UP

When you're done reading, by all means return to the comments. Tell us your silver lining about this year's Oscar race, whoever wins or loses on Sunday night.
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Oscar Symposium Day Two

Nathaniel R: A note of warning for rabid symposium enthusiasts. This year's symposium is shorter than usual. There's a brief wrap up tomorrow but it was basically a two and half day affair this year due to time constraints and the golden malaise that was well covered in day one.

Where did we leave off, let's see... previously on the Symposium the Academy was deemed a passive and/or reactionary collective. There was handwringing about the terrors of the distribution system and the limited amounts of movies people actually do see. Ed struggled with loving performances in films he hated. Rachel Getting Married proved divisive... no kidding. And Kris felt battered by Harvey Milk's halo. So here we go again.

~ Day Two ~

To give Kris a halo-proof film and to cover all the ground you request Tim, I suspect Milk would have to have been as long as Benjamin Button (The Curious Case of Harvey Milk?) and who needs that? Harvey Milk is such an underappreciated and crucial figure in the history of civil rights and what biopics can't also double as hagiographies? Make a miniseries if you want to cover a whole life. If we must have biopics -- must we? There are so many other genres that would like some face time at the Kodak -- shouldn't they be tightly focused like The Queen and Capote were and now Milk is. And if they're smartly made they can hire a brilliant actor to fill in the blanks of the life before the events focused on and the ones inbetween and the ones you don't have the running time to go into. This is the kind of thing actors should be rewarded for. Not for adequately meeting the demands of a meaty role.

Timothy Brayton: One of the things I noticed looking over the acting nominations is that the two male categories, in my opinion, are substantially stronger than the female categories. In both Actor and Supporting Actor, I love three nominees, and I'm perfectly fine with the other two; in both Actress and Supporting Actress, I actively dislike one of the nominees, two leave me cold, and two are pretty good, but not world-changing. Did anyone else feel the same way? Is this a sign of male screenwriters' perpetual inability to write compelling female characters? Am I just being absurdly picky because my beloved Sally Hawkins was snubbed?

Click for Day Two of the Symposium

Watch the participants dart away from Nathaniel's question about "heat of the moment" errors in judgment (guess he's the only one that makes mistakes!), learn what Iron Man says about stardom, why we're suing Kris, how David Fincher messed with Timothy and Ed's heads, why marketing execs should hang it up post Frost/Nixon, and why AMPAS ignoring public opinion can be a good thing. Plus: more nostalgia for 2007 and unnecessary dreaming about 2009. Return and comment if you'd like to join in...
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Oscar Symposium Lift Off. (But AMPAS Won't Fly)

Nathaniel R: First things first, please welcome this year's Symposium guests (in alpha order just like Oscar do): Timothy Brayton, Antagonie & Ecstasy, Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine, Karina Longworth, Spout, Erik Lundegaard, Eriklundegaard.com and Kris Tapley, In Contention. They were chosen through an elaborate and painstaking ranked balloting system. Only Price Waterhouse employees know who was snubbed for the 4th annual Film Experience event. Pundits suggest that they were invited on the basis of their mad skills with dramaturgy and accents. I'm happy to have these five in my virtual house to discuss the 81st annual Oscars.

But where to begin in a year when the Academy is feeling so passive aggressive? It's almost as if they took a look at the semi daring and pleasingly rangey shortlist of 2007 and thought: 'we simply can't have that again!', beating a hastry retreat back into their bios, Holocausts pictures, and vaguely ambitious epics a good portion of which will be forgotten about in five years time. I'm still unsure, given the ranked balloting system of the Academy, how at least 60% of them managed to get a sufficient number of #1 votes to compete. Who is passionate about them?

The menu was varied but AMPAS would only order the usual. Why's that?

AMC Theaters is hosting a marathon of the Best Picture nominees in several cities the day before the Oscars. I've considered going for the blog fodder but who wants to sit through these five particular films back to back to back to back to back and again for that matter? That's someone's idea of hell surely, or at least one circle of it. There's not even a comedy to break up the 12 hour day. Could you do it? Or would you like to propose a separate marathon. Is there an entire category you could sit through all at once?

Erik Lundegaard: Is the Academy feeling passive-aggressive? Does the Academy feel? All I know is I'm feeling passive and Harvey Weinstein is feeling aggressive. A friend of mine said that 2008 was a bad year for movies but it was really only a bad year for Oscar movies. The blockbusters were great: The Dark Knight, Iron Man, WALL•E, even Hancock which I think is underrated. The Oscars have Milk, which I think should win, and Slumdog Millionaire, which I wouldn't mind winning, but nothing to stir the passions like No Country or Brokeback or The Pianist. At least for me. Anyone else?

As for Nathaniel's question: I could sit through all the foreign language films, since it's probably the only way to see them all. I'm in Seattle, not a bad city for movies, but only Waltz With Bashir has shown up. The Class is scheduled soon. The others? Lotsa luck.

Karina Longworth: I agree that 2008 was not a bad year for movies. I don't think it was even necessarily a bad year for nominated movies...

Click for Day One of the Symposium

Find out how Sean Penn gave Kris a black eye, who loves Rachel Getting Married, why Slumdog didn't set off Ed's bullshit detector, how France pissed Karina off and which Muppet Frank Langella reminds Timothy of. Return and comment if you'd like to join the convo.
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Announcing the Oscar Symposium Participants

One more group conversation, then it's Oscar weekend. Then it's a new film year! [Commence rejoicing]. And the world goes round. It's time for the 4th annual Film Experience Oscar Symposium. I'm very pleased to welcome a brand spanking new lineup of writers joining me for this (the roster changes each year). The participants are, in alpha order

• Timothy Brayton, Antagonie & Ecstasy
• Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
• Karina Longworth, Spout
• Erik Lundegaard, Eriklundegaard.com
• Kris Tapley, In Contention

I'm sure the names are familiar to you... and if not, click around. You'll like what you see. I'm very honored that they all agreed to join me for a couple of days. The first chunk of our conversation will be up Tuesday evening. Hope you enjoy and join in the banter right here in the comments.
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Oscar Symposium Wrap: Adopt! Slap! Predict!

>Whew< ... that party was so much fun to host. Today I will be cleaning up after it. If you're just joining the Oscar Symposium conversation, you'll want to start from day one. But if you've been playing along, here's the wrap up.

Day Three

In which Best Actress is discussed and Nathaniel discovers a bunch of Marion Cotillard supporters in his house (blasphemy, the Oscar must be Christie's!), the participants offer the Lovely Laura Linney free advice on how she might finally win that Oscar and we end with a party game -- make like Ruby Dee in American Gangster and Hal Holbrook from Into the Wild: choose a film, person, or filmthing to slap or adopt.


You know you want to play this game in the comments. Let's hear from everyone... even the lurkers. Who do you want to just hug and protect and who needs some sense knocked into them? (But first go and read the symposium)
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You're Invited ~ Day Two of the Symposium

You are cordially invited to read and comment on day two of the Oscar Symposium


We can't be held responsible for how you react to the Juno and Atonement wars therein. Also bear witness to the vice grip of Daniel Plainview (who keeps trying to get back in the mix), odd tangents on girlpower, and the strange continued absence of No Country For Old Men from the meat of the conversation.

start with day one if you're just joining us.
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Oscar Symposium is a Go! There Will Be Chatter

Please welcome Sasha, Nick, Dennis, Kim, Boyd and Tim to the 3rd Annual Oscar Symposium hosted by Nathaniel (c'est moi) right here @ the Film Experience...


Three to four days of detailed Oscar talk. And we're a go...

DAY ONE
In which our correspondents discuss Daniel Day-Lewis's milkshake, George Clooney's "fixer", nomination morning rituals, The Wizard of Oz, "kabuki" acting, the odd case of sexual draaaaaiiinnnage from 2007 movies and so much more.

Got something to add to the conversation? That's what "post a comment" for. Join in.
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The Third Annual Oscar Symposium is About to Begin...

I already feel guilty for taking the day off. What's wrong with me? To quiet the screaming of the lambs my noisy conscience, I thought I'd give you a little heads up on what's next.


Feb 4th ~ 7th: the 3rd Annual Film Experience Hosted Oscar Symposium
I love doing this each year [you can see previous examples from 2006 and 2007]. Let me introduce you to this year's chatterboxes !

February 10th ~ 17th: the 2008 Movie Preview
Another "We Can't Wait" countdown with a different batch of talking heads. Our collective choices for the 15 most mouthwatering movies (sight unseen) on the 2008 calendar.

And in between those two big events the usual blog hijinx. Plus: Oscar page updates and the wrap up of the FB Awards, I know. I know. But no wonder I'm so zonked.
pssst...
Now is your chance to influence the Symposium discussion. Throw some topics at us in the comments and inspire the back 'n' forths yet to come.
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