Posts

Oscars Preview 2026

 It’s an exciting year, with a lot of races that are still considered up in the air and an overall excellent list of nominees. Big picture, it’s hard for me to think of anything that’s a real complete gobsmacking snub, i.e., not just that a great something or other hasn’t been nominated, but that I can readily identify the nomination whose torch I’d blow out with a good explanation why. But for all the excitement and the buzz in the air, I’m frustrated and annoyed and peeved and something something something that there’s a strong sense that One Battle After Another is going to win Best Picture. It’s a good movie, sure. It’s on my top ten .  But it isn’t even the best Warner Brothers picture of 2025.  One Battle takes an awfully long time to find its footing, and it’s a good movie with some nifty stuff. In five or ten years I’ll be curious to see it again, kind of like how I’m kind of curious to see There Will be Blood.  I’m thinking of the car chase scene.  I’m ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oscars Live Blog 2026

2:40 AM GMT:  OMG, a post-credits sequence on the Oscars.  Sean Penn’s glorious final moments in One Battle.  But, now I want to see the alternative ending that goes at the final scene in the jazz club at the end of Sinners.  Can that get leaked.  Please please please please.  For your Live Oscar Blogger for Life. So, that’s a wrap.  It’s late here in London. 2:37 AM GMT:  I hope that One Battle After Another will not be the last movie I see at the glorious Astor in Melbourne, which is one of the greatest places on all the planet to see a movie.  It’s been showing them for 90 years, and while l kind of would have preferred IMAX Film, I’m perfectly happy that I have the memory of seeing 70mm at the amazing Astor. 2:25 AM GMT: Fuck.I like One Battle After Another.  But repeat after me, not even the best Warner Brothers release of the year  Sinners, Sinners, Sinners, Sinners, Sinners, Sinners, Sinners, Sinners. 2:35 AM GMT: 25 years fo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oscars Live Blog 2025

11: 24 PM Getting back to the In Memoriam section: I first remember seeing Maggie Smith in California Suite, a 1978 movie. That’s some fifty years ago.  That’s a dang long time to be giving good performances in all sorts of movies. Dabney Coleman - Nine to Five. Classic. Dick Pope was the primary cinematographer for Mike Leigh, and had a forty year career.  Any time you can bring it for that long, any time in this job you can have a relationship with a director where the director wants to use you over and over and over again over a very long period of time… Marshall Brickman worked on several of the best Woody Allen films.  And his own movie Simon isn’t all that good, but the trip into Manhattan to see that movie over holiday break in 1980 is one of the keynote days in my coming of age as someone who really, really, really loved going to the movies.  A movie at Cinema One, a movie at the Loews Astor Plaza with mind-blowing six track 70mm sound.  A great day. Mar...
7 comments
Read more

Oscars Preview 2024

 Around 72 hours until Oscar night, as I am typing, and it's an exciting year, with a lot of heated Academy Award races, a lot of good nominees, and a lot of excitement and anticipation. My best movie rankings of last year, you'll find here . The Best Picture field isn't bad. I can't complain about Wicked, which was extremely popular, and The Conclave, which checks a lot of Oscar boxes more than pleasantly enough but is more the Zan and Jayna Wonder Twins version of an Oscar movie than an actual Oscar movie.  I can't complain about The Substance.  I don't think it 100% works, largely because the ending felt like the place to go when the filmmakers didn't know where actually to go, so they picked a direction and just kept driving. The exact opposite of Anora, which ends brilliantly.  But if not perfect, The Substance has verve, vision, good performances. I'm Still Here, Dune Part Two, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist and Anora are all on my own list of b...
1 comment
Read more

Oscars Live Blog 2024

2:22 AM Oppenheimer.  And I am going to cut out pretty quickly because it almost 2:30 in the morning, and I have to get some sleep, and be at Hachette HQ for my first meeting of London Book Fair week in not much more than eight hours.  This winner is deserving enough.  I did see it twice. I didn’t like it more the second time, but I liked it well enough. 2:13 AM This was a tough category to predict, but no complaints about Emma Stone who gives a fearless performance that is sui generis in Poor Things. Look at that list of nominees, and this is the toughest category full of brilliant performances.  But Emma’s - it’s the sui generis part that makes it worthwhile of winning over the others IMHO. 2:11 AM The whole dessert thing is challenged when I am in a temporary borrowed hotel room.  However, Bryce, outside King Cross/St Pancras on Tue-Fri afternoon are some food stalls, and on Friday I went and got some brownies from the stall that has a dozen brownies all of w...
3 comments
Read more

Oscars Live Blog 2023

11:39 pm - only three hours and thirty nine minutes, about how long it takes to read a Bookstore Care or Aurora Teagarden or Ground Rules mystery.  And about half as long as sitting thru All Quiet.  11:32 pm - Everything Everywhere All at Oscar. 11:23 pm -  Encino Man and George of the Jungle are the big winners tonight.  I’m very happy for Brendan Fraser.  I would have first seen Fraser in Nancy Savoca’s Dogfight in 1991. As a hunk in School Ties. Over thirty years later… 11:16 pm - The ads have been disappointing.  I’m yearning for Ellen DeGeneris ads for regular low pricing at J C Penney. Ads for a plan that was a great and also utterly ruinous idea simultaneously. For something, though, that feels fresh and distinct and creative.  Not Rolex ads that are like Rolex ads in the Wimbledon final. 11:12 pm - Two more prizes, editing and Director, for Everything Everywhere All at Once.  This seems like a good occasion to post a link to an LA Times ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oscars Preview 2023

 Sigh. This isn't going to be a great year for hate watching the Oscars. Before I get deep into, you can see my Top Ten of 2022 here . There is one and only one Best Picture nominee that I disliked intensely, which is All Quiet on the Western Front. If it wins, I'll be too frozen to deal from hell freezing over to car.  If it wins something else, I'm not going to spend the emotional energy.  And part of me admires Netflix's ability year after year to take some piece of claptrap artsy filmmaking and invest millions of dollars and get it into the completion. I wish every of my clients' books would be published with similar investment and enthusiasm. I don't even know what movie I'm rooting for.  I saw The Fabelmans twice, it held up well, and it's a great movie. I've seen Top Gun: Maverick a handful of times, and could watch it over and over and over again. Tar has kept its pull on me four months after, and I might just see it again this weekend.  I di...
Post a Comment
Read more