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Blarghagh

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Posts posted by Blarghagh

    The Movie Thread Returns

    in Way Off-Topic

    Posted · Edited by TrueNeutral
    Spelling, typing on my phone is annoying

     

     

    I haven't seen Get Out yet, but I feel the need to address the assumptions that the film's only nominated as a token entry in the Oscars, which I feel is simply false and a rather preposterous claim even. The film has repeatedly over the last few months been lauded as one of the greatest films of the year, so much so that it is currently the most awarded film of the year above the likes of every other nominee and former BP hopeful, according to RT's awards leaderboard. It's not just a random nom, it's one of the leading contenders and has been for months, and according to most I've spoken to rightly so as well. To leave it out would have been as preposterous as failing to award any of the other big players in the running this year, the likes of Lady Bird, Three Billboards or The Shape of Water, if not even more so.

    I think one should see it first to form their own opinion before saying any people who may think it's pandering are wrong or that such an opinion is utterly "false" or preposterous. If you know how the Oscar noms. work/come about and how political it and their Board of Governors can be, you know the Academy can very definitely pander, in many ways. And the voters are voting for peers after all, and those peers can get just as wound up into the latest peer and critical cause as anyone else.

     

    I'm not saying my opinion is somehow more "right" than anyone else's opinion, but by the same token, all those critics and the Academy voters and even my 10 best friends (if I had 10 best friends, that is, haha) opinions aren't really any more "right" either. That's why art is subjective.

    It's a good genre movie, I'm not knockin' it at all, but my opinion still stands. It's not anywhere near a "best of the year" sort of project. Note that I don't actually care if it is pandering, it's no skin off my nose either way. They can choose whatever they want, for whatever reasons, I have no investment in it. It was just my casual view/response tossed out one morning on a brief visit to a forum. I haven't even watched the Oscars in years. :p

     

    I do know how the Oscar noms work and come about, and that's the thing: they might arguably respond to politics but they respond far more often to *momentum*, and Get Out has had it for months. And whilst, yes, art is indeed subjective and one is free to think whatever they want about Get Out or any other film, but assuming that a film's nomination is purely political, or that people have rated it as one of the best of the year for purely political reasons, takes a step beyond positing one's opinion on a film and into discrediting others' through speculating on their motives for their assessment. In the same coin I could accuse you and TN of questioning the legitimacy of Get Out's nomination due to being racist and thus assuming that a black filmmaker's nomination is inherently less legitimate than that one a white one's (which, mind, I don't, but it follows the same line of thought). It's the act of speculating on the others' opinions for rating a film so highly to be political which is wrong, not a disagreement about whether it's as good as others say it is or not.

     

    That's not by the same coin at all. You don't even know what currency we're using. You're defending a film you haven't even seen, calling criticism of it false, preposterous and racist? That seems incredibly rude and pretentious to me.

     

    Get Out is okay. I enjoyed it. I didn't hate it at all, I was entertained all way through. It was, as far as horror movies go, definitly in the top 20 this year. A definite step below other heavy horror hitters like It Comes At Night, Gerald's Game, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Stephen King's It but way above Annabelle Creation, Alien: Covenant and Life.

     

    Why am I ranking it this way? To give you a better idea of the caliber of the film you're defending. I'm not arguing against the legitimacy of a black director. I love Jordan Peele. But the film he made is not oscar level. Not even CLOSE. It was never intended to be - it's essentially a Stepford Wives remake with feminism replaced with white privelege. It's competently directed (though nothing special), it's got some clever dialogue and funny cinematography and set design. I enjoyed it. The lead actress is good, everyone else is competent. It's not, however the kind of film that gets nominated for an Oscar. It's 'fine' at best. If you'd have SEEN it, you would know this and wouldn't be calling people preposterous racists for it. There is a gap in quality so obvious that it INVITES the questioning of motives.

     

    The fact this got nominated for an Oscar while clearly being a just 'okay' film at best is the thing that makes black directors look inherently worse here, I'm just pointing it out. This makes last year's fantastic Moonlight, for example, look bad - this movie has no clear reason to be nominated based on quality and the only other plausible motive looking in is politics. Based in this nomination, it becomes incredibly easy to look back and go 'oh, it must have been the same for that film too'.

     

    This would have been fine if the Academy had a history of nominating clever, decent horror films. But Scream never got nominated. Cabin in the Woods never got nominated. The only thing that sets this movie apart from those is race. Its nomination by itself makes the Academy look racist, out if touch, desperately trying to stave off the race controversy from a few years ago because nobody campaigned for a Moonlight or Boys N The Hood this year. This film wasn't nominated because it was good, it was nominated because it's black. Again, I liked this movie. But it's not Selma, or Precious. It's not 12 Years a Slave. It's not Fruitvale Station or even Creed which both should have been nominated but weren't. No, this is Scream with some clever jokes about privelege.

     

    Lets talk about films of the same caliber this year. Stephen King's IT, while also being just fine, was a better film than this. Why did Andres Muschietti get passed over and Jordan Peele get nominated? Well, only thing I can see from the outside is... Latinos aren't as important to the Academy as African-Americans. Seriously, how am I the racist for pointing out the plain as day participation trophy style tokenism on display here? The Academy is acting like the villain of the very movie we're discussing and I'M the bad guy?

     

    Seriously, watch it instead if being rude. You'll see. There simply is no way to view this nomination as anything other than the Academy going "I can't be racist, one of my best friends is black!".

    The Movie Thread Returns

    in Way Off-Topic

    Posted

    To see academy politics, just look at Leo winning for The Revenant when he's really winning for his whole body of work because he was terribly overacting and constantly, annoyingly mugging for the camera in that film. They wanted to finally give him something, didn't seem to matter they were giving it for a Jeremy Irons in Dungeons and Dragons style performance.

     

    Don't get me wrong, Leo deserved accolades he never got for a lot of roles. That just wasn't one of them.

    The Movie Thread Returns

    in Way Off-Topic

    Posted

     

    Shape of Water is fantastic and I was surprised it got nominated, it's too good to be recognized by the academy.

    And this is another comment I don't get in today's context. Back in the 90s or early 00s? Sure, the Oscars used to nominate some very dodgy stuff back then. But the films being nominated through the past five years have in their great majority been legitimate film of the year contenders, and are truly at their best since the 70s. This whole "Oscars suck" mentality feels weirdly out of sync with the latest years.

    I don't think the Oscars suck, it's just that Shape of Water has fanteesee stuff. Outside if Lord of the Rings, well... pretty much never stood a chance traditionally.

    The Movie Thread Returns

    in Way Off-Topic

    Posted

     

    You know, I liked Get Out but as a decent run-of-the-mill horror film. It was good at what it did, but it didn't do anything new or interesting. So why the oscar noms? That smells political to me.

    I haven't seen it, but it rather timely given current racial tensions in the US. Thay may be political, but credit is deserved for reading the pulse and reacting to it promptly.
    Token sympathy noms for such a mediocre film because you're terrified of another "no black directors" backlash like they had before is not really feeling the pulse. It's more like putting a children's smilwy face bandaid on the scar where you cut the wrist before, then telling everyone it's fine with a fake smile on a pale face as they watch you bleed out from a dozen open gashes next to it.

     

    That analogy got away from me somewhere.

    RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS - NOW IN 5$ LOOT BOXES

    in Computer and Console

    Posted

     

     

    • "Bring the Player, not the Class" is one of the misinterpreted things of all time. It was a response to a completely degenerate situation, back when there were no raid wide buffs, they were all party based.

    Uh, sure. That wasn't at all about Blizzard mishandling what could have been a decent response to class necessity in raid setups.

    Not sure why you sound like you're disagreeing while repeating what Ion said about it verbatim.

    RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS - NOW IN 5$ LOOT BOXES

    in Computer and Console

    Posted

    So more stuff from the next WoW expansion is being released (read: datamined) and there's so much cool stuff that I'm wondering why on earth are they marketing it as boring 'humans vs orcs' to the point of making some people incorrectly think it's a PvP expansion.

     

    We've got one continent that's all H.P. Lovecraft Innsmouth and sea priests and witch-hags building living wickermen and another continent that's massive Mayan temples of gold except the Mayan-proxy trolls have domesticated dinosaurs, mummies and dinosaur-mummies. Baby King Anduin and the revolving door of Warchiefs can suck it, they're not close to being as cool as Kul'Tiras and Zandalar and Blizzard is seriously dropping the ball with their marketing this time.

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