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Matthew Rankin's Universal Language.

And producer Denzel Washington's latest August Wilson adaptation, The Piano Lesson, which sees one of his sons directing his other son, plus Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, Danielle Deadwyler, and Erykah Badu.

Widely tipped as Jackson’s overdue career Oscar bid, it will have to be massive levels of awful to not result in at least that win for Best Supporting Actor

I mean, it worked so well for Chadwick Boseman (and the Oscars ceremony that year)

Never Cursed wrote: Thu Aug 22, 2024 4:03 pm I mean, it worked so well for Chadwick Boseman (and the Oscars ceremony that year)

However, Jackson has the advantage of being alive (knock on wood)

Since Jackson already won an honorary Oscar, I wondered how many people have won a competitive Oscar after getting what's often given near the end of a career:

Charlie Chaplin (Honorary Awards in 1928 & 1971, Won Best Original Score in 1972)
Walt Disney (Honorary Awards in 1932, 1939 and 1942, would win 22 competitive awards between 1932 and 1968)
W. Howard Greene (Honorary Awards in 1936 & 1938, won Best Cinematography in 1944)
Gordon Jennings (Honorary Award in 1938, would win 2 competitive Oscars for Best Visual/Special Effects)
Farciot Edouart (Honorary Award in 1938, would win 2 competitive Oscars for Best Visual/Special Effects)
Loyal Griggs (Honorary Award in 1938, won Best Cinematography in 1953)
Louis Mesenkop (Honorary Award in 1938, 2 competitive Oscars for Best Visual/Special Effects)
Nathan Levinson (Honorary Award in 1940, won Best Sound in 1942)
Harold Russell (Honorary Award in 1947, won Best Supporting Actor in 1947)
Laurence Olivier (Honorary Award in 1947, won Best Actor and Best Picture in 1948)
Cecil B. DeMille (Honorary Award in 1949, won Best Picture in 1953)
Louis B. Mayer (Honorary Award in 1950, won Best Picture in 1951 and 1958)
Jerome Robbins (Honorary Award in 1961, won Best Director in 1961)
Henry Fonda (Honorary Award in 1980, won Best Actor in 1981)
Paul Newman (Honorary Award in 1986, Won Best Actor in 1987)
Ennio Morricone (Honorary Award in 2007, Won Best Original Score in 2016)
Hayao Miyazaki (Honorary Award in 2014, Won Best Animated Feature in 2024)
Spike Lee (Honorary Award in 2016, Won Best Adapted Screenplay in 2019)

After Jerome Robbins's awards in 1961, I think the honorary Oscar became much more synonymous with lifetime achievement. Chaplin's second honorary award in 1971 was certainly that.

Interesting. This will be quite a year for Glenn Close/Peter O’Toole type expectations with Jackson and Amy Adams both believed to be front runners (and much liked Oscar-less actors such as Tucci and Fiennes in the running as well)

Given how close some of those competitive Oscars are to the honorary ones, it's as if the winning votes for the competitive ones were helped along by the goodwill established by the previous honor. Then again, it didn't help Peter O'Toole or Diane Warren, both nominated soon after their honorary awards.

domino harvey wrote: Thu Aug 22, 2024 4:01 pm Widely tipped as Jackson’s overdue career Oscar bid, it will have to be massive levels of awful to not result in at least that win for Best Supporting Actor

Hey guess what happened. Ironically it’s his two costars that are getting any attention. Oh that Awards Season!

Apparently A24 botched their rollout of Sing Sing so bad that they’re pulling it and rereleasing in January for greater awards visibility. Honestly, I got invited to like four different free screenings here a few weeks ago and passed, and tix for those were still available the day before based on the pleading emails I kept getting, so maybe, just maybe, no one actually cares about seeing this movie (like me, who knows a “Wait for it to hit streaming” film when I see one)

A24 Oscar campaigns are only either big triumphs or embarrassing whiffs, this is like them burning their best 2018 Oscar hopefuls in the summer and giving the awards slot to Mid90s instead.

With all the high profile burnouts, I have no idea what the Top 10 will look like for Best Picture. Hopefully there’s some covert bangers coming up at this fall’s festival circuit, because a lot of contenders are dropping left and right

domino harvey wrote: Thu Sep 05, 2024 3:45 pm Apparently A24 botched their rollout of Sing Sing so bad that they’re pulling it and rereleasing in January for greater awards visibility. Honestly, I got invited to like four different free screenings here a few weeks ago and passed, and tix for those were still available the day before based on the pleading emails I kept getting, so maybe, just maybe, no one actually cares about seeing this movie (like me, who knows a “Wait for it to hit streaming” film when I see one)

I mean, everyone who I talked to who saw it at SXSW raved about it, I just didn't get a chance to see it there. Then a couple weeks ago, my AAA24 free trial membership sent out an email for free tickets to see it at AMC theaters, but it wasn't even playing any of the ones in my city, which seemed like "what are you guys doing?".

The most confusing A24 decision as of late, imo, is their bizarre rollout for Janet Planet, an absolutely incredible film I saw at Telluride last year and which flew through its limited release this summer without making a dent. I understand the inherent challenges in marketing a film like this (the trailer is abysmal, case in point), but it never even showed up here in Montreal afaik. I just don't get this strategy of getting festival exposure only to let films sit dormant for months and then dumping them in the middle of the summer. :-s

A24 has been especially nonsensical in the the Bay area. Janet Planet played for 1 week in one very out-of-the-way first-run theater, 2 weeks in a second-run theater, and that's it. It had maybe 10 showtimes total—fewer than Breillat's latest had locally! Meanwhile, Sing Sing has been playing for at least a month locally. It's got showtimes at five local theaters today alone, and I know it's already had runs that ended at others, including this week at the most-likely-to-be-visited-by-Oscar-voters theater...

domino harvey wrote: Thu Sep 05, 2024 4:10 pmWith all the high profile burnouts, I have no idea what the Top 10 will look like for Best Picture. Hopefully there’s some covert bangers coming up at this fall’s festival circuit, because a lot of contenders are dropping left and right

My assumption is that, beyond the ones you already mentioned, Maria is out and Nickel Boys, Queer, and The Brutalist (assuming it finds a sizable distributor) are in. Mercifully, most of the GoldDerby predictions omit Wicked: Part One.

Wicked looks like that ABC show Once Upon a Time, and if the similar musical a few years ago with Meryl Streep couldn’t even show up, I doubt this does (and it’s quite sus that all marketing is purposely leaving out that it’s part one— guess they don’t want viewers to know until they’re already seated)

I think, with the right distributor, the Brutalist could prob sweep, based on what we’re hearing about it, so I’m obviously counting on it being part of the ten. The Almodovar is a tossup but those who like it really like it, so perhaps it too will make the cut

Sean Baker doesn't have a great Oscar record, but I'm really hoping Anora gets traction. There are a lot of films, though, that are more likely to land acting noms than BP. I'm also thinking of Conclave for Feinnes

I think Anora and Conclave are extremely safe bets for noms for Best Picture, Director, and Actress/Actor respectively

domino harvey wrote: Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:20 pm the Brutalist

This forum's most ardent Vox Lux fan is pinching himself.

mfunk9786 wrote: Fri Sep 06, 2024 12:30 am

domino harvey wrote: Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:20 pm the Brutalist

This forum's most ardent Vox Lux fan is pinching himself.

The Brutalist has been bought by...A24?

Never Cursed wrote: Sun Sep 08, 2024 2:45 pm

mfunk9786 wrote: Fri Sep 06, 2024 12:30 am

domino harvey wrote: Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:20 pm the Brutalist

This forum's most ardent Vox Lux fan is pinching himself.

The Brutalist has been bought by...A24?

But World of Reel was telling everyone that the bidding war was between Fox and SPC!

I know quite a few people are going to be pissed that it's with A24, especially due to the Sing Sing debacle, but I think they will do a fine job distributing it. They tend to go all out for their Oscar hopefuls, so I see no reason why they wouldn't do the same for this. I'm just hoping that they are planning on doing 70mm (or even 35mm) runs.

At least this means it will for sure get a Blu-ray and UHD release, but man, I don’t trust A24 to promote this sufficiently for Oscars at all

Like yoloswegmaster said (what a start to a sentence), A24 usually pulls out all the stops for their heavy-duty Oscar favorites (which this by all accounts will be), we're not even two years away from the ceremony where their movies practically won half of all the categories. It's the smaller movies that they could push for awards that they end up screwing over, and my avatar will tell you my opinion on the most egregious of those campaigning failures.

Posters on the antagonist awards forum think this means A24 is giving up on Queer (and they may have already realized they blew Sing Sing), so perhaps y’all are right and I am mistaken— I want to believe the hype for this one being a masterpiece, at any rate

And yes, in a just world, 20th Century Women would have had like a dozen noms and not just one for screenplay

Probably helped that Everything Everywhere was ticking all the boxes in every kind of zeigeisty way on the internet (of all places!), and A24 shooting money into all those veins was an easy move. The quality of that feature mattered very little in retrospect vs. what it ended up meaning to what became the fanbase for it, overall, and as such for all those guilty parties who voted for it in the Academy. In the years since, it's been a struggle to even remind people why movies matter/are valid entertainment in the first place (or that they should ever be over 4min long), let alone the shiny trophies the most attention getting ones inevitably happen to be. Best part of awards season is even getting a chance to see any of these pictures, so all for the better?

Mike Mills is probably fine living with the validation that he was able to even make a movie, any movie, that resembled his intent, and that anyone ever got to see it, right? If not, I'll steal someone else's Oscar and send it to him tomorrow.