Jake Gittes

30 Uncle Buck 68 31 The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover 67.5 I know now what @aabattery felt.

This godforsaken forum I swear.

Just top 30?

Where's Reggie?

Was all set to roll my eyes at the title and the quick cutting in the teaser doesn't leave you with much but since Oz Perkins is doing this I'm on board for now. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House was excellent.

To Be or Not to Be is fantastic.

It just seems weird to me to enforce the bullshit of campaigning/image being more important than quality because "that's the way it is". It doesn't need to be.

This sounds worse than the Joker discourse.

Yeah, well, you should.

Miramax and Sony Classics have historically been the biggest/most reliable foreign language film distributors in North America and today one is no more while the other hasn't gotten such a movie past $5m since Amour. Meanwhile all the new boutique distributors that have popped up starting with A24 can still barely get English-language films to succeed outside of limited release, what do you expect from them with foreign ones. (The fact that Neon is supposed to give this a real push is encouraging though. It does have the best chance of any recent foreign film to break 10m.) In theory there's nothing stopping major studios from taking on and pushing these films, via subsidiaries if nothing else, except that they just don't have an incentive to do so. "Will this be a hit or will it be just for cinephiles" is a disingenious question because this doesn't have access to resources that could make it a hit, and I mean an actual hit even if a small-scale one (like a 30m grosser). When a movie like this can get access to a wide-release marketing budget then it'll be a valid thing to ask.

I doubt even this could be worse than Green Book.

The first movie may have been R but it was as Disneyfied in its unimaginative mass-market mediocrity as it could be so fuck-up or no fuck-up nothing would change.

This really should do well at the Oscars then.

Madness.

I like Burning but it didn't have nearly the entertainment value of Parasite. I don't know if there was any push for The Handmaiden at all.

The Oscars:

I dunno Haneke strikes me as a good comparison. Like Haneke at the time of Amour, Bong's been making well-received movies for two decades and now he's made the one everyone including the Academy can get onboard with. And having seen it... it simply plays well, with an air of obvious accomplishment to it that can lead to healthy word-of-mouth and buzz among the Academy members as well. It doesn't need acting nods.

Excuse me Phantom Thread needed no elevating. Don't lump it in with... those others.

I don't think the role is particularly meaty, but even if I did (most people do), it's a pretty quiet performance without the fireworks you'd need to win, especially in a foreign language movie. He should be good for a nomination (out of already-seen contenders I'd place him fourth, behind Phoenix, Driver and DiCaprio) but even that's not safe if Bale, De Niro, MBJ all gain major momentum.

For a win? Absolutely not.

People also presumably know about Bong asking audiences not to reveal the story's surprises and that fuels curiosity. Anyway, yes, I think it's more likely to be nominated for picture than not, with director and screenplay also solid possibilities.

In the end Kelly won for having done 4 movies that year I think. I'm glad this sounds like a success for Zellweger at least, even if it's still hard for me to work up much interest in it. I do hope it gets more people to watch actual Garland movies. Greatest actor to ever live imo.

they aren't good with calculations