I think I have decided a new way to pull for Oscar winners. Card or no card. I can continue to despise the votes of the thespian elite and dismiss the whines of sociopolitical narcissists. Heck, I don't even have to watch the movie.

And the nominees are......

BRENDAN FRASER
BRENDAN GLEESON
BRIAN TYREE HENRY
KE HUY QUAN
CATE BLANCHETT
MICHELLE YEOH
ANGELA BASSETT
GUILLERMO DEL TORO
STEVEN SPIELBERG
JOHN WILLIAMS
JAMES CAMERON

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
I can continue to despise the votes of the thespian elite and dismiss the whines of sociopolitical narcissists. Heck, I don't even have to watch the movie.

If you are struggling with the real world, the last thing you need is to watch films or TV shows that will leave you feeling more miserable than when you came in. Why shouldn't "Top Gun Maverick" be Best Picture of the Year, if that's what was enjoyable to most people?

Well it won't win. It's inclusion on the list of 10 was as symbolic as "Avatar Way of the Water". The Academy voters and peers would rather honor films that no one wants to sit through as a way of maintaining their artistic integrity that the average audience just can't appreciate. When they want to go slumming for money, there is always the next Marvel project.

I'd like to see "Everything Everywhere All At Once" win. It's flawed and some segments were too far out, but at least it had a positive message. "Tar" was good as an acting exercise and Blanchett is fantastic, but the narrative had so many holes in it and the editing so choppy, you honestly didn't have enough information to know what she was up to or even what happened in the end. The "you decide what it means" is the approach of a bad screenplay writer and cagy director who wants credit for what he didn't do himself. Yes, I do mean Todd Field, who I hope will not get an Oscar for writing and directing an incomplete acting class.

Congrats to card SAG winners.

Brendan Fraser
Michelle Yeoh
Ke Huy Quan
Jennifer Coolidge
Jean Smart (her winning streak continues)

Everything, Everywhere All at Once...the only film in the list I have seen.

The SAG awards were heavily influenced by favoritism. Some winners came out of left field, but I did enjoy watching them on youtube, which tells you how great these awards shows are doing with viewers these days. I expect the Oscars to be the least watchable because the TV people go away and all we are stuck with is the high and mighty "movie stars".

Yeoh and Blanchett will be the horse race of the evening. Even though everyone knows it belongs to Blanchett, Yeoh may take it just as an acknowledgement of her career. Too bad they can't split the difference.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
The SAG awards were heavily influenced by favoritism. Some winners came out of left field, but I did enjoy watching them on youtube, which tells you how great these awards shows are doing with viewers these days. I expect the Oscars to be the least watchable because the TV people go away and all we are stuck with is the high and mighty "movie stars".

Yeoh and Blanchett will be the horse race of the evening. Even though everyone knows it belongs to Blanchett, Yeoh may take it just as an acknowledgement of her career. Too bad they can't split the difference.

Again, I’m hoping for a repeat of the 1968 tie in the Best Actress category. Blanchett does deserve it. Yeoh has given the performance of her career in EEAAO. She may win. The Academy gets stingy about giving out 3rd Oscars to actors.

quote:

Originally posted by Electrawoman Cards f/k/a jane:
She may win. The Academy gets stingy about giving out 3rd Oscars to actors.

I just have to take your word that Blanchett's performance is better than Yeoh's as I have not seen Tar. Still, this thought crossed my mind that Yeoh would get it simply because of Cate's previous wins. Will be an interesting night....that I will wait until the next day to view the winners from.

Makes me think of the late 1990s, when Judi Dench should have won Best Actress for Mrs. Brown only to be beaten by Helen Hunt, who quite frankly looked embarrassed about it when she went up to receive it. There was more than a hint that the Oscars knew they had ballsed it up as Dench won the following year for Best Supporting Actress for Shakespeare in Love. She was on screen less than ten minutes in that movie. A brilliant few minutes as Elizabeth I, but it was the Oscars knowing they had seriously screwed it up the year before.
I think it was at that point I accepted the Oscars were a flawed fake extension of Disney World. These days I like to see who won what the following morning, usually accompanied by much eye-rolling as I discover the latest arty-farty depressing load of bilge wins a ton of awards, but it truly means very little.

Both Hunt and Dench had just won the Golden Globes for those movies, but the Screen Actors Guild Award for which they faced off directly went to Helen. After that, it would've been a big surprise if Hunt hadn't also won the Oscar that year.

As for people winning awards for playing British royalty in general, hopefully we've seen the end of that at this point. How many times can the same story (literal kings and queens of the world who aren't happy for some stupid reason) be told over and over? (Waitaminute! Don't answer that, "Fast and the Furious" franchise, or Marvel, or Top Gun, or Avatar, or Pixar movies, basically all the biggest hits of the last 20 years,,,)

Maybe the 2025 Oscar will end up going to Harry Styles for his riveting performance as Prince Harry opposite fellow winner Meghan Markle, who plays herself. It should be super easy for Styles to remember his own character's name, which is like, half the work right there.

Regarding Helen Hunt, after the mid 2000s, she sort of disappeared. I know she had that "Mad About You" revival in 2019 on some obscure cable network. I think she will always be known primarily for that TV show.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Regarding Helen Hunt, after the mid 2000s, she sort of disappeared. I know she had that "Mad About You" revival in 2019 on some obscure cable network. I think she will always be known primarily for that TV show.

Rumor was the award went to head and she priced herself out of the market. Truth was that her peers didn't like her after the Oscar, and they tagged her as a diva. In another time she probably would have been fine, but not then.

Halle Berry ran into a very similar problem four years later in 2001. You would have thought she would have learned by Hunt's mistakes. but they both blew it coming off their most notable roles.

Helen Hunt was another actress who was best known for becoming a big TV star in the 1990s, after 15 years of TV guest spots, and then she thought that she could successfully transition over into becoming a big screen movie star.

She did "Twister" (1996), "As Good As It Gets" (1997), "Cast Away" and "What Women Want" (both released in 2000) which were all hits, but I don't think she was able to keep it going after that, like so many other stars who think that they can go from TV to movies.

I saw her recently on a 1984 episode of "Highway to Heaven", before she was famous

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Regarding Helen Hunt, after the mid 2000s, she sort of disappeared. I know she had that "Mad About You" revival in 2019 on some obscure cable network. I think she will always be known primarily for that TV show.

Rumor was the award went to head and she priced herself out of the market. Truth was that her peers didn't like her after the Oscar, and they tagged her as a diva. In another time she probably would have been fine, but not then.

Halle Berry ran into a very similar problem four years later in 2001. You would have thought she would have learned by Hunt's mistakes. but they both blew it coming off their most notable roles.

Does this ever happen to men? Would Adrien Brody count?

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Regarding Helen Hunt, after the mid 2000s, she sort of disappeared. I know she had that "Mad About You" revival in 2019 on some obscure cable network. I think she will always be known primarily for that TV show.

Not obscure - Spectrum, which has the NYC & LA market…still, not a major network of any sort though.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:

quote:

Originally posted by Electrawoman Cards f/k/a jane:
She may win. The Academy gets stingy about giving out 3rd Oscars to actors.

I just have to take your word that Blanchett's performance is better than Yeoh's as I have not seen Tar. Still, this thought crossed my mind that Yeoh would get it simply because of Cate's previous wins. Will be an interesting night....that I will wait until the next day to view the winners from.

Well, if you don’t count Yeoh’s former stunts she did herself, it’s easy to say this was the performance of both actresses’ careers. An almost impossible choice because there isn’t a wrong answer here.

Yes, Adrian Brody was another guy who had a few years of fame and now he has been relegated to lesser films. I would also put in that category James Franco and Anne Hathaway who were big in the 2000s and now you dont hear much about them.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Helen Hunt was another actress who was best known for becoming a big TV star in the 1990s, after 15 years of TV guest spots, and then she thought that she could successfully transition over into becoming a big screen movie star.

She did "Twister" (1996), "As Good As It Gets" (1997), "Cast Away" and "What Women Want" (both released in 2000) which were all hits, but I don't think she was able to keep it going after that, like so many other stars who think that they can go from TV to movies.

I saw her recently on a 1984 episode of "Highway to Heaven", before she was famous

Prior to that, as a young actor, she was in a couple of TV movies that have gone on to cult status: "Desperate Lives" and "Quarterback Princess". In the former, a somewhat hysterical anti-drug film, Helen's character famously takes PCP (called "crank" for some reason) and jumps through and out of a second story window at school.

https://www.cracked.com/articl...e-on-angel-dust.html

In the latter, she's a female high school quarterback on a boy's team.

These were valuable collectible VHS home videos throughout the 90's probably in part due to Hunt's popularity that decade mostly from "Mad About You", although she sure finished that decade with a bang, the Academy Award.

I always thought she was a superb actor. Another highlight for her was "Castaway" (for which Hanks should've got his 3rd Oscar). She also guest voiced in a classic "Simpsons" episode.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:

I always thought she was a superb actor. Another highlight for her was "Castaway" (for which Hanks should've got his 3rd Oscar). She also guest voiced in a classic "Simpsons" episode.

Yeah, I think in some cases it isn't that the actor is failing later in life but more that they have enjoyed a full career already. Why not slow things down a little?

I didn't realize she had a 17 month marriage to Hank Azaria. Wonder if that was her connection to the Simpsons?

The first time I ever saw Helen Hunt and remembered her was in 1984's "Trancers". She came back seven years later for "Trancers II".

If you have never seen the Trancers movies, or heard of Jack Deth, these Charles Band rip offs of "Blade Runner" were enjoyable in their day.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
The first time I ever saw Helen Hunt and remembered her was in 1984's "Trancers". She came back seven years later for "Trancers II".

If you have never seen the Trancers movies, or heard of Jack Deth, these Charles Band rip offs of "Blade Runner" were enjoyable in their day.

I’m embarrassed to say(but I will anyway) that I saw Desperate Lives live on the Abc Afterschool Special. The 70s sure were special.

She also did Trancers III in 1992.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
The first time I ever saw Helen Hunt and remembered her was in 1984's "Trancers". She came back seven years later for "Trancers II".

If you have never seen the Trancers movies, or heard of Jack Deth, these Charles Band rip offs of "Blade Runner" were enjoyable in their day.