Saturday, May 04, 2013
Long Gone (1987) - dir. Martin Davidson
(www.youtube.com)
I was so excited about finding this I had to share. The quality isn’t good, but considering it’s officially unavailable on DVD, it’s certainly better than nothing. I don’t think I’ve seen this in nearly 20 years, and it’s as wonderful as I remember.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 > Last ›This seems remarkably self-aware and astute. Or maybe I'm rating baseball players by far too low a bar.
Wait, that's not right. AS Howe, he was awful. As not-Howe he was great. He was simply not Howe.
That being said, if anyone cares, I'll be randomly making Academy Award liveblog comments.
If they had done that, I would have liked the movie a lot more than I did, which was not much at all. I realize that I am in no way similar to the target audience though.
This was my biggest problem with the movie. The way they portrayed Howe, as some irrational loon who looked like he was going to erupt at any moment, was absurd.
I'm pretty sure I could say that about majority of the nominees for Best Picture(Help and Moneyball being the exceptions this year). Artsy Fartsy garbage most of the time. When they actually have something interesting and entertaining win(like Forest Gump), it's lambasted by the pretentious snobs for the next several decades.
Forrest Gump was ####### trash.
My friend who cares absolutely nothing about baseball enjoyed Moneyball very much.
I didn't like it very much, but this basically sums it up.
Totally agree. Transformers and Hangover 2 got shafted fo sho.
It didn't even get Pretentious Dogshit of the Year?
I wouldn't go that far. The Help was a respectable box office success, had entertainment, and is rewatchable. Nothing wrong with that being a nominee. It's just stuff like the Artist not widely popular, except for the self navel gazing of the academy and industry insiders, mainstream people tolerated it at best, and it's probably going to walk away with every freaking award.
It seemed kind of sympathetic to Howe's position, where he is this baseball lifer and the 'dynamic duo' never gave him full reign of the team and worst, gave him a smack on the wrist every day he put 'Pena' in the lineup instead of 'Hatteberg.'
Why the venom? Did the movie call you names?
So ... people should not vote for the movie they think is best? They should instead vote for the movies that other people paid to see the most, but not actually just the highest grossing movie, but rather some dubious combination of quality and box office gross?
Not quite clear what the logic is here.
The Help sucked balls, btw. My least favorite kind of movie. I guess Driving Miss Daisy was due for a remake.
No, but the votes for best picture should somewhat resemble what real people think. It's like naming some 50,000 selling album, the best album of the year. If people don't like it enough to at least get a friend to go see it, it's not that good of a movie.
Hugo's already won several awards, so The Artist is clearly not winning everything. And popularity is a terrible way to measure quality.
Agree, if you base it as the only criteria. But disagree if you don't include it in your thinking.
"The Artist" has been playing in Manlius, NY in the middle of ####### nowhere for six weeks. Trust me, there are no academy and industry insiders in Onondaga County.
People who vote for the Oscars are real people ...
Why should they change their minds based on the release schedule and advertising campaign of a movie?
Do you actually believe this, or are you just trying to piss off the people that post here? You say stuff like this all the time, and I honestly am not sure if you realize how ridiculous you sound when you go off on these rants. Your anti-snobbishness is positively snobbish.
Your measure of worth is different than other people's measure of worth. Accept it. The Oscars is an award decided by critics. If you don't like that, go watch the People's Choice awards or something. I don't really like the Oscars, but as it is, I find it more interesting than I would if they just gave it to whatever action movie did best at the box office in a given year.
The Artist made $31 million in only 1000 theaters and cost $15 mill to make.
Moneyball made $75 million in 3000 theaters and cost $50 mill to make.
Silent films are the new market inefficiency.
I don't think it should be included at all. The public is largely composed of dummies. Here are the most popular movies of 2011. Look how far down you have to go to get a good movie.
I think the real problem was that 2011 didn't have very good movies. What did you want to get nominated that didn't get it? Personally, I thought The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo got jobbed.
The Oscars are actually decided by The Academy, which is made up of people who work in film.
I do have a sense that people who either aren't baseball fans or at least don't follow the Moneyball-type issues closely enjoyed the movie more than those of us geeks who have followed this stuff for years.
I half heartedly believe it. It's silly that the snobs ignore mainstream, and when they do accept the mainstream, it's utter predictable dribble like Titanic, or is blasted because it's too entertaining to be an Oscar worthy movie like Forest Gump. In the past it was different you had winners and nominees like the Godfather, Rocky etc, that were both widely popular with the mainstream, and had artistic merit. I find half of these nominees to be akin to Jethro Tull winning best heavy metal album.
It isn't like the academy has much brilliance, again, we'll talk about Titanic, or Avatar, a completely plotless movie which only saving grace was it's cinematography, yet it was nominated for best picture. It's not like these guys are immune to the commercial success, just that they really don't seem to comprehend why something is successful.
I'm not saying popular equals good. I'm saying lack of popularity equals not that great.
Bret joins Trent Reznor and Three Six Mafia as Oscar winners!
Agreed. Like Ray said, there aren't any movies this year I would say "felt" like a Best Picture. I think one of the closest was "Girl with a Dragon Tattoo". Seemed like it had some of the elements required - lots of hype and largely lived up to it, good, but not great box office numbers, acclaimed director who had been nominated before, but never won, based on a very popular book, and a pretty good movie to boot. But there weren't any "epic" movies that will really leave a mark in people's minds a decade from now. Well maybe "Tree of Life", but that movie is so divisive I can't see it winning.
I think cardsfanboy is just upset people said mean things about Forrest Gump. Which won by the way.
I'm more upset that people ever watched Titanic. I know guys who saw it a dozen times because it guaranteed them getting laid, beyond that, there is no saving grace, and it, not Forest Gump, Dances with Wolves signaled the decline of the Academy Awards.
Mind you, Forest Gump was at best the second best movie of it's year or third best depending on how enamored you were with Pulp Fiction. Neither of them can touch Shawshank Redemption though.
God, yes.
You're welcome to think that way, but I don't think it's an argument that's going to be too widely accepted here. I think most people would agree that the kinds of movies or albums or whatever that are going to be involved in GOAT arguments generally need to have both critical and commercial success to qualify for the discussion, but there's no such movie this year that seems likely to ever be in that conversation. When that's the case, I don't really get the argument against giving Best Picture to Artsy Fartsy garbage like "The Artist."
I didn't realize Billy Crystal was still relevant here in the year 2012.
I don't get the argument at all. What's wrong with artsy fartsy garbage?
(Note: I actually don't feel like having that argument, because nobody's going to change anybody's mind. I just wanted to come out in favor of artsy fartsiness)
Hear, hear!
Good artsy fartiness is just encouraging the audience member to pay closer attention, not intentionally deceive and confuse. Intentionally deceiving and confusing is bad arty fartiness. "Tree of Life" is fantastic arty fartiness. The theme of the movie, (humans connected with love, love connected with empathy, empathy connected with the universe, formation of the universe) is not complicated, it's just *out there*. Nothing wrong with liking it, nothing wrong with disliking it. But it's quality art, to be sure.
I was just looking at the 1994 Academy Awards and what a difference in quality of product between those candidates and this one. I mean Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forest Gump as the front runners. Is there even one movie this year that is going to resonate in a decade remotely like those three do? Even Legends of the Fall probably has a better shelf life than any of the nominees this year. The saving grace for movies this year was the commercial movies that were pretty decent(The Captain America, Thor, Planet of the Apes type of stuff)
I hope Hugo wins best picture though.
Well, I was engaged at the time. It took us about 15 minutes after the final credits to leave our seats.
Sometimes timing is everything.
And the Mrs. and her mom LOVED Moneyball, and they couldn't name the Yankees' starting second baseman.
I didn't even bother to see it.
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