92nd Annual Academy Awards

...To be honest, I forgot Toy Story 4 existed. But yeah, I'd say either Toy Story 4 or The Lion King will be getting it then.

If I may be controversial? Abominable, which I just got back from, deserves it more than TS4. Much more. It's a delightful Coco-esque film rooted in Chinese culture, and gawd. Dayumn. That scene at the giant Buddha.

Is that the one with Chloe Bennett? I've been hearing good things about that.

Yep!

It really reminded me of Coco in that it's a very sweet, earnest look at the positive side of a country that is almost always portrayed very negatively these days.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Oct 6th 2019 at 9:16:08 AM

Somehow I’d gotten it mixed up in my head with Missing Link, which looked terrible. (What is it with animation studios doing very similar movies close together? Antz and. A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo and Shark Tale, and now this.) Now I’ve watched the trailer, and it really does look quite sweet.

And good on Chloe for getting a film role! I like her from Agents of SHIELD.

Edited by Galadriel on Oct 6th 2019 at 10:53:48 AM

It has its flaws; the plot's pretty by-the-numbers (but hey, things become cliches because they work!) and the villain is underwhelming, but on the whole my favorite animated film of the year. TS4 disappointed me; would be my biggest film disappointment of the year if not for the aforementioned Ad Astra.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Oct 6th 2019 at 11:36:17 AM

^^ Animated films in particular take a long time to create, so one movie could be in a five year production cycle and another catches up by doing it in three years. Many of the examples in Dueling Works happen for that exact reason, another studio trying to siphon off the publicity of another.

The thing about the Best Animated Film category is that animation is such a technical process that the big budget studio movies have an enormous advantage there. That means a brilliant movie with mediocre animation can be overlooked. Angry Birds 2 was a surprise critical success (depending on your definition of terms, it is officially the best reviewed movie based on a video game). Lego Movie 2 was pretty good, Toy Story 4 just didn't leave the same impact as the previous films.

Endgame might get some technical awards like sound and visual effects but I doubt it will do anything beyond that. There is a possibility of a special achievement Oscar, but it's hard to say because the MCU is mostly an achievement in franchise branding.

Yeah, the Academy only created Best Animated Film because multiple years great animated movies came out and were nominated for Best Picture and didn't win, making people upset. BAF is a compromise.

Though I highly doubt that The Lion King will win. Didn't get that good of a reception from critics in theaters, plus it was a by-the-numbers redo of the original movie, except done worse.

I wouldn't be surprised if The Lego Movie 2 gets nominated as an apology for not nominating the first Lego Movie.

Since Papicha was submitted by Algeria for Best International Feature Film, I am posting here that this is a nice film, although I don't expect it will grab the award (or be nominated, because I suppose only a few suggestions are nominated).

I will probably start its work page soonish.

Edited by gropcbf on Oct 12th 2019 at 10:04:45 AM

I doubt even Disney would want to submit Lion King as animated movie. Most of it's marketing for it stems from it being a "live-action" remake, so I don't think Disney night want it to submit it for the animation category.

Weathering With You might also have a decent chance, since it seems to be getting a push that others movies don't: it's Japan's entry for best Foreign Language Film, meaning it will have a push from two sides.

Edited by Akirakan on Oct 12th 2019 at 4:24:45 AM

Good luck trying to bring that movie to the awards. I bet by the time the top 10 films qualified for Best Foreign Film are announced, it wouldn't be a part of it.

As for Best Animation, my bets are Frozen 2, Toy Story 4, Missing Link, Abominable and Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon and/or How to Train Your Dragon 3. Personally, unless its Studio Ghibli, Japan has no chance whatsoever.

Edited by HamanaHamanaHamana on Oct 12th 2019 at 6:58:06 AM

In general, non American films have zero chance of getting an award that is not the foreign award.

Weathering with You might get a nomination as a way to make up for Your Name not getting a nomination (with the caveat that Your Name didn't get a nomination because nobody expected it to break out the way it did.)

Not likely. This is the Oscars. Have they ever nominated a Japanese film outside of Ghibli? Well maybe Mirai but honestly they don't give a crap about Your Name, (and quite frankly, so do I). At least a Laika film will make it.

The Maleficent sequel is in theaters now. I wonder if the sequel can get nominated for the 2019 Costume Oscar just as the first Maleficent lost the 2014 Costume Design Oscar to Grand Budapest Hotel.

Which would be hilarious to me given that the costume Meleficent has been sporting in trailers is... well, there's less of it than there was in the first film.

Edited by Brandon on Oct 20th 2019 at 11:59:50 AM

One movie I'm really interested in seeing how it will do is Judy. On the one hand, it's damn good in its own right, great songs, can go from funny to heartbreaking without feeling like too much of a gearshift, and of course it's a biopic, which the Academy voters love.

On the other, it takes the Golden Age of Hollywood, a time beloved by many, including, I'd assume, the old stuffed-shirts that comprise most of the Academy voters, and portrays it, shall we say, less than sympathetically. The film even features respected figure Louis Mayer (founder of MGM) as a clear Harvey Weinstein analogue who makes crude passes at the underage Judy Garland in flashbacks.

Frozen II hits theaters this Friday.

Disney will push hard for Frozen II to get nominated for Animated Feature and Song but what are the chances that Frozen II could get nominated for score? Frozen was not nominated for the 2013 Score Oscar (which went to Gravity).

Though Disney/Pixar's Up won the 2009 Best Score Oscar, we haven't seen a film from Walt Disney Animation win Best Score since the 1989-1995 period when we saw Walt Disney Animation win Song & Score 5 times in 7 years.

I don't remember if a film from Walt Disney Animation has even been nominated for Score since Mulan lost the 1998 Comedic/Musical Score Oscar to Shakespeare In Love.

Man the above post for Frozen II did not age well. After the film's release, the awards it has so far garnered are from the Annie Awards. Its ratings also does not help with the only thing worth mentioning are the box office results. Meanwhile I Lost My Body is winning awards than any other animated film, and may get a lock on the spot.

That leaves Toy Story 4, I Lost My Body, How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World, and Missing Link. The 5th spot is a massively unlikely place which I am guessing is Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (won the European Awards), Abominable (because the Oscars often put rather mediocre films in this category like Ferdinand back in 2016) and I guess thats it.

If Adam Sandler doesn't get at least a nomination for Uncut Gems you can write of the entire academy as completely worthless.

Wait was he in a good movie?

Apparently Uncut Gems is being lauded as Adam Sandler at his best.

(From what I can tell. Apparently it's one of those Oscar bait movies where critics love it, but audiences are more ambivalent about it. After reading up on the end, it's rather easy to see why...)

Uncut Gems is definitely a great movie and Adam Sandler is great in it. I wouldn't call it "Oscar Bait" aside from the fact that it's a crime thriller that gets more and more tense until it ends with a twenty minute sequence which is anxiety-inducing. Seriously.

As for what it's about: Sandler plays a jewelry broker in New York that's also a gambling addict. He owes a lot of money to a loan shark, but whenever he gets money, he ends up spending it on bets on basketball games. The movie really kicks off when he gets an uncut "black opal" in order to auction it off and a series of, uh, unfortunate events happen. All of which end up resulting in Sandler's character betting all the money he made on a single basketball game, while holding some loan sharks hostage. It's super tense and Sandler really does play it well.

I personally think Sandler completely vanished into this role, which considering how he usually is, is a huge accomplishment.