TFW some shitty bootstraps grustle porn wins the Oscars instead of Drive My Kino or Don't Look Up

Cant expect them to choose anticapitalist stuff 3 times in a row ig :doomer:

  • VHS [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    tbf Don't Look up was pretty cringe

    • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      How so? To me it was based for a hollywood film, although it falls short of any meaningful systemic critique, or highlights any of the devastating human costs of climate change in a realistic, respectful way, at least it acknowledged there was a problem and the billionaire elite are part of it.

      • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        not OP, but I definitely got something real out of it. I've been working in academic/outreach STEM world on climate change shit for like over a decade. just full bore, staring down the barrel at the anticipated drivers/impacts.

        in a lot of ways, Leo and JLaw gave life to emotions and voices in my head arguing for supremacy. lol especially JLaw. her 100% losing her shit was cathartic for me.

        I know movies are about more than that for critique, but for raw artistic expression and emotional resonance... they got me.

        to be clear I'm not a doomer, but sometimes I want to freak out on people like an animal.

        • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          I’ve been working in academic/outreach STEM world on climate change shit for like over a decade. just full bore, staring down the barrel at the anticipated drivers/impacts.

          :07:

          her 100% losing her shit was cathartic for me.

          :this:

        • JuneFall [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yeah when you looked into climate change after 1995 you had this view of "Fuck, the data is so overly clear, it is not any lack of information that is the problem".

      • VHS [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Might just be that it didn't land for me, obviously the subject matter is important but it seemed too corny or on-the-nose IMO.

          • Wheaties [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Anything that wants to satirize billionaire tech moguls while simultaneously repeating every stupid advertising promise of "AI so powerful it can accurately predict your death", or "no worries, we'll just pop in the secret rich-person starship" is doing a pretty awful job at satire.

            • DialecticalShaman [none/use name]
              ·
              3 years ago

              You're exactly right. I didn't expect anything else though. The editing was just surprisingly bad (and was nominated for best? wtf?) lol.

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        at least it acknowledged there was a problem and the billionaire elite are part of it.

        To me, doing that in the face of what you mentioned is what made it meaningless. Like I saw quite a few Twitter leftists trying to project their own radicalism on to it, but all the libs that watched it were just yass queening it for calling out republican hypocrisy while missing the hopelessness of trying to work within the system. And then, on top of all that, Leo was pushing some :vote: stuff in the interviews he was doing for it.

  • Spike [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Most of the time the best film(s) of the year don't get nominated. Who cares what those libs think

    • shiny [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Imagine outsourcing your taste to bureaucrats

  • asaharyev [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Will Smith was nominated for that Pursuit of Hapyness perseverance porn propaganda, so it's not really surprising

  • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    IMO - Licorice Pizza was the best movie of 2021, and it's not even close. Those long takes. The naturalistic acting. The perfect recreation of the 70s. The overall malaise of the stagflation era. The complex characters with many flaws but also undeniably likable characteristics. Bradley Cooper nailing his comedic performance. It's just a down-to-earth story about a couple of middle-class young people trying to make something meaningful out of their lives, but told masterfully. Also touches on homophobia, the exploitation of child actors, etc. without being preachy. IDK, it's just such a breath of fresh air compared to more commercial movies. Loved it.

    Belfast is good, too. Amazing acting performances, and beautiful cinematography.

    Dune looks/sounds pretty but needed to be longer (or just a TV series).

    • vertexarray [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I can't bring myself to watch it because the name is gross

      • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        IDK if you know but it refers to a record store that used to exist in Los Angeles. "Licorice Pizza" was a nickname for vinyl records.

        • vertexarray [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Oh that makes more sense. Still weird on the senses but at least it doesn't make me think comet pizza.

    • CliffordBigRedDog [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      idk much but isnt like licorice pizza about an adult woman's relationship with a teenage boy, thats icky ngl

    • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Good question, I guess it wouldn't be explicitly anticapitalist, and the director probably wasn't going down that route. However, it clearly highlights the morose psychic alienating wasteland of life under an end-stage neoliberal hellscape. The ending is very doomer this way.

      I haven't thought about the reasoning/evidence too much as to why exactly, so this probably won't be convincing. One point of evidence is how the protagonist, a depressed "sigma male" type character, has to seek spiritual refuge by the end of the movie in a cope play from the 19th century Russian Empire based on the philosophy of Christianity, in its most beastly, oppressive form. No friends or close family come to mourn the death of his wife, whom he couldn't confront about her multiple affairs due to his fear of losing her, being left alone in a cruel world where everyone is either hostile or indifferent. He could barely make time to mourn the arrest of his lead actor due to the rush of meeting the production deadline. The driver moves to South Korea of all places by the end of the film, to move forward from her tragic childhood marked by having to drive her abusive mother to work in order to make ends meet. All the while they are both tormented by a sense of Christian guilt for supposedly "killing" their family members, blaming themselves for the tragedies. The entire movie so excellently portrays alienation, grief, and depression to the extent that it can be construed as a criticism of the damaging spiritual effects of the neoliberal political economy.

      • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        clearly i'm a dummy because i thought the ending was supposed to be happy. symbolized by she finally gets a dog :doggo-matapacos:

        • SuperNovaCouchGuy [any]
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          lol dw its technically a happy ending but it doesn't seem that way to me because I have depression am sigma, i truly like the fact that the dog was fluffy and cute, although her pet ownership can be construed as a representation of how alienated subjects under neoliberalism have to depend on animals for a sense of companionship and emotional support

  • Cromalin [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Coda was a run of the mill inspirational story. That's the kind of thing that usually wins. It wasn't an awful movie or anything, and you can't expect anything better from the Oscar's generally. The past few years have been aberrations from an organization founded to bust unions.