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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB Post-Oscar Hangover

BYOBOScar

February 26, 2017 is just around the corner, right?

 

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16 Responses to “BYOB Post-Oscar Hangover”

  1. Stella's Boy says:

    SPOILERS FOLLOW

    Anyone else see 10 Cloverfield Lane yet? I was pretty excited after the overwhelmingly positive reviews started coming in, but I felt a little let down when the credits rolled. The set up is strong and the performances are good, but I wish it had stayed in the cellar. It works so well down there, and Goodman is such a good bad guy, that what happens after Winstead finally makes it out left me feeling “eh yeah that’s kind of what I figured not all that impressed.” Not a bad movie by any means, but I’m a little puzzled by all the 4-star reviews and gushing.

  2. YancySkancy says:

    Haven’t seen 10 Cloverfield Lane yet, but I applaud Kris Tapley for trying to inject John Goodman into the Oscar conversation early and presumably often. Who knows if it’ll work, but I’d rather see advocacy from prognosticators than the same old tea leaf reading based on the usual voting patterns.

  3. Stella's Boy says:

    And Goodman is really, really good. Love how he plays the part. He’s almost eerily serene, which makes him all the more frightening when he isn’t. He doesn’t overdo it and it probably would have been easy to.

  4. leahnz says:

    shut the fuck up donnie

    (can the ludicrous ‘awards season’ punditry industry just die, scorched from the earth in a fire? the site then frozen solid for good measure. macCready and childs watch over it to make damn sure nothing gets reanimated… morricone’s single note ‘bum…..bum bum’s in the background for all eternity)

  5. Nick Rogers says:

    Stella’s: I felt the same way. The very presence of “Cloverfield” in the title more or less tips the hat, too. And as much as I liked the movie, I have to laugh at Abrams and Co. insinuating that said word perhaps suggests a brand other than “giant, seemingly indestructible monster.” I have never heard so many people loudly decrying a film before it was even over. But, as you said, not a bad movie and all of the stuff in the cellar was tightly wound.

  6. movieman says:

    “Room” + “Independence Day” = “10 Cloverfield Lane.”

    That said, I enjoyed it more than “Cloverfield.” The bunker stuff (which is 80% of the movie if not more) is terrifically well-sustained, and the performances are first-rate.
    Mary Elizabeth Winstead really deserves to be getting the type of scripts that routinely go to J-Law, Brie and Vikander (in that order? probably).
    Hate to see her permanently branded “Genre Chick.”

  7. EtGuild2 says:

    Ah just saw this so I’ll paste from the other thread:

    Can I talk about how bad Cloverfield Lane is? Such an interesting premise. And instead it’s a less compelling “Valencia” with 10 minutes of Cloverfield tackily pasted on (this didn’t bother me much, but it’s also nonsensical, as characters are dialing an iPhone6 during events that presumably took place in 2008. Or is this a bizarre parallel universe where iPhones don’t have cameras and Manhattan hipsters rock out to T-Pain and 50 Cent in 2016). The original premise sounded much better, but I guess people dig it, and it helped boost the box office. If it helps raise the profile of the criminally underused Mary Elizabeth Winstead, I guess it’s fine.

  8. leahnz says:

    winstead is good in a number things, not so much in terms of mainstream success – after ‘lucy mcclane speaking’ and her role in ‘scott pilgrim’ it’s been patchy for her, few lead roles and projects that might have turned out better didn’t, maybe this parallel cloverfield thing could signal a sea change – but she’s had some really nice turns in smaller stuff like ‘smashed’, ‘alex of venice’ and ‘faults’, plus she’s terrif as nurse phinney in ‘mercy street’ so she’s working and buzzing along nicely on the indie/tv circuit.
    what would be great is if there were lots more good leading roles for women in a range of mainstream cinema so all the talented actresses around at the mo had chances to shine and do their thing, flex their muscles, but the sad fact is there are few opportunities for actresses in lead roles in the mainstream and with so many talented women around and so few lead roles it’s the usual travesty of lack of opportunity – particularly if you’re not the Law, or scarJo to a lesser extent, mcCarthy in the comedic vein

  9. Stella's Boy says:

    I’ve liked MEW since first noticing her in Final Destination 3 (I love those movies). She is indeed a really good, underrated actress. Lots of genre credits, not that there’s anything wrong with that because she’s always a welcome presence. Hopefully 10 Cloverfield Lane raises her profile.

  10. js partisan says:

    Oh yeah. We need to discuss SCREENING ROOM, because it’s the stupidest idea Hollywood Studios have ever had. They really think, that they can sell a movie for 50 bucks, and NOT HAVE IT POP ONLINE IMMEDIATELY. It’s staggeringly ignorant, of how the internet works. It’s also such a stupid fucking price, but these are the same people who can’t figure out how to sustain a fucking home video market. So what the fuck do they know?

  11. leahnz says:

    the funniest part is the $150 outlay for the ‘anti-piracy’ box, haha yeah good luck with that

    (when the big wigs publicly supporting this thing are also investors and shareholders in the venture it’s a sphincter-factor 9.5 situation)

  12. Hcat says:

    So no studios have signed on to this, they are just putting out feelers? NATO will flip over this, I mean every year it seems someone is trying to undercut the theater window. I am all for innovation but one window feeds the next. The bigger the box office the more they get for cable reimbursement, dvd sales, amazon rentals etc. How many times have you seen a movie in theaters and then saw it again when it hit rental? But after seeing in your home once, are you really going to catch it again in four months once the price goes down again? Besides you WANT people to see it in theaters everything looks better onscreen, it is more overwhelming of an experience.

  13. Stella's Boy says:

    Is this a good release strategy for Midnight Special? When is it going wide, or does that depend on its performance this weekend? Has Bat vs. Supes started screening yet? Is it as hilariously awful as it looks? Every time I hear Affleck growl in a TV spot I am in hysterics.

  14. leahnz says:

    is there a bottoming out on these overpriced kaka, a limit to just how shit things can get before mainstream cinema hopefully rebounds from the age of (infantilising) comic book ‘world building’ pre-sequel/remake-boot/franchise unoriginal mediocrity, or is it the endless abyss. feels like looking into the abyss

    shat vs poops will still make a metric shit-ton of cash so short answer: probably no (what does it say that the most i’m hoping for is for BvS to be so bad it’s good, if/when i get around to seeing it, as Stell’a seems to above. somehow i doubt they got even that right by the looks of it. i feel kinda bad for it)
    who knew the apocalypse would be so freakin dull and stupid

  15. Hcat says:

    Leah reading your last sentence reminded that the Independence Day sequel is coming out this summer

  16. leahnz says:

    ha oh no i didn’t realise, UGH.
    full circle baby! 20 years and two decades of bar-lowering later…seems esp desperate.
    i looked it up and LIAM HEMSWORTH is the headliner (i have no idea who joey king is, sorry joey king), well that says it all. just stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it, who in god’s green fucking acre decided to make liam hemsworth happen at any cost, come hell or high water? how many chances is he going to be given to drain any possible charisma out of a role/movie (maybe it’s the same person who decided jai courtney shall be in every genre flick — some idiot austral-o-phile sitting in their office in LA wearing a no-flies-on-me dangly cork hat holding a little austraaaain flag in their free hand wearing their ‘gday mate, now that’s a knife!’ t-shirt. jai and liam should ‘star’ together as the anti-charisma bros from damp dishragsville and get it over with, then fuck off back to sydney or from whence they spawned in a dull plop from their mothers’ wombs)
    anyhoo, grim times. (make it ‘suntory times’)

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
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“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

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