And Robert Osborne loved "This Is Spinal Tap."
There's no accounting ...
--Dave Sikula
On Saturday, March 26, 2022, 09:11:31 AM PDT, Jim Ellwanger
<[email protected]> wrote:
Better hope the vengeful ghost of Alex Trebek doesn't take note of a former
"Jeopardy!" champion calling "How Green Was My Valley" lousy. (I have no
opinion about it, because I haven't seen it... in fact, all I really know about
it is that Alex always said it was his favorite film.)
On Mar 26, 2022, at 2:35 AM, 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV
<[email protected]> wrote:
"Don't Look Up" is indeed terrible, but there have been lousy nominees aplenty
over the years. I actually kind of like "Greatest Show;" it's not great, but
once one gets a sense of DeMille's directing style (it's especially apparent in
"The Ten Commandments," in that he never stopped directing silent pictures; he
just added sound), it's tolerable. I've seen a lot of worse pictures that were
supposed to be "important."
There are plenty of dogs that actually won. "Cimmaron" is generally ranked
among the worst, but it's just dull, not bad. For sheer lousiness, though, it's
hard to beat either "Cavalcade" or "How Green Was My Valley," though I'll
stipulate that I don't like that one because I can't stand John Ford
(especially "The Quiet Man").
As for McKay, the more films he does (and I liked "The Big Short"), the more
obvious and smaller his bag of tricks becomes. I'm thinking particularly of
"Don't Look Up," with its overripe "aren't we outrageous to tell truth to power
this way?" vibe, but also the atrocious "Winning Time," about the Lakers. Too
much talking to the camera, outright lies about people and events, and ramping
everything up to eleven. Farrell (who would have been awful as Jerry Buss)
should consider himself lucky that he got edged out.
--Dave Sikula
On Friday, March 25, 2022 at 8:41:16 PM UTC-7 PGage wrote:
This is a much more difficult call than naming the best film ever nominated for
Best Picture (obviously, The Godfather). I did a quick Google search and saw a
lot of different nominees, some of which I thought were ridiculous (I really
liked JoJo Rabbit). It’s hard to go back in time to judge just how bad old
films were. I have seen “Greatest Show on Earth”, and it’s not good, but I’ve
seen Ivanhoe too and it’s not clear to me it is that much better. Dr. Dolittle
has been my go to worst Best Film nominee (I hated it even as a kid in the demo
when it came out). More recent films in contention for me are Prince of Tides
and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
But I finally got around to watching “Don’t Look Up” this evening and, wow, is
it bad. It is basically a mediocre 4 min SNL sketch stretched to 2 hrs and 20
minutes. I don’t often agree with Sikula, but in this case he has been
understated in his criticism. I write this as a huge fan of Vice and,
especially “The Big Short”, which is one of my favorite films of the last 25
years. DLU may not be the worst film ever nominated for Best Picture, but if
it’s not it is in the top three.
I’m not that surprised the film stank; they took a big swing and whiffed. It
happens. I think it would have been a lot better had they played it straight,
as in Big Short, but it’s easy to say that after the fact. But I am shocked it
got nominated. Why did that happen? Who thinks this is a great movie? Even if
you thought it was sporadically amusing, like Anchorman II, you can’t really
think it is good. I laughed at one joke, which paid off during the credits, and
that might just have been relief that it was finally over.
It strikes me that the thinking behind nominating this film is the same as that
behind nominating other stinkers like Green Book, Blind Side and The Help. Lazy
arm chair liberals mark it as somehow making a socially significant point, and
they want to pat themselves on the back for getting behind it.
On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 11:03 PM [email protected]
Let me just say that, after enduring the grisly "Don't Look Up" tonight, I owe
Mr. Sorkin an apology. McKay's effort (emphasis on the "effort") is so inept as
to make Sorkins' look like a 30's Paramount comedy.
--Dave Sikula
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