Box office receipts never have anything to do with who wins awards.
^^^Did anyone say they did? American Sniper’s noms were all done in advance of the film’s national opening weekend.
I refuse to go to a movie glorifying someone who kills people for a living. Sorry if that offends anyone.
Saw The Theory of Everything this afternoon and just loved it. Eddie Redmayne is so deserving of every nomination and win, IMO.
I won’t see a movie that has violence, I don’t care how valuable the story it’s telling. I can’t and won’t watch violence. So I won’t see a number of the nominated movies, this or any year. I did see The Imatation Game yesterday. I thought it was terrific with its two themes, both now commonplace and then so unaccepted.
“Re: Selma. Having a point of view in a film is expected. But having LBJ not supporting the Civil Rights marchers is just outright wrong. And I am no fan of LBJ. In general he was a terrible president. But if a filmmaker mangles the facts completely then the film should not be taken seriously.”
I agree. Nothing wrong with having a different point of view or interpretation. But portraying something completely fictitious, something as important as that? Outright lies do not make for good film.
@TatinG and @busdriver11 Selma’s inaccurate slant on LBJ is disappointing, yes. On the other hand, Selma is far more historically accurate than, say, Mel Gibson’s Braveheart was, and Braveheart won Best Picture. Similarly, Philomena portrayed its main character much differently than she actually was (she was/is neither confused nor silly in real life), and it was nominated for numerous awards. The two leads in Titanic were fictional. Filmmakers frequently rewrite history. Not saying it is right, but I don’t think Selma should be singled out. (BTW, I disagree, as well, that LBJ was a terrible president.) And IMO David Oyelowo should have been nominated for best male lead. While Cumberbatch did a great job playing Cumberbatch in Imitation Game, Oyelowo–who is from Britain!–got MLK just right. An amazing performance that should not have been overlooked.
@"just"aMom
Glory was in fact nominated, so no snub there.
ETA: the program won’t let me write your whole screen name, and I have no idea why!
Just saw Imitation Game today. I was very impressed and thought it was well-done movie making and dealt with the various layers of the story quite well. Benedict Cumberbatch was outstanding, it was beautifully filmed, the score was outstanding, the supporting cast was excellent. Wanted to see Selma as appropriate for MLK Jr Day but couldn’t get in. Into the Woods was also sold out.
^^ @MidwestDad3 - I agree. Oscar-nominated films (and Oscar-winning films) often play fast and loose with historical accuracy. I really liked “The Imitation Game,” but it has been criticized for its factual inaccuracies as well as for the liberties it takes with the character/personality of Alan Turing. (The Guardian, for example, gave it a C+ for entertainment and a failing grade for its portrayal of history.)
The Imitation Game greatly simplified the true difficulty of breaking the Enigma. There were many more complications that took very heroic efforts by Royal Navy crews to get German code books off captured U-boats to get access to the unencrypted traffic.
So I saw Foxcatcher tonight. I am not a Steve Carell fan, but I’d been told by someone whose movie opinions I typically agree with and respect that Carell was phenomenal. And I have to agree - it was a side of Carell I’d never suspected to exist. I didn’t even recognize him for the first minute or so that he appeared on the screen. I am sold now, and would look forward to seeing him again in future dramatic roles.
Teri, catch him in The Way, Way Back. It’s so odd to see him play a jerk.
I came across this today and thought it interesting. Bill Moyers was LBJ’s press secretary …
"So look who won the midterm elections as voter turnout fell to its lowest in 70 years: A coalition of suppressionists doing everything they can to make it hard for black and poor people to vote – and their big donors who give millions to drown out those very same voices. That’s “Free Speech” in the Roberts era.
"As for how the film portrays Lyndon B. Johnson: There’s one egregious and outrageous portrayal that is the worst kind of creative license because it suggests the very opposite of the truth, in this case, that the president was behind J. Edgar Hoover’s sending the “sex tape” to Coretta King. Some of our most scrupulous historians have denounced that one. And even if you want to think of Lyndon B. Johnson as vile enough to want to do that, he was way too smart to hand Hoover the means of blackmailing him.
"Then, casting the president as opposed to the Selma march, which the film does, is an exaggeration and misleading. He was concerned that coming less than a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there was little political will in Congress to deal with voting rights. As he said to Martin Luther King Jr., “You’re an activist; I’m a politician,” and politicians read the tide of events better than most of us read the hands on our watch. The president knew he needed public sentiment to gather momentum before he could introduce and quickly pass a voting rights bill. So he asked King to give him more time to bring Southern “moderates” and the rest of the country over to the cause, but once King made the case that blacks had waited too long for too little, Johnson told him: “Then go out there and make it possible for me to do the right thing.”
“To my knowledge he never suggested Selma as the venue for a march but he’s on record as urging King to do something to arouse the sleeping white conscience, and when violence met the marchers on that bridge, he knew the moment had come: He told me to alert the speechwriters to get ready and within days he made his own famous “We Shall Overcome” address that transformed the political environment. Here the film is very disappointing. The director has a limpid president speaking in the Senate chamber to a normal number of senators as if it were a “ho hum” event. In fact, he made that speech where State of the Union addresses are delivered – in a packed House of Representatives. I was standing very near him, off to his right, and he was more emotionally and bodily into that speech than I had seen him in months. The nation was electrified. Watching on television, Martin Luther King Jr. wept. This is the moment when the film blows the possibility for true drama — of history happening right before our eyes. So it’s a powerful but flawed film. Go see it, though – it’s good to be reminded of a time when courage on the street is met by a moral response from power.”
Im not sure how to do links on my phone, but John Lewis, a central person in Selma, and a member of Congress, has an Option Ed in the LA Times addressing the fact/fiction issue.
Talk about rewriting history and winning the Best Picture, one doesn’t have to look any further than Argo!
The film was nominated for best picture so I don’t know why this issue is a controversy at all.
Allegedly Still Alice was supposed to be released on January 16, but today I still can’t find it anywhere in Dallas.
If anyone is interested, here is the trailer:
http://sonyclassics.com/stillalice/
ETA: Wow, I found it in Plano at one of those sort of Art House cinemas starting Friday.
Yes, the film Selma does take creative license very far, perhaps too far. I recall years ago watching an interview with Congressman and Rev. Walter Fauntroy, who was in the room when LBJ asked King to wait, as the ink Civil Rights Act was barely dry. The film misstates LBJ’s perspective and actions. But it is a theatrical film, not a documentary film. And I appreciate the references above to Braveheart, Argo. By the way, I admire LBJ very much. He was an SOB in the oval office when this country needed an SOB in the oval office. Obviously his major mistake was the tragedy of the Vietnam war.
Getting back to Selma, my two cents is that Tim Roth deserved an Oscar nomination his portrayal of Wallace. And I think that the old gentleman who portrayed the grandfather who ultimately cast his first vote at age 84 deserved a nomination. But he and Roth had too little screen time to get a nomination. But hey, Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and if I am not wrong he had the briefest time onscreen of any nominee or winner.
I wonder if the controversy over Selma’s portrayal of LBJ started soon enough to explain why the director wasn’t nominated.
I don’t expect movies based on true stories to get all the facts right–but I don’t like it when they libel people in the story, especially if they are alive or were around not that long ago. I really enjoyed Imitation Game, but my admiration was tempered after the fact when I read some of the liberties taken with the facts, including turning people into obnoxious bad guys when they weren’t. (Note: apparently "Mr. Turner is very true to the facts; unfortunately it’s too long and kind of boring.)
We loved “Grand Budapest Hotel.” It led us to also watch “Moonrise Kingdom,” which I think I liked even more.