I didn’t think I’d ever be in the position of defending the Academy, but I find myself in that exact position after the internet, in typical fashion, lost its mind over the absence of any women in the Best Director race — specifically, one director. It’s presumed by many who write the headlines at major outlets that Greta Gerwig was somehow “snubbed” for Best Director. With this piece, I hope to explain why that was the wrong way to look at how the Oscar nominations came down.
Anyone not familiar with how the Oscar race actually works might feel shock, dismay, and despair over how Greta Gerwig could have been left off the list, but trust me, the Directors Branch is not the conspiratorial cabal it’s being made out to be. Really, though, this story has become like a game of telephone. You could call it “fake news” if you want. The falsehoods piled up until it exploded into collective outrage, as the mainstream press and the feedback loop of social media churn “It has to be sexism! There is no other explanation! When will women receive their due?!”
If you find yourself here because of the clickbait headline, when you read on you will understand why these headlines are misleading, though well-intentioned. Along the way, you might learn a thing or two about the Oscar race.
But first, some brief background about me, in case you didn’t know. I’m a woman who launched a website in 1999 with little more than a modem and a one-year-old baby daughter in tow. A lot of women did this back then; I was not, in those terms, unique. I was, however, unique in the business and industry I helped launch: Oscarwatching. That was the game of watching, covering, and seeking to analyze the Oscar race from the start of the year on through to the end. When I started, nobody else but Tom O’Neil at Gold Derby was doing it. Now, it seems everyone is doing it — all the major outlets, even the New York Times. I’ve been here 20 years, and (as my longtime readers know) in that time much of my coverage has been devoted to passionately advocating for women and artists of color for inclusion in the Oscar conversation. This has been a long battle, and the Academy has responded in unprecedented ways. They listen. They care. They really do.
Maybe you’ve seen me railing against this year’s “hot story” on Twitter, and maybe you’ve concluded I’m a bad person because of it. Maybe you think I am on the side of the sexists who want to keep women down. If that’s your impression, then let me point to the following pieces I’ve written about women and directing over the years.
Just a sampler:
AFI Shuts Out Women in an Exceptional Year for Female Directors [2018]
Two Women in the Best Director Race — Two Very Different Receptions [2017]
Oscarwatch: Six Women in the Best Director Race – Can Even One Make the Cut? [2017]
Ava DuVernay’s Evolution as a Filmmaker from I Will Follow to Selma to 13th [2017]
The State of the Race: Why Aren’t Women Directors in Play? [2016]
Adding More Women to Best Director and Why That’s a Big Deal [2016]
The Feds Looking into Hollywood’s Discrimination on Women Directors – Here is How You Can Help[2015]
More Filmmakers Should Follow Ava DuVernay’s Lead: Make it Happen, Don’t Wait for it to Happen [2015]
Best Director: Why We Don’t Make Women into Icons [2015]
Infographic: Women Directors Need More Support[2014]
Cannes Jury President, Jane Campion, on the State of (lack of) Women Directors [2014]
Dear Academy: Consider the Women Directors [2013]
Alliance for Women Film Journalist Fail to Nominate a Single Woman Director [2011]
Oscarwatch: Can Women Directors Break Through? [2011]
Uppity Women: How Maya and Kathryn Bigelow Continue to Threaten the Status Quo [2013]
The Women – Best Director Starts to Take Shape [2009]
Kathryn Bigelow: Guns, Blood, Beauty [2009]
I’ve been writing about women and the Oscars for a long time. But never in all of that time did I ever once make the argument that any woman should be recognized because she was a woman. Instead, I have always argued on merit. It is insulting to do anything else. Awards should be given to those who deserve it. We can’t talk about equality and then decide to give women bonus points. The moment we do that, the instant we say because we are women we should demand special consideration based on gender, then we concede that we aren’t equal after all.
Of course, systemic gender bias in the film industry exists, without a doubt. I’ve also written extensively about this issue. This problem has been identified again and again. There has been a surge in advocacy for women behind the camera, for more inclusion across the board. The industry has responded. The Academy has responded. Film critics have responded. It took a village to get us to where we are today. Never have I seen a year where so many women — so many women of color — have written and directed films. Comedies, dramas, blockbusters, animated films. Some have made $100 million, as Hustlers did (and Little Women will likely do in a couple of weeks). Some haven’t. Many of them are brilliant. The story of Harriet Tubman was told by Kasi Lemmons. Lena Waithe collaborated with Melina Matsoukas to make the breathtaking Queen & Slim, which features the single best-written female character of the year. There’s the internationally acclaimed Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Céline Sciamma. There was Mati Diop’s Atlantics. There was Lulu Wang’s The Farewell. There was Booksmart from Olivia Wilde. There was Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy. There was Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, after she made Can You Ever Forgive Me, one of the very best movies of 2018. And so forth.
Wow, right?
But there was also one director who can be fairly described as a critics darling. Already popular as an actress and writer, Greta Gerwig was nominated for Best Director two years ago for writing and directing her solo debut Lady Bird. In some sense, she has come to epitomize the one great hope for women directors that have finally shattered that glass ceiling. At last: a female director men like!
But for all the praise, Gerwig simply isn’t in the same place this year that she was with Lady Bird, which had all the prerequisite bona fides heading into Oscar race. Her first film had Golden Globe wins in Best Picture (Comedy) and Best Actress (Comedy) and nominations for Best Screenplay and Supporting Actress, a Directors Guild nomination, and Screen Actors Guild nominations for ensemble cast, Best Actress, and Supporting Actress.
It was reasonable to expect that Lady Bird would get into the Best Picture/Best Director race, and it did. But Little Women? It ticked none of the boxes Lady Bird did. No Globe nominations for Picture or Director, no SAG nominations at all, and no DGA nomination. Why? It could well be because this has been an exceptional year for films in the Best Picture race, and though many people sincerely love Little Women and it’s making good money, for many others it’s not in the top five, maybe not even in the top ten. But don’t count on the mainstream press to tell you that.
It should be said here that the Academy’s directors branch has always been a boys club. For decades its members were the men nominated for Oscars and the men who won them. Men get nominated over and over again, but women don’t. After all, how many women in the past were ever trusted to helm prestige films? Nearly none. The process for finding Best Director nominees is the same as it is in each of the branches: it is dependent on reaching a consensus, and the consensus views of an insular, largely male group will always make very difficult for any woman to break through. Even Kathryn Bigelow was shut out for Zero Dark Thirty, as was Ava DuVernay for Selma, even when their films were nominated for Best Picture. That was also true for Randa Haines for Children of a Lesser God, Barbara Streisand for The Prince of Tides, Penny Marshall for Awakenings, Lisa Cholodenko for The Kids Are All right, Debra Granik for Winter’s Bone, and Lone Scherfig for An Education.
A bit of history for women — here are the only five women ever nominated for Best Director at the Oscars:
1976 — Lina Wertmüller, Seven Beauties
1993 — Jane Campion, The Piano
2003 — Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation
2009 — Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker (WON OSCAR)
2017 — Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
And that’s it. That’s the whole list. Notice how the first two had to bypass Hollywood altogether. You might think (as anyone would) that the list is shameful. We could name dozens of films over the years directed by women that are better than Oscars nominees in the same years. Please do so in the comments. Ordinarily, I’d be right with you. But this year, I am not. It has always been nearly impossible to break into the Best Director race, but in a year like 2019, the bar is incredibly high. I’m here to tell you Little Women never even came close — nowhere near as close as some of these other women have. The misconception that Gerwig was passed over in favor of lesser male counterparts is patently untrue, and I hate to use the term, it’s “fake news.”
Here is how the Oscar race actually works:
Every year, many of us have the privilege of gathering at festivals to watch movies: bloggers, critics, publicists, studio heads, awards strategists, and other influential industry folk. It begins at Sundance (which happens right in the middle of the Oscar pageant for the previous year’s films), then moves to the Cannes Film Festival in May. By Labor Day, the two biggest end-of-summer film festivals are underway: Venice and Telluride. Then we move onto to Toronto in September. Then it’s the New York Film Festival, then the AFI jury convenes, and finally voting begins. First the critics announce their awards, then the Golden Globes bring on the glitz, while the industry hunkers down in earnest to do their due diligence in the guilds. Then the Oscar ballots go out.
Out of this first phase of the process, the films directed by women that popped for critics were Lulu Wang’s The Farewell and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. (Many savvy movie enthusiasts felt certain that France would put Lady on Fire in the mix, but instead the French committee went with the more muscular and visceral Les Misérables.)
The films that emerged in early Oscar conversations were:
The Farewell — Sundance
Portrait of a Lady on Fire — Cannes
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — Cannes
Parasite — Cannes (won PALME d’Or
)
Joker — Venice (won Golden Lion)
Marriage Story — Venice/Telluride
Ford v Ferrari — Telluride
Knives Out — Toronto
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — Toronto
Jojo Rabbit — Toronto (won People’s Choice Award)
The Irishman — New York Film Festival
Harriet — Toronto
Several significant late-breakers that hit the race bypassed the festivals and therefore had to play catch-up by year’s end:
Little Women
1917
Bombshell
Just Mercy
Queen & Slim
In between, were films released the old fashioned way — to theaters and audiences. Here are some of those by women:
Booksmart
Late Night
Blinded by the Light
Hustlers
Here are a few hard truths to remember before we get into how to build an Oscar contender:
— This year, the schedule was pushed way up so that the Oscars, normally held at the end of February, instead will be held February 9. That has made for a brutally abbreviated season that has been so rushed that most Oscar voters did not have time to watch all of the films. We see evidence for this assumption in the fact that so many of the same films ended up in so many categories. It’s not uncommon for one or two movies to rack up 10 or 11 nominations, but it is rare that four can score such high tallies.
— The industry precursors mostly decide the Oscar race. If your film doesn’t make an appearance there, then it’s likely you’ve missed the boat and you’re not getting in, save for one or two annual exceptions.
— In a normal year, few films are as great as those we’ve been blessed with this year. Ordinarily, there is more wiggle room. But this year, all the top movies are really strong.
— An anonymous consensus vote is unaffected by whatever “utopian diorama” Film Twitter decides to cook up. Since a powerful faction of Film Twitter are critics, we do see their dreams come true within their own awards groups. Critics have the platform and audience that allows them to tinker with insulated outcomes, to discuss and champion their pet favorites (and seek to destroy their imagined evil enemies). They have the luxury to pick and choose precisely what “represents” their tastes best. And since they’re in close communication, agendas can be devised. But when we get to the guild phase of the race — a large consensus of hundreds if not thousands of voters — micromanaging outcomes is not really possible. Voters simply pick what they like, just as they do in an election, and then basic mathematics takes over.
— Over the past four or five years, the Academy has actively sought to invite thousands of new members to try to even rectify the demographic imbalance a little bit. Fully 25% of Oscar voters are people who didn’t get a ballot five years ago. This push has shifted the landscape, but not by much. Why? Partly because a member still has be invited to join the club, and the club is naturally selective. Moreover, the rather crude assumption that people of color will automatically vote for films by and about people of color (as opposed to films they thought were the best) is misguided. I once belonged to an all-women film critics group and in 2012 they picked Argo over Zero Dark Thirty — because, lo and behold, before we are women we are human beings. Imagine that.
— The way the Oscar race works is that only a few films are seen by most voters and many of those have already been pre-selected as the best of the year. By the time the stacks of 50 or 60 screeners have all arrived at the gates of Oscar voter estates, the task of accessing the vast scope of global cinema has already been subverted and homogenizes any notion of individual tastes. Many of the films I championed this year were completely ignored by the Academy and the guilds, including Dolemite Is My Name and the stunning Queen & Slim. Remember, some of the most perceptive voters are those with the most active careers, so they too must rely on riding the wave of what a consensus decides. Bottom line: if a film hasn’t hit any of the major guilds or prominent voting bodies by the time the Oscar nominations are announced, there is no reason to assume it will get in.
Do miracles sometimes happen? Yes. Films like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour can make an impact in Cannes with the right people, then seem to falter by not hitting any of the major groups, but ultimately be resurrected in the Best Picture/Best Director race. It happens, but it’s rare.
What can hurt a contender most is when it’s expected to show up somewhere and it doesn’t. Little Women did not show up at the Golden Globes for Best Picture or Best Director or even Best Screenplay (this from the same group that gave Lady Bird four nominations and two top victories). That falter for Little Women set in motion the first falsehood of the Little Women narrative: that the Globes voters shut out women because they were sexists. If that were true, then how to explain the disparity between their fondness for Lady Bird and their sudden “hatred” of Gerwig? Were all the Lady Bird fans in the HFPA assassinated by drone strikes?
It doesn’t take much research to find out that the HFPA are about 50% female voters. Always has been. When the New York Times posted its op-ed on the second falsehood in the Little Women narrative, that men were refusing to see the film, I even wrote to their editors to clarify this fact about the HFPA. The New York Times did not bother correcting that story. They were happy with the clickbait headline, which was making the rounds and causing op-eds to sprout up at other outlets like The Washington Post.
And the New York Times had gone all in for Greta Gerwig and Little Women in a way they really didn’t for any other female director:
But it simply isn’t true. It was another game of telephone. Again, please believe me. I know that men were seeing Little Women because all the men who saw it and loved have taken turns slapping me because I don’t. Critics especially were advocating for it — male critics. Trust me, they came at me like a team of white knights on their trusty steeds on Twitter defending the honor of Lady Gerwig. It was depressing to see that Trump has discredited the term “fake news” by using it to describe anything printed by mainstream press. I have always resisted that blanket absurdity. But this story that men were “afraid” to buy tickers to Little Women? That is fake news.
The third and final lie about Little Women happened after the Oscar nominations were announced, and it’s the one that has prompted me to write what I’m writing today. Here are some things to know:
— Many critics did everyone a disservice by not being completely honest about Little Women. By and large, they went overboard for it, giving it a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes with only a few brave voices of dissent endeavoring to describe what the film is and what it isn’t. Yes, it’s beautiful, lush, alive, and funny in places. But for many it is also a structural disaster. Unless a viewer is familiar with the story, the rearranged timeline often causes confusion, and many will have trouble keeping their bearings. Even for those of us who accepted the task of putting the puzzle together, we had to wonder what purpose it served. You heard no qualms about this from major film critics because they were swept up in the idea that Gerwig was back and no one wanted to dampen that enthusiasm. When critics addressed it at all, they would explain away the approach with a variety of rationales that fail to convince a lot of us (that said, congratulations to all the fans of Little Women who had fun solving the Rubik’s Cube. Now solve the mystery of why you’re so furious at anyone who wishes the plotline had been more straightforward.)
— Those who love the film aren’t bothered by the ornate structural affectation. They love it anyway. Obviously, at least 350 Oscar voters loved it too. But the very real issue is clearly not something that a large number of voters were willing to overlook when they weighed a convoluted film on the one hand against 10 or 12 other other films that flowed seamlessly across the screen with such propulsive narrative thrust. In fact, it’s hard not to suspect that the reason a lot of voters named Little Women on their ballots was because they felt it was their duty, because Gerwig is a woman. Would a Best Director nomination bestowed on those terms even be fair to Gerwig? Nope. (I didn’t invent the hashtag #VoteforWomen. I prefer to reserve that sort of blinkered loyalty to #VoteBlueNoMatterWho)
— All of the other films whose creators made it into the Best Director race have won other major awards:
1917 — the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Drama)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Musical/Comedy)
The Irishman — The National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics
Joker — the Venice Golden Lion
Parasite — the Palme d’Or, the Golden Globe for Foreign Language Film, the Los Angeles Film Critics, and the National Society of Film Critics.
Little Women didn’t win a single major award until the story about sexism began churning. At that point, the Boston Film Critics finally spit out a Best Picture prize for the movie and the National Society rallied to give Gerwig a Best Director spot.
By now, you might be wondering: Of all the movies directed by women year, why is Little Women the one to be anointed by a fanbase that we will graciously describe as “avid.” Why this director? Has Gerwig truly accomplished such a superlative “directorial achievement” that she totally eclipses Sciama and Matsoukas? Why, of all of the films in the race did the critics rally around this one?
I think there are two factors. The first is Gerwig herself is charismatic and lovable, and well-known since she infused Lady Bird with details of her own youth, as she has done in other movies she’s starred in like Frances Ha. Her persona was well-established and that easily transferred to her image as a female writer-director, of which there are far too few. The second is that after so many talented women got neglected by the Oscars last year, it became clear that the critics had divided their acclaim and, thus, none of the women could build a consensus. Perhaps this year, critics figured if they put all of their chips behind Gerwig, she had a shot. But again, the movie is the movie and that will only take you so far.
When the nominations came down, after all of the hype built up expectations, after so many Oscar pundits believed that hype would translate to nominations — in the aftershock of seeing that Gerwig didn’t make it in (even though there was no precedent for her to be nominated this year), the only explanation, the low hanging fruit had to be sexism.
The chauvinism story has spread like wildfire and it will continue throughout the rest of the season. Outlets need “a hot take” to come out of the Oscar nominations. It could never simply be that five or ten men made five or ten dazzling, brilliant works of cinema. Where’s the outrage trigger in that?
What we see being created here with this artificial sexism narrative is proof that the crude toxic contagion of Trump has forced a lot of people to embrace an equally crude antidote: too many people prefer to see the world as what they want it to be, rather than what it is. Author Stephen King said on Twitter that — SHOCKER — he votes for what he admires based on merit. And he was attacked for that. My god, can you imagine if anyone said “No, I only voted for you because you were black or a woman.” I can’t conceive of anything more horrifying or insulting. Even worse is that women and people of color can’t ever establish a legit reputation if this is the low-bar criteria that gives them entrée.
I expected more, frankly, from the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME — I expected them, at the very least, to investigate the story rather than leapfrog off of the outrage machine that all too often lately is driving actual news. But worse, now the nominees themselves are shamed and discredited because they got in and Gerwig didn’t.
This is what happens when critics deliver an “Emperor’s New Clothes” reaction to a movie anyone with eyes can plainly see has problems. Doesn’t mean the dissenters thought it was a bad movie, but such a mixed reaction is usually enough to put a movie in the lower tier, on par with films like Hustlers, Knives Out, Bombshell — these are films that have great things about them but for one reason or another, that isn’t enough. In order for a director to be Oscar nominated, ideally they have to be as good as or better than the other five nominees. You can read about the very real issues in dozens of Rotten Tomatoes user reviews, which make no bones about it:
— “Liked the adaptation in general, the great acting ensemble, disliked the constant and sometimes diificult to follow flasjbacks and flash fprwards.”
— “Very confusing to watch, was not in sequential order of the story”
— “Movie was difficult to follow it jumped from present to past to much”
— “Too confusing. Had a hard time following the timeline.”
— “The movie jumped around a lot in time periods, making it a bit confusing to follow. Well acted however”
— “Jumped times too much.”
— “The constant back and forth time flashes were too confusing.”
— “Did not like this screen play. It went back and forth between the present and past to the extent that it caused not a little confusion. Do we really have to try and figure out in what tense things are happening?”
— “I’m automatically attached to the 1994 version of Little Women because of Winona Ryder but in general…fantastic version of the movie. The new 2019 one that’s in theaters…well let me tell you. We have the character Amy being played by a TWENTY FOUR YEAR OLD ACTRESS….where in the book and 1994 version she is supposed to be TWELVE YEARS OLD. HOW DOES SOMEONE LOOK PAST THAT. I literally was sitting there laughing at this 24 year old women on the big screen, talk and act like a 12 year old little girl,”
— “There should be a law against ruining the classics. My husband went with me and didn’t know the story. He still doesn’t. This movie jumped all of the place, completely neglected to develop the characters, and was confusing (very hard to follow what time period we were in). So many of the scenes consisted of Marmee and the girls talking over one another in an effort to convince us that they were a close knit family, but this just left me with a splitting headache.”
— “Very disappointing. I loved book, read it many times. I found the first half of the movie very slow and boring. Then the constant flashbacks made things very confusing. How could a Great story be so ruined.”
— “Jumped around in time too much. Way too long. Loved previous versions and the book, this one did not do story justice. Almost left the theater 1/2 way through. Acting was over the top.”
Yes, many of the user reviews for Little Women are effusive with praise and it did end up with a 92% overall audience score at Rotten Tomatoes and an A- Cinemascore. I’m not trying to say that many people didn’t love it. But many others didn’t, and apparently a lot of them have Globe ballots, SAG ballots, BAFTA ballots, DGA ballots, and Oscar ballots. I wish there had been a more balanced examination of what didn’t work about the movie along with what did. We did not get that from most critics.
But I can promise you, directors who have reached the pinnacle of their profession in the Directors Branch don’t need to have critics explain the craft. They are not going to overlook what many of them will see as a misstep, an ambitious vision that didn’t quite come together. They might appreciate it in some fashion (as the Academy at large did when they gave it a Best Picture slot), but many won’t. Not when it’s competing with the likes of Parasite and 1917 and The Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Joker and Jojo Rabbit, etc.
The story coming out of this year’s Oscar race should be based on the actual reality of the process, on the context of the films and directors in the mix, not a blunt sulky version of the truth that makes those who cover this race take a position so they feel less guilty about the results (and less likely to be attacked by angry readers).
Me, I’m choosing to look at all the other spectacular possibilities this year afforded for women and to welcome what looks to me like genuine gender parity. Equality doesn’t mean we need throw awards at films that don’t quite deserve it for the sake of appearances, but the roster of dazzling achievement by women directors this year does mean that they (and the film industry) are finally arriving at a point where women are afforded the opportunity to create acclaimed and prestigious movies every year at the same rate that men have always been given. And that, my friends, is something to celebrate.
And I’ll leave the last word to Gerwig herself who was interviewed YET AGAIN in the New York Times after the nominations:
So you want to see the work acknowledged on the largest stage possible, and there is so much beautiful work done by female writers, producers, directors, creators. But in terms of it all moving in the right direction, that’s all we can do: continue to make the work, make the work, make the work.
And when asked if she thinks the Academy is lagging behind, she said:
There have been great strides and we’ve got to keep going: keep writing, keep making, keep doing. It’s all there.
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I disagree. Their needed to be more.
I adore LITTLE WOMEN (it is my #4 film in a Top 25 and I had no problem with the “structure”) and I was rooting fervently for Greta Gerwig to receive a Best Director’s nod which for me was well-deserved. However I have to say I totally agree with Sasha Stone on this issue. I do NOT at all feel she was snubbed or that the results of the nominations was somehow tainted, and though I badly want women to receive better representation it should not be at the expanse of compromising the art. I completely agree that there should never be bonus points, not for gender, not for color, not for overdue narrative. I’ve visited this site for many years and feel this is one of the most brilliantly written and argued essay I’ve ever read here. I’ve linked it and copied and pasted it elsewhere to great reception.
And Warren Beatty.
Oh, I did. I just didn’t like what I saw.
Ummm. 1917 just won Best Pic at GG and more Oscar noms than Parasite.
Well, obviously these people were all part of the conspiracy with movie twitter and professional critics to hide the truth and promote Greta Gerwig’s Oscar chances. We’re through the looking glass here, people!
Rotten Tomatoes user reviews that “make no bones about it”.
“I like the way the movie moved from present time in the back and than back to a pervious period in the book and than back again”
“I loved the fresh presentation of this classic story. The transition between time sequences was seamless.”
“Perfectly casted and acted, really enjoyed how Gerwig wove the tale..”
“Gerwig’s adaptation is faithful, and brings with it a strong knowledge of film grammar, a logic different from chronological literary narrative, to create a film experience that is a cognitive as well as a visual treat. ”
“The writing is absolutely exquisite. The script and the dialogue are all great. The story being told is an important one. Gerwig does a great job balancing the two storylines. ”
“I loved the whole movie. The actresses were incredible, the story well crafted, reinvented, and told, and it was heartwarming and incredible.”
“Loved the acting, the scenery, the clever plot and the way it resonates today!”
“Very interesting retelling of familiar story.”
“It was well acted enjoyable with NO VIOLENCE and simple cadence easy to follow and understand.”
“Perfect cast with a great script. Wonderful portrayal by Ronan. Best version of the classic book to date.”
“Lively and a bit eccentric with its nonlinear story line, but essentially enjoyable and satisfying.”
“Excellent! Loved how it stayed true to the story. Enjoyed the back and forth flashes from when they were girls at home and then grown up”
“I enjoyed it very much! I didn’t like how they kept going back and forth with the dates.”
” The best version of Little Women Ive ever seen. I highly recommend this movie to all audiences.”
MEMENTO, INCEPTION, and DUNKIRK play fast-and-loose with chronology deconstruction in far more challenging and (one might say) gratuitous ways than LITTLE WOMEN does but I’ve never heard as much collective complaining about how “confusing” they were compared to Gerwig’s film. That rationale is weak sauce. I hadn’t seen the Armstrong version in two decades and hadn’t read the Alcott for even longer and I had absolutely no problem following along with the film.
And once you get oriented, which honestly any seasoned filmgoer should have been able to do fairly easily, the juxtapositions in the stories & character arcs complement each other in clever and touching ways that a straightforward linear approach (which we’ve seen ad nauseum) wouldn’t do. It’s a fiendishly clever and ingenious way to accentuate the book’s themes and a hard thing to translate from the page to the screen, and she handled both expertly. This is an undeniable step up in artistry and craftsmanship for her and while there were other terrific films helmed by American women (THE FAREWELL in particular), the fact that it hits all the other Academy tick boxes (period setting, award-friendly cast, literary prestige) makes her absence more conspicuous.
fair
Mike Nichols (WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and THE GRADUATE).
Orson Welles and Greta Gerwig, both received a BP and Best Director nomination for their first film and a BP nomination for their second film, missing Best Director for the second film. She is doing well…
And, I cannot find a filmmaker in Oscar History having the following set of nominations for both their first and their second feature film, please let me know if there is one.
Lady Bird: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress
Little Women: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress
So now we’re playing the blame game.
As I recall, they appealed to the governing board and was granted permission to run in either character. That’s just off the top of my head since I’m at work and I have not researched it. Just my recollection.
I’ve never understood the term “subbed” when it came to Oscar voting. Voting is a decision based on artistic merit, not gender or skin color or whether you personally like or dislike a certain actor or filmmakerere’s a lot of ignorance in the mainstream press as to how Oscar voters come to their de
To their decisions. I believe they take the process very, very seriously. Otherwise,, what’s the point? I was never happy with academy’s decision to open the floodgates to allow 3,000 or 6,000 new voters. The Academy was always meant to be an exclusive body. That’s not a popular sentiment in our age of inclusion at any price. If I had my way, I’d reduce the membership to the levels of the 1960s or early 70s : 2.000 or 3,000. The, once again, the cream of the film industry would be deciding Academy Awards.
Boiled down, this is ART we’re ranking (an inherently foolhardy endeavor). I LOVE “Little Women” and I’m luke-cold on “Joker” but there’s no objective proof one is better directed than the other. Let’s just keep supporting female-directed films and someday awards will follow, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Joker will win for Adapted Screenplay on its way to winning Best Director and Best Picture.
You wouldn’t get it.
I love your sarcasm.
Indeed. The de-aging alone is something to behold. /s
Social media whining? no. AMPAS giving in to pressure? It just ended. They BTFO’d Oscarssomale and Oscarssowhite and even Marvel this year. may be an anomaly rather than trend but they BTFO’d Film Twitter last year with Green Book and Bho Rap too so something is up.
Sorry, I didn’t express myself well. I meant that The Witcher did it better and when something that isn’t exactly an awards calibre does it better, than you ain’t an awards calibre either. I have no problem following The Witcher despite zero familiarity with the source (games, books). OTOH, LW was confusing to me who didn’t read the book or see previous versions. I guess that’s how audience that didn’t read Harry Potter books felt.
I delight in your sadness.
I wasn’t expecting it from the main cast but they’re was hardly anywhere else.
I do.
THERE didn’t need to be. “THERE”
How sad that people love such a truly stupid film.
And if you swap a few of the acting genders around, James L. Brooks (TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and BROADCAST NEWS) qualifies, too.
Thanks!
No. You wouldn’t think that.
The issue is that she’s not calling the critics and people with different opinions idiots. She’s calling them liars. She’s not disputing people’s opinions, she’s attacking their honesty and integrity.
I said it elsehwere but a movie that does time jumping worse than The Witcher is not a Best Director calibre.
Just a remidner that Gerwig wasn’t even #6. That’s Waititi. so she wouldn’t get in anyway. Philips and Waititi flip flopped and Philips got in with the Branch after losing (to Waititi) with DGA.
When Joker won best film at Vencie it should have been clear that this was something to take notice. They didn’t give it best film for any other reason that they loved it. And whether you like the movie or not people in the industry love Joker more than any other film. They didn’t love for some sort of political or gender reason they simply loved it. I know some people who hate Joker want to imagine there is some sort of conspiracy a foot but there isn’t.
Also Merritt Wever! The whole “papers scene” was so perfect.
Oooh it’s been happening more often lately. Hopefully the trend continues
Cooper’s decision to make the second half of the film the “Bradley Cooper needs an Oscar” showcase resulted in Gaga being shunted aside and probably cost her that Oscar.
Just a thought: if shorter seasons favour big contenders, what would happen if we want back all the way to late march? Would the nominees be any more “small” than what we’re used to?
I’m sorry but Hustlers was disappointing. You’d think a movie about strippers would have more nudity.
Or maybe they just like Joker more than you… Because, you know, it’s subjective.
I miss the days when this site seemed to be about stats and inside info and sober analysis of the awards race, rather than vendettas. Maybe it will be like that again next season.
Great article. Sasha has been doing this for 20 years so she knows how a lot of voters think. And this year, her opinion just happened to match the Academy’s opinion so she has an even better insight about it.
The only thing I’ll disagree with is “Many critics did everyone a disservice by not being completely honest about Little Women.” If the critics liked it, the critics liked it. I don’t think that’s a disservice. But they ain’t voters.
I saw someone elsewhere bring up the point that maybe Oscars should take a page out of the SAG playbook. So obviously Oscar voters are industry members, most of whom are busy making movies so can’t watch the number of films they really should before nominations. Therefore, why don’t they start having nominating committees that specifically have to watch a certain number of films in order to qualify (like, at least in theory SAG does even if it often doesn’t work out in practice because they are too early in the year) that select the nominations – that way they will consider more films. Then the whole body can vote for winners knowing that they only need to see the nominated films. I’m sure it’ll piss people off but it might help get more films into the conversation. This should be paired with pushing the date back again (which is happening) in order to get films seen.
However, it should be said that “smaller films” (a term really meaning films that didn’t get into the conversation, since films like Jojo and Parasite and more to the point in other years films like Moonlight have gotten in so little doesn’t necessarily mean small budget) even if they are seen don’t get in because their pockets of love tend to be smaller. Take the simulated ballot here, there are lots of films that people put as their number 1s but they got split up so even though someone may vote for Waves and Pain and Glory as their 1 and 2 they probably won’t get their vote and The Irishman will (if The Irishman is at number 3). Generally support for the smaller films get split up even if people all see them so in the end the films in the race may not change too much… What might change is that crafts people may see more films below the line so Joker will probably still get best picture and director but maybe not costumes and editing. Who knows though.
I’m actually not the least bit riled up and welcome the continued discussion. And this is a superbly written and comprehensive piece.However I still adore Little Women and consider it one of the very best films of the year.
Totally disagree on every point. For me the film is a absolute masterpiece and one of the best of the year.
I think you are right. They only watch the movies that are getting more Oscar attention. It’s a shame. I feel that they should watch way more movies. I don’t want to hear that it’s so, so hard for these elites to watch movies when I, a schoolteacher from the back of beyond in Ohio, could probably watch all the major contenders except for a few categories prior to the voting if I wanted to.
I’ve not seen Little Women, but I really don’t see what was so confusing about The Witcher. I’d never read a book or played a game in the series, but I caught on to the fact that it’s not a linear timeline with the small hints here and there, such as the woman Gerald fights mentioning The Lioness of Cintra winning her first battle, when we’d already seen her on the throne for a while. Yes, it wasn’t spelled out, but there were enough hints to realise the different timelines, and the convergence worked.
The Witcher has far bigger issues in terms of world-building, and not the non-linear timeline. But…that’s neither here nor there.
Hope you see the movie soon. Enjoyed it more than expected given some of the negative reviews I read about the flashback structure of the film. It actually worked, for me, as it gave an element of surprise and actually enjoyed it more because of it.
Nah. I think her crusade is against the people who are giving her crap for not liking Little Women.
Joker deserves its 11 noms. Get used to it.
Enjoyed Little Women and it deserves the Best Pic nomination along with the other noms. Lots of good films this year and, unfortunately, only 5 slots for Best Director. Little Women may surprise us next month winning Best Picture without a Best Director nom just like Green Book last year.
Damn! I forgot about “Candy”. That movie wrecked me when I saw it in college. Ledger, Cornish, and Rush were fantastic in it.
This will never end, obviously.
Sasha, this crusade you have against Gerwig, Little Women and people who gave it a good review is getting really sad. It’s crazy that you’ve been doing this Oscar thing for so long yet you still have trouble accepting when you don’t like a movie that gets Oscar attention, even to the point of you trying to craft some larger narrative to justify it.
“I don’t like Little Women, so therefore its awards success has to be tokenism on behalf of the voters”.
Apparently you didn’t watch many movies this year. And since when has quality been the chief qualification for getting an Oscar nomination?
I would have been happy if Gerwig had nominated her partner Noah Bombach should have been nominated for Marriage Story .Both would be better than Todd Phillips for the over nominated Joker.
There were film with nonomination like the Farewell and the last Black man in San Francisco.that were better films.Joker is the second weakest of the bp noms just ahead of Jo jo Rabbit
hear hear!
Joker resonates which is why it edned up with so many nominations. You want a movie that doesn’t resonate and therefore faded? Marriage Story. The leads are amazing so cannot help but admire the actors but something about the movie as a whole just doesn’t connect. No wonder it’ll end up with only 1 win (Supporting Actress).
The Bookshop was fabulous………….
I agree that Gerwig was not snubbed (good lord has anybody complaining seen the legendary lineup they assembled this year), but I disagree with your assessment of Little Women.
Having never seen any film version or read the book I was ready to be confused by these jarring changes in time, but I found that as long as I was paying attention to what was being said, how the actors portrayed their characters, and subtle costume/lensing choices that I knew what time period I was in.
The only time I got lost was during the melding of Beth’s two instances of illness. And in fact, my confusion about the timeline enhance my experience. I felt all the joy and relief that Jo felt walking down the stairs to see her beloved sister recovering and smiling, and then immediately filled with dread when I saw her descending those stairs once more in the icy blue cold of the future timeline. It wrecked me.
Honestly I feel the time jumping in The Irishman was more confusing to follow (but hardly difficult) because it was difficult to discern how old Frank was supposed to be. He never seemed younger than 55 to me,
In the last five years or so, absolutely. Between 1980 and today the pace is about half of what it was between 1960-1979.
Yeah, but Oscars its not just about being good. A lot of bad films have been awarded and nominated in the past, as we all know.
She’s not doubling down when she asks all of her followers what they want her to write about and overwhelmingly it was about this topic. So blame the hundreds of people that wanted this post.
Sasha doubling down on her hatred of the movie to justify Gerwig’s lack of director nomination in too many words borders on desperation. I agree with her, though, that it wasn’t gender bias that Gerwig missed out. I loved the movie but it was a stacked year of good movies that there were many other directors— male or female— who missed out on the nomination.
We don´t know, of course. But to be honest, I was already thinking about this extremely short awards season went at the expense of the smaller arthouse films. Many voters were probably in a rush and decided to see the films that were promoted very well and in discussion everywhere.
I mean, I really liked many of this years main candidates, but the nominees list does look very uninspired – with the usual suspects getting nods nearly everywhere, and a lot of really worthy, yet not widely enough seen candidates have fallen under the table.
Go watch it then before making any judgment.
Between 1960 and 1979, SIXTEEN foreign language films received Best Director nominations. It was clearly an Academy that was much more open minded about international films than revisionist thinking about the new “hip” Academy members would have you believe.
Such a long article and yet, the answer “Because no woman made a good enough film” would be sufficient
This shorter award season ruined the possibilities for smaller films to get noticed and have a shot at a nomination.
Next year it will be different.
Blame it on ABC.
It really changed a lot over time. In 1985, After Hours got 0 and Out of Africa got 11. But how many of those films won the top prize in a top 5/prestigious film festival? Joker did win…
The plural wasn’t for the BD lineup this season but for the group of mediocre directors who got in in recent years, usually one per year. I think this time it’s Phillips while the other four in his category are all very deserving (Mendes, Bong, Tarantino, Scorsese).
Thank you, Sasha, for “a more balanced examination” of this current issue regarding women film directors. Extraordinary, multi-faceted, and timely.
Comic book films like Endgame (2.8B) The Dark Knight (1B) and Logan (600M) all made a lot of money and were much better and considerably more critically acclaimed than Joker so I don’t think it was just the money. It was the (deeply problematic) narrative.
It feels like the nominating branches of the Academy don’t even watch movies anymore. I’m worried Oscar coverage has ruined the Oscars. Now they don’t have to watch as many, they can narrow their field. It’s unreal that a film as empty as Joker has 11 nominations while much stronger works like The Farewell, Hustlers, Last Black Man in San Francisco, Portrait of a Lady on Fire have none.
The central tenet of Sasha’s argument is flawed.
She says female movies should be judged on merit but that little women lacks such merit and is only being pushed to advance the women were robbed narrative.
That’s simply not true, plenty of critics & filmgoers disagree.
The fact that Sasha and some confused online viewers don’t like LW doesn’t mean it lacks merit.
I think films by women such as The Nightingale, Atlantics and Portrait of a Lady on Fire have more merit than LW this year, but so do films by men that have been overlooked like The Children Act and Uncut Gems.
I can name plenty of films by women that were more meritorious for BP than Hirt Locker, but I’m still glad Bigelow was recognised.
The merit argument is also a bit flawed when women don’t have the same opportunities as men to make movies in the first place.
The system isn’t fair that way.
And Oscar is not fair in the way it recognises and awards films either
This year in particular I find that the five nominated men have signed films which rely mostly on its direction, even if, I have to admit, I didn’t like Joker at all. So I’m not outraged by that quintet even if my favourites are not on the list.
However, those media who are crying out loud, how often do they defend female-directed movies?
If we want a more diverse, representative line-up why, oh boy, why does the press align last minute with the bazillionth adaptation of a literature classic instead of defending those women who are really innovating on set. Best female directed movies I’ve seen these year were not even eligible. If they were, they were not supported by the media. Most did not even got a US release on time. Why don’t we talk about the situation of women in the industry instead of moaning because they didn’t pick the most popular of the bunch?
Press does make much noise about this subject, but talking about female directors, once a year, only after the nominations, when they usually don’t bat an eye for them is nasty and petty clickbait.
I call this text “Portrait of a gentleman on fire”.
Maybe its target audience were busy celebrating the holidays (like I was). Just went to see it this week, finally.
Go see it again and see a packed theater like I did on a weekday.
Both movies have done quite well at the box office.
Personally if someone I respect argues something that I strongly disagree with, I’d rather actually discuss it than just avoid the topic or the person
you’ve missed my point entirely
I understand your point but this argument “So Lady Gaga can be nominated for the one good film she’s provided and Jennifer Lopez gets a shrug for her film” seems disingenuous. ASIB tied for the second highest nomination total last year while Hustlers was nowhere to be found on nomination morning. Of course Gaga was nominated lol.
On Twitter, I voted to “let it go” because it seems pretty evident how frustrated you were getting at continuing to go over the same logical points over and over again. But I’m happy you wrote this piece, however often you have to retread the same points.
One of my wife’s favorite movies is the 1994 version of Little Women. I have now adopted it as one of my favorite movies, though a few moments in it I love out of sheer morbid curiosity (Claire Danes is NUTS in it). While I enjoyed Gerwig’s take, I could tell that much of that appreciation came from already understanding the story and looking for “her version” of the moments I loved from the ’94 version.
I think casual readers tends to assume your POV is incredibly black and white. As I have always read your perspective, I appreciate the layered approach to the need for representation of women and people of color, while simultaneously recognizing that award season is not handing out participation trophies. Yes, the wins of Bigelow, Jordan Peele, Moonlight, and many other more progressive films and filmmakers has put a spotlight on the lack of diversity historically in the Academy. But that doesn’t mean every film Greta Gerwig directs is automatically deserving of an Oscar nomination, Ladybird is great. Little Women is fine.
Yes, discrimination still exists. And it probably will for a long time. But as much as reporters want to make it a black and white or male and female issue, many times it really IS based on merit. OUATIH, The Irishman, Parasite, & 1917 were for sure better directed films than Little Women. I’m not a big fan of Joker, but my problems with it aren’t entirely related to directing.
All that being said, I WILL stump for The Nightingale. And The Farewell. If we want to take about truly DESERVING films.
Off my soapbox. Thanks Sasha for all your passionate writing.
And the critics mentioned it in every review I read of Little Women. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make at this point.
Sasha accused the critics of intentionally giving dishonest reviews simply because they didn’t agree with her, and that’s BS. They’re not obligated to validate any particular opinion.
Did you move around and sit in different seats during Little Women to make the place look like it was fuller?
I went to two movies on Christmas Day.
“1917” — nearly packed. (It was a morning show.)
“Little Women” — I was ALONE in the theater. (It was 10 PM, but still….)
There is nothing in life more satisfying than a Michael Buble slow clap. Unless it’s from Gillian Jacobs.
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It’s a well known Story, just like any other IP ie. Comic book Movies. People will have their own expectations and opinions about these stories. Whenever there is a difference from original story, critics actually do mention this aspect.
The people who wrote positive reviews for Little Women didn’t just say “it’s an amazing movie and everyone should see it.” They delved into what worked and what didn’t; not every review was 100% positive. So, what are you and Sasha complaining about? The fact that every single review didn’t validate that one interpretation doesn’t mean the critics conspired to hide the movie’s flaws.
Sometimes they do, and some probably did here. I haven’t read every single review, but I know not all of them were 100% glowing. Regardless, critics aren’t obligated to validate other people’s points of view.
It gave her a leg up, her artistic merits are wildly overstated
LOL 🙂
Find me a single one who can prove critical consensus has no impact on their vote and THEN we can talk.
So just because you’re personally not amazed by her skills as an actress, her only possible value to anyone is her looks? This goes right back to Sasha’s argument’s main problem: just because you think that someone or something isn’t of note, that doesn’t mean that people’s motivations for liking that person/thing aren’t genuine. Your opinion is not the only valid one
All Sony needed was a BP nomination they can put in new TV spots in an effort to help the film capitalise on the Oscar buzz enough to make more money for them. That’s all, their main Oscar bid is definitely OUATIH.
Oh, I totally agree on all counts. I do think that the narrative was mildly uncomfortably lopsided – I think it went out of its way in terms of the narrative and plot to portray Driver’s character as this poor pitiable guy (it does a mostly good job of portraying his flaws as well as strengths and his fundamental goodness, I have no issue with that – it’s when the plot contorts itself in unnaturalistic ways to get us to feel pity for him, like that scene with the social worker – it was kind of funny, I guess, for about a minute, but then it was too long and way too unbelievable and too transparently an attempt to make us feel sorry for Driver for it to actually work.).
The “genius” thing was kind of irritating because of the autobiographical aspect, but by the end I came around to partially interpreting it as Baumbach poking fun at himself. I also thought the overall pacing was odd – it was difficult to distinguish how much time elapses between the various scenes. I also wasn’t convinced by the dialogue or cinematography/camera direction of the “big fight” scene – I think that it doesn’t even begin to compare in terms of writing, pacing, believability, and to a lesser extent, acting, to the masterful equivalent scene in Before Midnight (although that’s maybe an unfair comparison, because the “fight scene” in Before Midnight was like half an hour, and because I think Before Midnight is a true masterpiece and the far better movie overall than Marriage Story).
Is it all that necessary to put down The Irishman and Martin Scorsese to elevate Little Women? I believe the majority of critics prefer The Irishman to Little Women. It’s the most rewarded film by the guilds. And they’re not all praising Scorsese just for his “daring”. It’s a very good film even if it’s not a daring film or the best of its genre. Saying The Irishman is just one of TONS of organized crime films is like saying 1917 is just one of TONS of war films is like saying Little Women is one of TONS of literary classic period films. Unless you think Little Women is the BEST literary classic period film that’s ever been made.
And I don’t even think Little Women and Gerwig have been so DERIDED. People not thinking it’s one of the 5 best of the year don’t mean they hate it. More people seem to be hating on JOKER but I happen to think it’s superior to LITTLE WOMEN. Doesn’t make me sexist either.
If Little Women the same film had been directed by a man, would it have gotten the same backlash for its non-nomination as, say, BEN Affleck’s omission for Argo, or Ang Lee’s omission for Sense and Sensibility, or Christopher Nolan for Inception/The Dark Knight, or Martin Scorsese for Taxi Driver? I don’t think so.
No not here it’s on twitter I have seen it a lot! If you haven’t seen endless tweets of people saying that anyone who doesn’t love LW or any group that doesn’t award it specifically is sexist then you congratulations I wish i was like you and didn’t spend so much time on film twitter, I honestly do. Yeah I do agree that the looking at audience scores thing is silly though but that is a really minor part of her overall point. Also she’s not doing it to prove that it’s divisive she’s doing it to prove that there are people who legitimately have these opinions because she is getting attacked on twitter by people who say there aren’t. And I do think Sasha is very valid in saying she is the first to champion female directors in best director races, as she points out here she’s been doing it for years so complaining that its because it happens every year when we are talking about Sasha really doesn’t hold up.
These discussions with people really not getting her points are really frustrating because they also make me want to hate LW even though it will probably end up on my best of the year list.
The “internet” is doing no such thing – no one here is claiming that Sasha, or anyone, is sexist for not liking Little Women. What’s sexist is when the Academy consistently overlooks the work of women directors even why they’re more critically acclaimed and popular than the movies which end up getting nominated – overwhelmingly men. The issue is that Gerwig isn’t a one-off fluke. That’s what people here are angry about. (That and some of Sasha’s more blatantly fallacious reasonings, for example, resorting to RT user reviews to try to prove that Little Women objectively has flaws or is some sort of divisive movie, while never making the same critiques about her own favorite movies which have lower critical and/or audience scores from the same sources, and then claiming that it’s perfectly valid for Gerwig to have been left out of the director’s race when we all know that she would have been livid had Scorsese (lower audience score) or Tarantino (VERY significantly lower audience score, significantly lower critics score) or, apparently, Phillips (abysmal critics score) been left off the nominations list.).
I am neither surprised nor upset about Gerwig not making the cut in BD, for me personally she was #9 behind Mendes, Bong, Tarantino, Scorsese, Sciamma, Almodovar, Waititi, Mangold. I just don’t agree with some of the more popular arguments against her bid, that’s all.
I’ve been reading this site for many years and I don’t normally weigh in debates like this, as I prefer to save my comments (and my energy) to praise films that I feel very strongly about, but I’m going to make an exception here. First because I appreciate the lengths of explaining why you are making the point your are making and back it up with valid arguments, and secondly because I do disagree with some of these arguments.
First of all, I have not seen Little Women yet, but it is not my intention to judge or analyse the film itself.
Overall, I agree with the argument that this has been an extremely competitive year and that (and no other) is the reason Gerwig is not in the top five. She was probably sixth or seventh in the list. I truly don’t think there is a hidden agenda behind this, nor the Academy (as if the Academy is ONE single mind) decided to snub her. The fact that Little Women had six nominations shows wide support from the Academy. There was simply extraordinary work from other directors, in one of the strongest years in movies I remember. I agree that it would have been nice to see a woman in the top five, but in my case I would have selected Lulu Wang. Just my personal opinion.
The part of the argument I disagree with is the whole “structure” thing. Again, I still have not seen the movie, but the main point to make here is that the structure of the movie is determined by the writing, not by the direction. And the screenplay got a nomination. So, if the structure is so terrible, certainly the Academy didn’t think so.
Interestingly, there is another movie this year with some debatable choices (again, IMO) about structure, and that’s The Irishman. The fact that the road trip is first presented as the backbone of the movie but then disappears for about an hour to then come back on the third act seems like a flawed script to me, but I don’t see anyone daring to point this out, maybe because we assume that iconic legends like Steven Zaillian or Scorsese can’t get it wrong.
But anyway, my two cents on this, as per above, is: I agree with you, Gerwig didn’t make the list not because she is a woman but because this year there was extraordinary work by many directors, unfortunately there is only room for five. The argument should stop there. The moment you start talking about structure and script choices, you are talking about something else that doesn’t really have an impact on Gerwig’s nomination as a director., maybe could have had an impact on the noms for Picture or Script, but ironically she got those two.
Lol well I guess I’m not “enlightened” or PC enough to stop myself from calling you out, “sister,” for being absolutely asinine
and a waste of spaceon this comment board. At least Pete has rare moments of clarity and lucidity.Edit – you know, I’m trying to train myself from making bitchy comments about people’s lack of value in shared spaces, so I’m striking that one out, even though you’re still not contributing anything smart or even entertaining here.
How unusual it must have been to have Lina Wertmuller nominated for Seven Beauties, a foreign language film. Which by the way is a great fucking movie. I wonder how much campaigning went into it.
RE: the “structural disaster” of Little Women. To me, unfamiliar with the story, kept things interesting. The narrative unfolding in an unconventional manner that made the film excitement and compelling. Which is something a movie like Judy, could’ve benefited from. Also, it was much less confusing than The Irishman. Which in the first hour, with the flashbacks, you couldn’t tell what age the characters were supposed to be.
Olivia Wilde is also a very good looking woman who already did full frontal nudity but even so Booksmart was almost completely forgotten from the awards. So what’s your point?
The Last Emperor
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Memoirs of a Geisha
Slumdog Millionaire
Parasite
I’m probably forgetting someone, but the list is far from short. It’s really sad that progressive Americans don’t want to talk about the lack of Asian representation as much as they talk about black representation.
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I really think people are misunderstanding that statement. She isn’t arguing that individual critics are being disingenuous, she is saying that if we are using consensus we should present the full range of opinions and make sure that it’s clear that for some people the flashbacks will be a bit jarring and for others they won’t and that is fine. Critics as a whole are letting people down by not presenting that as a part of the story. I should say for the record this is coming from someone in the I love it camp.
I know. It was bizarre, though, what with it being opening day. I think it’s safe to say that I’ve never been alone in a theater on opening day for a film that’s going to make $100m.
This is a flatly absurd statement. The fact that critics liked the movie more than you doesn’t mean they’re not being honest. It means yours is a minority opinion (which is fine, for the record, but don’t try to pass it off as something else).
And frankly, anybody who had a hard time following the movie was not paying much attention. The two timelines could scarcely be more distinct; they’re literally colour-coded.
The people who voted for Trump did so because they were/are ignorant, cowardly, racist, sexist, or flat out STUPID fools, and THEY and THEIR actions are why Trump won. I didn’t force anyone to vote for him, those pigs did that on their own damn accord. For people who talk about “snowflakes” and “thin skin”, voting for Trump out of spite for whatever the hell names I call them is pretty damn f*cking thin-skinned. “Oh, boohoo, this gay hispanic man thinks I’m racist, I’m going to shoot myself in the foot by voting for this absolute monster, that’ll show him!”
That’s not how it fucking went down, people voted for him because people in this country are easily manipulable pigs. Deplorables, if you will. Say whatever the hell you want about movies, but don’t tout that absolutely garbage nonsense about people “like me” being why Trump won – I get some very mild enjoyment out of our squabbles here, even when you are being a troll, but I’d be just as happy blocking you.
I wrote a truthful comment about her acting Career
Spot on, kind sir.
The grammar and spelling in those RT user reviews tells me all I need to know about those confused nitwits.
All these clicks and comments from everyone up in arms and annoyed that Sasha writes another post about Little Women. Yet here you all are. You can’t stay away. You HAVE to look…you HAVE to comment. It’s so effing easy to just not read these posts but you all can’t help yourselves. It’s hilarious. She’s riled you all up and her business is benefiting because of it. Love it.
Little Women’s chronological order is about as hard to follow as The Irishman’s… that’s is to say, neither are hard to follow and both hopscotch around quite a bit. I don’t get her argument that the timeline is confusing.
I’m not sure I would have included Gerwig in the Best Director lineup, but I think there are other female directors that would have been worthy, like Lulu Wang. If Gerwig had been nominated, I wouldn’t complain about it… as if the ladies are getting handouts…
That’s not what I meant at all, Phantom.
I’m only responding to: “Why are we still talking about this?”
I would never want you to shut up, my friend!
No more than I like suggestions that Sasha should shut up.
You get the last word. I’ll bow out now.
Fruitful discussion!
Maybe too fruitful 🙂
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I understand it’s tacky to tear down one film to seemingly prop another up. I think in recent years, Scorsese has been rewarded for a few inferior films. There’s no doubt he’s contributed so much to film, both artistically and commercially. In his early years, his work was ignored. Now, he’s nominated for nearly all his films. Mind you this comes at the expense of other worthy directors.
It reminds me of the Emmys, when one series or actor keeps winning the top prize year after year despite having lost its luster long ago. Think Modern Family or Kelsey Grammer and all their wins well past their prime.
All Scorsese and Spielberg and Eastwood have to do nowadays is direct a biopic and the film community goes apeshit over them. Let’s reward new ideas that represent the diverse stories in the world!
I am going to play evil and also add how due for a nomination as writer or director, Isabel Coixet is at this point (odd that Sarah Polley managed to be Oscar nominated but NOT for her Oscar-worthy turn in Coixet’s My Life without Me). And yes, Coixet delivered a (Netflix) film this year… Elisa and Marcela (obliterated by critics in Metacritic) but is delivering “It Snows in Benidorm”, starring Timothy Spall for 2020.
She is a bit hit or miss (she won the Goya for Best Picture recently with The Bookshop, along with Director and Adapted Screenplay, a film shot in English and that was starred by Emily Mortimer) and the films she makes can have any result, good or boringly bad, but she has a really distinctive personality, and she may break through on American awards season any minute, without warning. She is respected and seen as a classic indie auteur. I always keep her films as a wild card on awards season.
And there is all this derision for Gerwig’s effort, another period piece with a bunch of actresses that talk with one another, and Scorsese is “daring” for directing another organized crime piece. There are TONS of organized crime films and Scorsese’s film is outstanding? He’s done it all before, and he and others have done it much better!
Yes! The Piano is just such a cool film. The score, the cinematography, the acting… all of it is so good! I can’t believe that the score wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. That music stands the test of time.
I take back my comment about lack of lucidity. But just on this one
But my point is that “pretty well-known” is not equal to fact nor is admission of guilt and even if it WERE a fact and they DID admit guilt, being guilty of a selfish indiscretion in your personal life, isn’t supposed to have an impact on your professional life. And somehow it does have an impact for the woman because you did bring it up in a professional context.
Baumbach and the genius comment, that I agree with. I don’t give a flying fuck about what happens in the personal lives of actors and directors off-screen, but if they put it on a screen near me then I feel I have the right to judge it. And if he decided to put his divorce story on that screen in which he keeps referring to the character based on himself as a genius and allows the on-paper split-narrative to lean toward the male perspective by low-key shading the wife, then yeah, that’s bullshit I will call out. BUT only because he opened the door for it by putting it on screen. Gerwig didn’t do that thus deserves to be left alone.
“So why isn’t at least now all the focus on that man instead of still dragging the woman who is no longer a contender ?”
You don’t really think this piece “drags Gerwig.” Why say it that way?
Sasha wants the beating she’s taken to end. She asked on twitter what people believe is the best way to end it.
It was a poll. Multiple choice. 2 options.
– drop it?
– try once more to carefully explain how she feels?
overwhelmingly her followers asked her to please share her final thoughts.
phantom, all the time you and I both advise readers to scroll past posts that they know will bother them.
you always share your carefully considered thoughts and feelings — and the site is a better place with your presence.
if you ever write something that’s controversial and provocative and everyone is hammering you for expressing your feelings, you know I’ll be here to defend your right to write whatever the heck you feel like writing.
as for writing about a director whose nomination is not deserved — you could be writing 20 or 30 paragraphs about that right now, yeah?
I wish you would. I hope you do. I look forward to reading your thoughts.
but first I guess you have to do what you’re wishing everyone would do: drop the topic that you’re sick of hearing about and stop helping to fan the flames of this endless firestorm?Edit: (Scratch that last klutzy paragraph. Sasha certainly doesn’t write things that she hopes nobody responds to.)
Haha! The only reason I don’t regret having seen it is because I see everything that is likely to get Oscar noms. I had seen the versions from the 30s, 50s, 90s. The time jumping bothered me. I thought Flo had been better in “Lady Macbeth” a couple years ago (and “Midsommar”) than in this.
I would have been happy with an Actress lineup of Ronan or Johansson, Nyongo, Erivo, Awkwafina, and Ana de Armas, maybe switch out Erivo for Zellweger
I don’t want to talk about it further because it is unfair to him but that’s the lesson learned there : if your star is not comfortable with a stunt then you get a stunt double who can do it safely. Your artistic vision is not worth risking anyone’s life.
No female deserved the Best Director Oscar more than Jane Campion for The Piano. It was her bad luck that she came up against Spielberg’s juggernaut Schindler’s List that year. At least she won screenplay and the film won 2 acting Oscars.
I have never seen Gold Derby so close for BP this late in the race. Current combined ratings:
10.96% Once Upon a …
9.51% 1917
8.47% Parasite
7.36% The Irishman
6.96% Joker
6.31% Jojo Rabbit
I hate to bring this point up because I don’t wanna drag Tarantino but the comparison is crucial for my point here.
Gerwig, a female director, is in a relationship with a divorced man and while there is zero proof about her being the other woman, that’s exactly what you claim she was thus less likeable thus less worthy of professional recognition. Even though the whole accusation is based on an assumption that is based on nothing. Yet you bring it up in a professional context.
Tarantino spit into Uma Thurman’s mouth and with one reckless executive decision, risked her life on the Kill Bill set. This is all stuff he owned up to and stuff that happened on set while shooting thus being considerably more relevant in this professional context than anything Gerwig may or may not have done in her personal life.
Yet the woman gets dragged while the guy sails through the Nomination Stage without anyone digging up this little chestnut. And for the record I do NOT want people to dig it up, I just want the same courtesy to be given to the woman in the story, as well. Especially when her “crime” is unconfirmed and in her personal life compared to his that is confirmed and of professional nature. I find double standards this obvious, utterly disgusting.
“people can dislike her for reasons other than her gender”
Says the person who just wrote a blatantly and grossly sexist comment about Gerwig … a sexist comment directed specifically at … her gender.
This is a bit of a rabbit trail, but what has the Academy ever done to “placate Christopher Nolan”? He didn’t ask them to expand Best Picture. All he did was make a hugely popular, well reviewed, and successful movie that got a bunch of precursor nominations.
Well, in that case you shouldn’t be mad that other directors got in and she didn’t. I am sure that you like the movie and that’s perfectly fine.
In the end, it was a jam-packed year with several contenders – Sam Mendes, Bong Joon-Ho – I am pretty sure you can’t argue against these two. Then, you have Tarantino and Scorsese – sure even I was predicting Scorsese to be dropped (he’s done this type of movie before). And then you have a choice between Todd Phillips (directed a powerful movie (in my opinion) that objectively made $1 billion worldwide, is lead by monumental performance by Joaquin Phoenix, etc. Those are your top 5.
In my opinion, you can add Waititi, Noah Baumbach and James Mangold before you even consider Gerwig.
That’s my opinion. Clearly, not yours. But in the end of the day, if the majority of MEN and WOMEN in the Academy picked other directors and it ended up the top 5, then I feel we should accept it.
Now, if Gerwig hit all the precursors – Globes, BAFTA, DGA and THEN got snubbed by the Academy – then your argument has so much more weight. But as of now – it’s just an opinion. Just like mine.
It’s just so happens that more people agree with me on this one. It doesn’t necessary make your point less valid. There is just so much space at the top. That’s all.
The Irishman was certainly more confusing because the CGI de-aging sucked and DeNiro still sounds/moves like an old man even when he artificially had a “young” face. Should’ve just hired a different set of actors.
Yeah … that’s what literally everyone on this board in support of Gerwig is already doing … arguing for her inclusion based on merit. No one is suggesting AT ALL that Sasha or any voter or anyone else should vote for or support Gerwig for anything other than the merits of her movie – which have already been praised by critics and audiences alike, none of whom are writing glowing reviews or called for her nomination because Gerwig is a woman, contrary to what this article is implying. They’re calling out the Academy because she – and many more women this year and in previous years – have been snubbed precisely despite the perceived merits of their works.
the real post-nominations argument we should be having:
This Oscar smells like my…
https://media2.giphy.com/media/26gsnZ77m2nrc2Yco/giphy-downsized-medium.gif
I don’t know of anyone who has a problem with that paragraph. People have a problem with all of the space this article spends insulting and impugning the motives of people who disagree about the movie.
Oyelowo was great. But he didn’t have a wig, a prosthetic something, 1T of makeup or some fake “I have a voice” Oscar clips to be considered more seriously for awards.
I don’t know many people who put Little Women in their top 5 of the year. My wife just saw it with her mom and they much prefer the 1994 version. So why should those same people be compelled to nominate her directing? Out of guilt or fear? Film Twitter’s argument here is one of the weakest for a “snub” I’ve heard.
Australia has produced a lot of decent female directors over the last few decades, and the key thing with them all is the need to seize their opportunity instantly. So many of them resisted the US scripts or spent time with a sophomore project which was unlikely to sell, or had a young family or personal health issues. And before you know it, they are buried deep in the credits of someone else’s film.
Gillian Armstrong’s Charlotte Gray was really the end of her Hollywood prospects. The US big city critics murdered it, and it vanished there without a trace. That was her last a-list yelp really.
I’m fine with directors staying in Australia (the work can often be better, see Rolf de Heer), but a lot of talented female directors disappeared through the cracks because they wanted to persevere in directing their own scripts.
This is a classic reductio ad absurdum — take a valid point people are making (lack of diversity) and spin it out to a ridiculous conclusion. It’s used constantly in arguments by people who think it is “PC” to be concerned about diversity. If people complain about diversity in the acting nominations, then just spin that perfectly valid concern into a completely silly scenario where we would need a vast number of awards and categories. The implied conclusion is there is no problem and no solution is needed.
There IS a lack of diversity in the acting nominees. 18 white people, and one black woman and one Hispanic man. This entirely appropriate concern does not mean that the only alternative solution is your stupid scenario.
Agree on 1917 but I had another 10, The Nightingale. Perfect also. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is almost there, 9.5.
The Life of Pi, with its mostly South Asian cast, was nominated for 11 Oscars, none of them for the Suraj Sharma. It won the most Oscars that night.
every argument has holes in it, but they aren’t at all relevant to KB’s commentary
Sasha needs to seriously let this issue go because her writing about it is beginning to come off as borderline unhinged on the subject.
Believe me, I understand the pain of having the minority opinion about a movie. When I didn’t like Get Out I thought I was going borderline crazy as I watched every critic who wasn’t Armond White disagree with my take on it. But what I didn’t do was leap to the conclusion that 338 different critics from different backgrounds and living in different locations were issuing fake positive reviews as part of some grand conspiracy of virtue signaling. That doesn’t happen and it’s not how things work. It’s ridiculous. Critics are not going to secret meetings where they scheme out which movies they’re going to pretend to like in blocs and which one’s the aren’t and they don’t have some psychic link they use to decide which female filmmakers they’re going to like and which one’s they aren’t. Occam’s razor suggests these critics simply have a different opinion that Sasha, and it would seem so do most movie goers.
It is certainly unfortunate that the film’s structure got in the way of Sasha’s enjoyment of the movie but believe me when I say that people do not see this as a “problem” that they are “ignoring,” because frankly it isn’t. You can certainly cherry pick negative user reviews it you want (believe me, if you wanted to discredit OUATIH or Queen and Slim you could definitely find similar comments if you looked hard enough) but for the majority of viewers this plainly isn’t a problem. Personally I think the structure is the stroke of brilliance that makes the movie work as well as it does. If you look back at the older adaptations you find that they struggle pretty hard to make any of the characters besides Jo distinct, which is solved by giving the audience a sneak peak of these characters when they’ve matured, and it also makes the early parts (the flashbacks in this case) look like they’re actually building to something rather than just sitting there as childhood anecdotes. As to the accusation that it makes the film confusing… I’m sorry but that’s just not a complaint I can relate to, the film presented two chronological structures with a flashback structure. It’s not exactly Primer. I certainly never would have considered holding it against the movie and neither did most of the critics. And I say all this as someone who went into the movie not very excited about the idea of another Little Women adaptation and not necessarily the world’s biggest Greta Gerwig fan and who has no particular motivation to seem “woke” on the internet.
I will grant you that there were probably some voices on twitter who were hyping it a touch in order to advocate for it but these are not the majority of the critics who make up that 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and, frankly, someone who spent a year predicting that Wesley Snipes and Da’Vine Joy Randolph were surefire Best Supporting Actor nominees and who still talks endlessly about Queen and Slim is in no position to scoff at people for being advocates for their favorites. And I would also remind Sasha that she herself made several statements last year essentially reprimanding critics for advocating for various different female directors instead of championing one because “No one can agree on one and there can only be one” as she was quoted as saying in a Vulture article last year.
As a rule it is bad form to accuse people of arguing about movies in bad faith. That’s usually not true and leads to nothing but hurt feelings. The people accusing the Academy of choosing their favorites purely out of sexism are to some extent guilty of this but they are at least simply lobbing accusations at a bunch of anonymous voters and not a cadre of people who have publicly given detailed reasons for feeling one way or another about a movie and signed their names to said opinions. I doubt Sasha would appreciate someone writing a lengthy screed accusing her of only liking Dolemite is My Name or Queen and Slim in order to look cool and I wish she would extend that same courtesy to the rest of the film community.
Thank you for expressing this so well
I only have one “perfect 10” film from 2019 and that would be 1917 : beautifully understated script, masterful direction, striking production values and brilliant acting all with a laser sharp focus with not a single frame or line wasted.
Little Women was a solid film but wouldn’t be my pick for BP. However it was good enough for me to think it does not deserve any of this fucking vitriol especially after its Oscar chances have been officially decimated.
“Many critics did everyone a disservice by not being completely honest about Little Women. By and large, they went overboard for it, giving it a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes with only a few brave voices of dissent endeavoring to describe what the film is and what it isn’t.”
Also, I’m sorry, but besides the unfairness of this completely subjective accusation, writing a critical review isn’t “brave.” That’s a pretty a twisted use of that word (with echoes of delusional self-victimization; no one is being persecuted or losing their jobs for critiquing the movie) by someone who generally has far, far more grounded priorities.
Why was Asian Dillon etc from Billions nominated by BFCA as Supporting Actor? They are gender non-binary, but do they play a male character? Who made the assessment?
Clearly. We have two films in BP and one in BD without critical acclaim while a lot of acclaimed films were never even close to cracking either category.
Come on, people. Little Women is done. It may win Adapted. That is it. The fact that the anti-campaign is still this strong after Golden Globe, SAG, DGA, Bafta BP/BD, Oscar BD snubs just proves that this level of scrutiny is special. As in reserved specifically for women. Ones who dare to be successful at least.
It shows that getting into the final five for director and final 8-9 for picture involves a lot of luck and good fortune with the REAL precursors.
Green book was critically despised, but landed nods with the DGA, WGA, SAG, and PGA. When Little Women missed SAG and DGA it was clear that it was going to fall short of the frontrunner status some of its fans are weirdly insisting it has.
Green Book, a film from and about men, had a 69 MC and didn’t receive a BD nod though won BP.
Joker, a film from and about men, had a 59 MC and received a BD nod.
Little Women, a film from and about women, had a 91. Didn’t receive a BD nod, won’t win BP.
So not sure those are the best examples to prove your point about lack of bias for women at the Oscars.
If the future of the Academy is to have a quota for women and POC nominees, then we can all say goodbye to the Oscars. Nobody who actually tunes in year after year wants that remedy. But I agree with Phantom that the solution isn’t to bash Gerwig. If anything, Sasha should just bash the people who constantly beg for nominees simply/primarily because they fill certain quotas…but then she is prone to doing that herself.
RT, yes. But if you want an accurate picture of critical consensus, then MC is pretty decent for that.
Shape of Water was called the Fish Fucking movie. Oscar winners are usually “right place right time”. Del Toro two years ago greatly benefitted from his competition having some missteps in the home stretch and frankly the Academy’s less than stellar history with BLACK artists (remember them? still no black directors hoisting a directing Oscar, at least the women have Bigelow. Or Asian directors, the only two to win were both Ang Lee)
Some of her short films are also really great as well. Check out The Water Diary, arguably as relevant in 2020 as ever.
I’m also a big fan of Holy Smoke! Portrait & Sweetie are the two that misfired for me a little.
Just Mercy and Hustlers both screened at the Toronto International Film Festival before being released. If Harriet managed to get noticed as a Toronto film, so should the other two.
And Once Upon a Time in Hollywood won the Golden Globe for Comedy, not Drama.
Also there were only a couple times where I didn’t immediately recognize which timeline we were in. But I quickly figured it out based on the impeccable hair and makeup and costuming. Real life is a pastiche of memory and forward movement. Is it a perfect movie? Probably not. But I did find it bracingly alive thanks in part to how she restructured it, rather than making it a paint-by-numbers adaptation with a simple linear narrative. I also think Pugh in particular benefited from the structure as it showcased her character’s evolution. All of this worked better to me than Irishman’s uncanny valley VFX, but wouldn’t you know that the wigs and Meryl’s eyebags were not nominated but the VFX to make De Niro look 30 were…thank you, Academy.
If the goal is to save the Best Director category from mediocrity then relentlessly going after the rare woman who came somewhat close but ultimately missed out on a nomination is probably not the best way to do it, the best way would be putting all this energy into dragging the men who DID get in with mediocre films. There is one of those in BD basically every year. Where are the 20 articles per season about that shit ?
Lol what an absolutely laughable comment
Now, to be fair, of all the working female directors, Greta is the only one who personally did full frontal nudity during her time as an actress.
In all seriousness, the fact that she’s a good looking woman certainly has helped her cause during this particular round of hysteria. If she looked like a female Peter Jackson I suspect she wouldn’t be getting the run that she does in some circles.
Individually, yes. The problem is when we start talking about consensus. For many people the structure is considered jarring and a flaw so if a site like rotten tomatoes is going to exist to present consensus it should present the full range of opinions. That is what she is trying to say. Though I would argue that film criticism should not be measured in consensus so the whole idea of Rotten tomatoes is really flawed and I try my best not to look at it.
Though it is also a critics job to be able to see other perspectives. A good critic will give their perspective and also say “this may be a problem to me even if it isn’t to others” and evaluate the whole field. Generally a critics job is supposed to be to prepare the readership for what a film is so that they can know whether to go and see it. People often forget that.
To give a really obvious example (even if I haven’t seen it yet I know enough about it to say this) if a critic says the lighthouse is an amazing movie and everyone should see it they are probably not doing their job well. However, if a critic says I personally loved the lighthouse and here are all my reasons, though it isn’t for everyone and these are the reasons why then they are doing their job well (obviously while avoiding spoilers). The job of a critic is actually really hard and it’s unfortunate that all of that nuance is lost with the rotten tomatoes “it got 95%, that’s all you need to know” system and I feel like that system is breeding a lot of very self serving critics which is unfortunate.
I didn’t know or realise any of this, all I knew was that that was the song I heard in a film in 2019 that truly stood out to me. The rest just felt like basic “I want an Oscar nomination for this cliched song playing during the end credits” bait.
Can you direct me to a review or statement by a critic that says or implies any of these things?
completely agreed – one would think that the Academy already awarded her Best Director in a write-in campaign.
Complaining about Little Women being “overpraised” and that social justice warriors are harming film criticism, while Joker is sitting on 11 nominations, is laughable.
The day that several very arguably mediocre movies – lowest critic’s score (like Joker’s), lowest audience score (like OUATIH), lowest box office (like Irishman, to round out three of Sasha’s favorite movies of the year) – directed by women get into both best picture and best director (like the three mentioned above) at the expense of several critically acclaimed masterpieces directed by men, we can maybe start talking about “woke twitter” going “too far”. We’re evidently not there yet, though.
For the last time, the Director’s Branch that nominates the five directors doesn’t give a flying fuck about Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and there is zero evidence that such metrics factor into their thinking.
1. Hoo boy, are you gonna get it when the acolytes of Greta of Arc find out about this post.
2. She’s garnered three Oscar nominations in three years. That’s not easy to do (Spike Lee took 29 years between nominations 2 and 3 for instance. Sam Mendes took 15 years between 1 and 3). I get that Director is one of the BIG ones, but three nominations isn’t nothing, and if she herself were to complain about this “snub” she would look greedy and ungrateful for what she HAS accomplished.
3. Her craven disavowal of Woody Allen during the Lady Bird campaign I always felt eliminated the post Globes momentum she had and made it MUCH easier for Del Toro and Shape of Water to hoover up all the subsequent major guilds. Woody’s got friends in the Academy, and not just the six or so actors who won Oscars in his films. I wouldn’t discount that especially when the Director’s race was that jumbled between positions 5 and 8 (8 is where I think she ended up).
4. I always felt that the “Poor Widdle Ben” campaign that successfully swept Argo to the BP win was one of the more cynical ones ever. This is Argo on Steroids.
5. When the Dark Knight whiners got the Academy to wildly change its BP rules ten years ago, the watered down BP category that resulted I think permanently damaged the prestige of the award. I shudder to think what reactive rules changes for Director will do to the prestige of THAT award.
No, critics actually say this all the time that this particular choice worked for me, maybe won’t work with majority people. Mostly people who know the subject matter.
Problem of Selma is that it is too sober and historically accurate. Better have one of those with “I have voices” and all those cathartic and fake moments.
I’m sorry Sasha, but you weren’t challenged because you didn’t like the film, most people respect your right to like or hate whatever you want. You were challenged because you made the insulting and baseless claim – one that you are sticking to in this article still – that critics who praised the film, essentially lied to support an agenda they have never bothered to support before (female directors). Just a reminder that those critics with LW raves included the likes of A.O. Scott, Kenneth Turan and Pete Travers. You weren’t challenged because you didn’t like the film, you were challenged because you questioned the integrity of everyone, including established film critics, who disagreed with your highly arguable personal opinion. You weren’t challenged because you said “I didn’t like this film!”, you were challenged because you said and kept repeating that “I didn’t like this film and if you did, I don’t care how established or influential of a voice you have, your integrity is non-existent because you are lying for an agenda”. It was just a massive insult you never owned up to and still consider a valid argument. It isn’t.
I have always valued your opinions, Sasha and I still do, so imagine my surprise when after months of listening to you repeat your complaints about the “structural disaster of a Rubik’s Cube”, I finally went to see the film and realised the structure was perfectly coherent. Based on your many LW related articles, I expected a proper zigzag puzzle by the time the film started and it was nothing of the sort : there were two timelines (past and present) running simultaneously, both in chronological order; the transitions were incredibly clear (“7 years earlier”, “New York Hardware” sign, Dreaming of the Past on a Train in the Present; Jo’s short hair in the past timeline and long hair in the present one; different colour palettes for both timelines – a more vibrant one for the past and a distinctively greyer one for the present) and the editing was on point, as well. So I genuinely don’t know where this “structural disaster” argument came from when the film was easy to follow thanks to the very prominent transitions. I think you didn’t give the film a fair shot (you said it was the only BP contender you refused to see more than once) and you are on record about your immense disdain for both the source material and the writer / director whose work has been apparently irritating you since Frances Ha. I have zero problem with anyone not liking a novel or a writer / director or both but admitting strong bias would be preferable to this “yeah so I sat down to see it already knowing I hate the story and don’t like the director’s style but trust me when I say it is a bad film” argument. It is just not credible when your bias is so well-documented. Mainly because you were the one documenting it.
Yeah, I agree. It’s odd – “Many critics did everyone a disservice by not being completely honest about Little Women. By and large, they went overboard for it, giving it a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes with only a few brave voices of dissent endeavoring to describe what the film is and what it isn’t”.
One could accuse critics of doing this for literally any movie with a high
score. I could claim the exact same thing about The Irishman, a movie I didn’t enjoy, but I wouldn’t make that claim, because I would have absolutely no way of defending it except by explaining why I, personally, did not find the movie very good. I wonder how Sasha would react if people DID start making that claim, though.
The point isn’t about whether Sasha likes the movie or not. It’s fine if
she didn’t. That’s OK. I don’t like a lot of her favorite movies, plenty of people hate several of my own favorites. The point is that if EVEN Greta Gerwig – with the good will and fanbase she’s accumulated, with her charm, with the critical consensus and box office she’s achieved – can’t make it into BD, especially over someone like Phillips, then yeah, there’s probably deeper structural issues afoot, which is no secret. Which is why I think Sasha is taking the defense of Gerwig far too literally – it’s simultaneously a defense of ALL women who have been snubbed, with Gerwig as one particularly conspicuous example, but I’d say the exact same thing about Sciamma.
I don’t think that we should be pointing to the abysmal track record of
the academy – 5 women directors in almost a century – and then use that to turn around and essentially tell Gerwig that she should be happy and grateful with what she’s got already. The point of bringing up that abysmal track record isnt’ to bring other women down.
It’s also official that you’re obsessed with this topic. Like clockwork you can’t stop commenting despite how annoyed you are. https://media3.giphy.com/media/pVHtzDD6xbMo9pNVqB/giphy.gif
But if the critics don’t consider the flashbacks to be a flaw, why should they call it a flaw? It’s not like telling a story out of chronological order is weird and jarring; it’s been common since at least the ’90s. It’s not the critics’ job to “present the full range of opinions”, it’s their job to present their own analysis.
Oh shiiiit. You nailed the Gaga-JLo part
“In order for a director to be Oscar nominated, ideally they have to be as good as or better than the other five nominees. You can read about the very real issues in dozens of Rotten Tomatoes user reviews, which make no bones about it”
I’m not sure that picking through Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews is the best methodology for trying to prove that Gerwig didn’t make the cut because too many people had issues with it (or because it simply wasn’t objectively “good” enough), when Irishman has a lower score (86 compared to Little Women’s 92 for audience ratings). I can do the exact same thing you’ve done in your article – take a look at some of these criticisms of Scorsese’s movie:
“The time shifting was fine with me most of the time, but who was married to who and why got a bit old and threw me into confusion more than once. That CGI to me is not really as bad as everyone says. Not Scorsese’s greatest by any means, but I’m usually happy to have him.”
“The movie felt like a stretched collection of clips from other films with narration, like one of those ‘tribute to’ documentaries. It was difficult for me to identify with or care about the characters on the screen, and the movie felt somewhat bland and stretched. It’s too bad that I chose this film to introduce my girlfriend to Scorsese. Given the other positive reviews, I expected to see the likes of Casino or Goodfellas. In the end, we both regretted spending time watching The Irishman and found it profoundly dull.”
“It’s not as good as Goodfellas. At most points the movie drags on for too long that you feel so drained while watching. Really isn’t worth the hype. No female characters that would drive a female audience”
“Took about 4 nights to watch it all the way through. We didn’t need another Hoffa movie at all. Just go back and watch Casino, Goodfellas and the Departed again, this thing is soulless chore to finish. Maybe I would give it 2.5, but considering the massive waste of talent involved it has to be .5 stars because its a horrible shame this is what came from the people involved in this plot-less, un-inspired, poorly-edited, garbage movie.”
“It was every mob movie ever made condensed to 3.5 hours… plus green contacts. It was fine.”
“A-list of actors, but long boring movie with poor acting. It was torture hanging in there. Are the critics giving good ratings just because of name recognition?”
“Unclear why this has been so highly rated other than as an automatic genuflect to Scorsese? Story does not warrant its length and the standard Mafia tropes are trotted out with glee by the usual suspects. It’s all been done before and better (Coppola springs to mind). Scorsese himself has done better and I feel both the movie and performances were done on autopilot! Go see The Godfather(s) or Casino if you want to see a great mafia movie….”
“I don’t know why The Irishman gets such a high rating from folk. I found it incredibly boring and fundamentally pointless. I love the genre and the actors, so was disappointed that it was a total waste of sooo much of my time.”
“Te·di·ous beyond belief. Waited through this entire – – – way too long – – – movie thinking, given the reviews that this story about a dull sociopath will improve, but it never does. Depressingly about male power and control while their women shop, smoke cigarettes and say very, very little. The only power left to women is to avoid and ignore their men, which is what I recommend you do to this movie.”
“How does this have such a high rating? Boring story line with no real climax. Very drawn out. Plenty of star power wasted. Movie could have been cut to about 20 minutes and achieved the same result.”
“BORING!!!!!! If you want to bored out of your mind and need an aid to fall asleep, watch this movie! I wasted 3.5hrs of my valuable time on this typical Scorsese movie. This movie was nothing new or exciting. Total disappointment!!! So glad this movie was on Netflix and I didn’t have to pay lots of money to watch it at the theatre. This movie is not worthy of the credit and nominations it has or will receive! This movie sucks!!!!!!”
“An old man creating a vanity project about old men with horribly unbelievable special effects.The Irishman is an overrated waste of time – kept afloat by reputations of the actors and director involved.”
I could go on, but basically, based on your own logic and methodology, it’s not Greta who’s getting a “pass” or being praised or defended just because of her sex/gender – it’s SCORSESE who’s the one getting a free pass to a nomination, based on namesake, nostalgia, and star power.
Great article! I still don’t get the excitement over Greta Gerwig and Little Women. It delivered nothing new that the various productions (including the phenomenal BBC series) already delivered. On top of that, most of the performances in it were FLAT – I love Saoirse Ronan but her nom is a case of rewarding a familiar name vs Academy members going out of their way to see and reward groundbreaking performances like Awkwafina.
A dear friend and Awards strategist who has two films up for Best Picture let me in on a little secret – the reason we see such a “meh” and predictable Best Picture list is because most Academy members didn’t bother showing up to screenings of less prestige films. They went to the major studio screenings but the shortened calendar gave them no time to see and appreciate smaller films with fantastic performances. He had 5 films in the running and the only time screenings were full were for the 2 films that were helmed by major studios. The Little Women team should count itself lucky that it even got in for as many awards as it did.
I hold out hope that she will enter the conversation again one day, she is ridiculously talented and I feel like she has a lot left in her yet I don’t know whether she isn’t getting the opportunities or isn’t writing or what the problem is recently but other than Top of The Lake (which is a masterpiece, to be clear) she just hasn’t done much. Its been what 11 years since Bright Star and she hasn’t made a film since… Its really sad!
I don’t think I’ve ever once seen her say that a lot of people don’t legitimately love Little Women. In this piece alone she even says over and over again to be clear that many people love it. For the record I am someone who loves Little Women. I did find the flashbacks a bit jarring for the first half an hour because the visual cues are quite subtle and they have actors in their twenties playing people in their pre teens but I found I was quickly able to get on the film’s level and ended up loving it. It will probably end up being my number 10 of the year (or somewhere around there) .
Anyway Sasha is not saying you are not allowed to love Little Women or that you don’t actually love Little women. The reason she is endlessly going on about it is because the internet is endlessly telling people who don’t like it that they are sexist, which most of the time is not true. The film is made in a particular way and some people can get on its level and love it yet others can’t and don’t. That is fine, Sasha is fine with that. She is just pushing back against people who don’t believe this to be true. To me that is fair enough – I love it but I totally understand that others don’t and again, that is fine. That should be the end of the discussion. The problem right now is that she personally doesn’t like it and wouldn’t nominate it for best director so when the Internet is screaming that she isn’t nominated because the voters are sexist she feels like she has to defend those voters and make the argument that, shocker, maybe they aren’t sexist and they just didn’t love it as much as you did and maybe they have reasons for not loving it that aren’t sexist. Again, that is fine.
God she’s even been having to repeat “I don’t hate Greta Gerwig I don’t hate Greta Gerwig” and still there are so many of these comments that open with ” god does Sasha hate Greta Gerwig”. Okay I’m done.
The first half of this article is about criticizing people for not being willing to accept that Academy voters denied Gerwig the nomination because of their reaction to the film, and not because of misogyny. Great. You’re right.
But then the second half of this article is all about accusing the people who did like the film of having ulterior motives. Do you really not see the contradiction here? Little Women got better reviews and more of an awards push than other films directed by women. Why? It’s not because Gerwig is more marketable for awards, it’s because people thought Little Women was better than those other films. It’s fine if you disagree, but it’s BS for you to accuse critics and fans of having an ulterior motive, right after you wrote half an article about how the Academy and HFPA shouldn’t be accused of that.
You rightly insist that people who disagree with the Academy’s decision should accept that it was made because of the film’s perceived merits. Why not hold yourself to the same standard when you disagree with the professional critics?
That’s the cold hard truth about Ava DuVernay (Selma) and Dee Rees (Mudbound). Both should have been in there with a shot at winning, the fact that they didn’t even get the nominations, was just ridiculous. And I won’t even be coy here : DuVernay absolutely deserved Morten Tyldum’s spot and Rees absolutely should have gotten in instead of Gerwig who I did not consider nomination-worthy for Lady Bird. I do think she was for Little Women though. Or more like if Phillips was the bar (5th slot) then I honestly could come up with a quintet of directors (Waititi, Mangold, Almodovar, Sciamma, Gerwig) who would have gotten my vote long before he did.
Selma is about as good as any biopic that gets nominated for Best Picture and better than most. I didn’t care for it, but I’m deeply cynical when it comes to biopics and their reliance on “oohs and aahs” they get from the actors/actresses “transforming” into another celebrity or public figure.
So even though I do not care for Selma, the Academy strangely ignored it when so many similar biopics have received recognition. So many dull ones, like The King’s Speech and Green Book have won, even against superior competition. A “true life” civil rights drama should have been catnip to the Academy.
I second Vily’s comments. Nicely put.
And an excellent read, Sasha. Lots of cogent points about just where the discourse is at.
I think he’s saying that sexism is an underlying factor in Oscar nominations.
I think a lot of it comes from people nominating their friends or icons and outside of Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, there just aren’t many women that check those boxes. You think those stuffy old men who vote for Best Director have many female peers? Sexism prevented that from happening a long time ago.
Greta Gerwig didn’t receive a single BD nomination from any of the three key precursor groups (DGA, Bafta, HFPA) so anyone surprised about her not receiving an Oscar nomination, clearly doesn’t know how this works. Sure, you can get an Oscar nod without any of those three but it is incredibly rare based on precedent.
The question shouldn’t be why Gerwig didn’t receive an Oscar nomination in BD, the question should be how come she wasn’t in serious consideration in BD at any of these organisations even though she delivered a film that was considerably more critically acclaimed than the films of 3 of the BD nominees at the Oscars and is also expected to be more profitable than 3 of the nominees, as well.
And if you ask me, the ACTUAL question regarding the BD category and women, shouldn’t even be about Gerwig : where the hell was Celine Sciamma all season after she delivered a towering masterpiece that garnered her unanimous rave reviews from US critics ? And as for women being snubbed by the Academy, where is Claire Mathon (Cinematography), Mary Steenburgen (Song), Lulu Wang (Original Screenplay) ?
This whole thing is sooo much bigger than Gerwig who still got a decent deal with consecutive picture / script nominations.
How it works:
Ava and Dee miss: Blame on Netflix, bad campaign, late release…
Greta miss: Academy is a bunch of misogynists.
How this people are ridiculous… how can Trevor Noah say the bullshit he said about a film receiving 6 nominations not receiving BP when another film with 6 noms directed by a foreign POC also failed to receive a Directing nom after DGA.
Now suddenly people are worried that stories nominated for BP are over male-centric. Why they were mute when La La Land was trashed and male centric Moonlight was crowned instead? Why they were mute when Carol received 6 Oscar noms, outrageously missed BP and BD and were all about the male centric and sub-par Straight Outta Compton? Did I read any single piece questioning why Brokeback and Moonlight were so much more successful despite having review in the level of Carol?
Thank you for that insight, Stephanie Grisham.
Amen.
Yes, I for one can’t get enough. Her predictability gives me pure pleasure. Good clean fun.
Let me see if I have this straight. Sasha is not a big fan of Greta Gerwig or ‘Little Women’. I’m just trying to read between the lines of her last 20 articles.
Campion is my favourite director, so many masterpieces. Portrait of a Lady was phenomenal, it was unfairly criticised in my opinion. Holy Smoke was brilliant and even In The Cut was terrific. Her first film the quirky Sweetie is also worth catching.
And the Top of The Lake series.
More actresses in yellowface (Rainer and Hunt) have actually won Oscars than Asian actresses.
Exactly. The last thing we need is to pot kettle black. Constantly making the same articles about a selective case of clickbait outrage is participating in feeding and subsisting off that machine. More diversity of coverage please.
de Armas, yes! Hahahaha
I was shocked to read a stat that six (I think) Asian films have been nominated for five or more Oscars — Parasite being the latest — and not one of them received a single acting nomination.
Ugh, I know, right! And Pitt cheated on Aniston with Jolie and now he’s being recognized for OUATIH.
Ana de Campo? Do you mean Ana de Armas?
Wow. Does Sasha have a picture of Greta Gerwig with the eyes slashed out hanging in her bedroom? I could have watched Little Women again in the time it took to read this whole piece, and I wish I had.
I get and agree with all of the points Sasha is making here about how the Oscar race works and who is expected to get in or not each year, and that Gerwig missing this year was not a “snub” in the traditional sense because she lacked precursors. All true.
What I’m sick of is Sasha’s insistence that people who love this movie don’t *really* love the movie, but are trying to advance some narrative to support Gerwig. A whole lot of people love this movie for very pure reasons. A lot of people love Joker, too. Why not let them do so without being accused of intellectual dishonesty?
As for Little Women’s structure, I’m baffled by why people find it confusing. Flashbacks are hardly a new concept! The women are remembering their childhood, and both timelines are shot and performed in such a way that it’s easy to tell them apart. I can’t believe people lack basic film literacy and are unable to figure this out.
Yeah, he’s just trying to stir the pot. I’m not sure he even watches the Oscars.
Yes Michael Nymans score is my all time favourite, even after almost 30 years.
How it missed a nomination, I’ll never know.
I know right! Campion has made some superior films (Bright Star, An Angel at my Table), and Schindlers List to me was a superior Picture nominee, but Campion’s performance as director on The Piano was deeply impressive and significantly elevated that film. In retrospect, she really should have ran off with that award.
That would have been an incredible lineup! I’m not too crazy about Zellweger’s spot as I think it’s just another dreary biopic, same with Erivo, but more than anything I’d just like to see more diversity from worthy films.
I actually really love Lady Gaga’s performance for reasons I couldn’t even discuss last awards season because I didn’t see the movie until after the Oscars, and while she wasn’t as good as the ingenious Colman IMO, I thought her nomination was very worthy and in a different year could have won – but your point totally still stands
I’m really tired of all this Greta Gerwig talking. It’s just distracting us from the main discussion about sexism in filmmaking. I cannot say if Gerwig deserved a directing nomination because I didn’t watch Little Women yet, but I can say there were great female directed movies in 2019 that deserved the nomination much more than Todd Phillips and, yes, Quentin Tarantino (I’m not the biggest fan of OUATIH). These woman were not even in conversation despite their amazing work. That’s what we should really worry about.
I pray to God there will be no need for more Greta Gerwigs from now. What I wanna say is that it’s really sad that we have to just point “the woman”, like her work isn’t any important. We don’t need “the woman”, we need more WOMEN (in plural) to be in conversation. We need more Lulu Wang, Melina Matsoukas, Olivia Wilde, Celine Sciamma and others getting the recognition their movies deserve. So it’s okay to think Gerwig didn’t deserve a nomination. I can’t say I agree with that because I haven’t seen LW yet, but I wasn’t a huge fan of Lady Bird.
So I agree with most Sasha points, but I really hope we stop this discussion. It seems that 2020 will be a great year for women behind the camera. I hope THEIR talent will be more in conversation so people won’t need to chose another Greta Gerwig again.
And, what about the lack of diversity in front of the camera?
I agree that Gerwig’s lack of a nomination isn’t such a big deal, but her inclusion or another female director’s inclusion in the category wouldn’t have been unwarranted. It’s not like Scorsese or Todd Philips is doing anything new or different with their submissions.
Scorsese has the opposite problem he had in the past: before he was having trouble getting recognized for his incredible films all the way through the early ’90’s; now he’s being praised, and hogging nominations, from other directors, some of them women, that are contributing outstanding films each year. A small handful of his recent efforts, like The Aviator and now The Irishman, are by numbers biopics, with a dash of Scorsese verve. Hugo was a daring move and was a fine submission. He should be held to the same standard as everyone else.
Todd Philips cribbed from Scorsese for The Joker and really, that film is all about Phoenix’s performance. Joker had about as much business getting a director nod as Judy.
I’m not sure why you’re not addressing the lack of diversity in the acting categories (you know, in front of the camera where audiences can see them). In years past you would have had a strong critique ready to go. I can’t tell if you’re just exhausted at making the point, don’t see a problem with anything about the acting nominations, or if your business would be negative affected by making incendiary comments on race in light of the films you are advertising (like Ford v. Ferrari and 1917, which don’t have any acting nominations anyway).
I feel that the push to “honor” so many “legendary” actors like Pitt, Dern, Pryce, Pesci, Pacino, Zellweger, etc. is a shitty exercise that ends up marginalizing new diverse talent, or even old diverse talent in the case of Zhau Shuzhen and Song Kang-ho. How many Academy voters even recognize these actors even have a history of their own when they are slapping Hopkins on the back for looking like a Pope?
So Lady Gaga can be nominated for the one good film she’s provided and Jennifer Lopez gets a shrug for her film (which grossed over $100 million and was produced for much less), and she was a such a great part of why the film performed so well. She’s also been in other solid films throughout the years like Selina and Out of Sight.
It seems like the POC actors have to play a different game than their white counterparts, even when their films are lauded. Especially the actresses.
I’m replying to your comment about mainsplaining to Sasha, when the argument Sasha made has a few holes in it
I mean, one can criticize the college itself, but that’s how the game was played, and that was absolutely clear to everyone beforehand. If Trump won the popular vote but Clinton won the electoral college, the same people would (I believe rightly) argue that she rightfully became president. People should argue that “the popular vote should be how we choose the president”, not “the last election’s results should be evaluated under a different set of rules”. (Please don’t take this as party political, it’s really not about that.)
which is not what KB commented on….or did you just want to comment without reading?
Exactly!
Nuff said.
The electoral college is why Trump “won.”
I would like to start this by saying that this was the first Little Women adaptation that I saw, and I didn’t read the book either. And I will agree with Sasha that indeed, at some points (one or two scenes for me) the timeline was indeed a little bit hard to follow. There were clues, and ultimately it was easy to figure out, but wasn’t obvious. So I can understand if she found it a flaw. I myself didn’t, not really: I thought the “remixed” timeline elevated the story a lot. A whole lot. It added additional meaning and themes to the scenes, without which I don’t think a great movie could’ve been made.
I believe there can be three different problems with the timeline, and they can be found in the quoted RottenTomatoes lines:
1. Firstly, one can see that for fans of the book, or fans of the earlier films, changing the story is almost sacrilegious. A lot of the RT comments are about this. And this is a very natural human reaction. If someone watches a new adaptation of a material they love, they really want to see the exact thing with no changes. One example for this is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I think it’s by far the best film in the series, and generally an amazing film. But some people, who care more about Harry Potter as a literary series than the films as works of cinematic art, including my sister, for example, will dislike the film because it deviates so much from the book they love. That is a normal reaction, but doesn’t make the films any less great.
2. Secondly, some people just don’t like films that make them do anything. As ugly as it sounds, that’s just how it is. They don’t really care about what the filmmaker wants to convey by putting specific scenes next to each other. Their enjoyment of film is more shallow. We know that some people watch films to be entertained, not for their “art value”, and that’s absolutely fine. But I would imagine that some of the RT comments come from this group.
3. And thirdly, there is a more complicated group. I would imagine that Sasha belongs here, but of course wouldn’t want to miscategorize her. These are the people that just simply don’t like something that’s in the film. This sounds very general, but that is my intention. You see, we all belong in this group, not necessarily for this film, but for something. And films are things that we can like or dislike based on the impact it has on us, as individuals. We won’t simply like something just because others tell us that they liked it, or that it’s “good”, or that we should. If someone deeply considers the film, and still thinks the jumpy timeline makes it messy and bad, most likely noone will convince them otherwise. And that is fine, that’s why art is subjective. I’ve been there with multiple films, that everyone, people I respect and whom I know know a whole lot about cinema, seemed to love, and I just couldn’t even begin to. Pablo Larrain’s Ema, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War, Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir. Of course, in my mind I can try to say over and over that just because I didn’t like it others can, and my experience is not universal, and I shouldn’t be annoyed if others champion these films as masterpieces because they genuinely feel that way, and I do the same thing with the stuff I love. But ultimately it doesn’t matter. I still get a bit angry when somebody doesn’t feel the same way that I am, because that’s human nature, I guess. And oh, we can feel so vindicated when our opinion is backed by the yellow number of Metacritic, that yes, I told you that it’s bad, you idiots! But then my favourite gets the same treatment and suddenly I find myself calling the critics idiots. It all comes down to what we love, truly, deep in our hearts. So I admire Sasha that despite all the reactions she gets, she stands firm by her opinion on this film. And she won’t and shouldn’t change that because of what others say. And she should be annoyed when it gets a reaction she thinks it doesn’t deserve. And in return we’ll be annoyed that she’s annoyed, instead of becoming a fan like us. It is what it is. Let’s just not forget that these are ultimately silly awards, and it really doesn’t matter in the end.
The people who voted for Trump did so because they were/are ignorant, cowardly, racist, sexist, or flat out STUPID fools, and THEY and THEIR actions are why Trump won. I didn’t force anyone to vote for him, those pigs did that on their own damn accord. For people who talk about “snowflakes” and “thin skin”, voting for Trump out of spite for whatever the hell names I call them is pretty damn f*cking thin-skinned. “Oh, boohoo, this gay hispanic man thinks I’m racist, I’m going to shoot myself in the foot by voting for this absolute monster, that’ll show him!”
That’s not how it fucking went down, people voted for him because people in this country are easily manipulable pigs. Deplorables, if you will. Say whatever the hell you want about movies, but don’t tout that absolutely garbage nonsense about people “like me” being why Trump won – I get some very mild enjoyment out of our squabbles here, even when you are being a troll, but I’d be just as happy blocking you.
The people who voted for Trump did so because they were/are ignorant, cowardly, racist, sexist, or flat out STUPID fools, and THEY and THEIR actions are why Trump won. I didn’t force anyone to vote for him, those pigs did that on their own damn accord. For people who talk about “snowflakes” and “thin skin”, voting for Trump out of spite for whatever the hell names I call them is pretty damn f*cking thin-skinned. “Oh, boohoo, this gay hispanic man thinks I’m racist, I’m going to shoot myself in the foot by voting for this absolute monster, that’ll show him!”
That’s not how it fucking went down, people voted for him because people in this country are easily manipulable pigs. Deplorables, if you will. Say whatever the hell you want about movies, but don’t tout that absolutely garbage nonsense about people “like me” being why Trump won – I get some very mild enjoyment out of our squabbles here, even when you are being a troll, but I’d be just as happy blocking you.
It’s now official! More words have been contained in this column about Greta Gerwig and Little Women than were in Les Miserables, A Tale of Two Cities, War and Peace, and Remembrance of Things Past (Vols. 1-7) combined! Brava!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a9632c6162b42286b48298f0c4bb4dd97df6625504581e81aad4f2f11ab020bf.gif
No one wants her nominated BECAUSE she is a woman. But if a dozen movies are made every year with a roughly even amount of critical acclaim, starpower, box office, precursor nods, etc, why is it always the female-directed movie that gets left out? As it has in all but 5 of the past 92 years of Oscars?
I feel bad for the VFX team, whose talent is, I’m sure, incredible – but there’s just some things I don’t think we have the technology for yet, and the fact that the movie has an Oscar nom for the effects is … frankly just so bizarre
And yet, she thinks the critics conspired to rate the film highly when deep down they really didn’t like it, and just wanted to push an agenda
Wells is talking about this too
I’m rewatching the movie (in installments, although I should just do the whole thing at once, I know, but it’s tough; maybe this would have been far better as a Netflix series rather than movie) and anyways the scene where he beats up that grocery store man would almost be laughable if it weren’t kind of … sad, watching DeNiro in his frail 76-going-on-40? 45? 35? 50? who knows? year old body trying feebly to convince us that he was beating up an able bodied man half his age. I feel sad and ageist and sorry to DeNiro for saying that but – it just wasn’t a good look …
The argument is no male director could have gotten away with Gerwig’s LW structure. I counter that with no female director could have gotten away with that deaging aspect of a 210min film.
way to mansplain movie reviews to a woman writing about movies for decades…
I respectfully disagree. He wasn’t magnetic enough to me in the same way that Taron, while flashier, was not charismatic enough.
Thank you for being so brave writing this piece. I am pretty sure you’ll be attacked for it. But you put it best in this paragraph:
“But never in all of that time did I ever once make the argument that any woman should be recognized because she was a woman. Instead, I have always argued on merit. It is insulting to do anything else. Awards should be given to those who deserve it. We can’t talk about equality and then decide to give women bonus points. The moment we do that, the instant we say because we are women we should demand special consideration based on gender, then we concede that we aren’t equal after all.”
I agree with this 100%. If anyone has a problem with that paragraph, then they are not really serious about REAL equality.
Absolutely no one is talking about “compelling” anyone to vote for anything they don’t like … and certainly not out of guilt and fear. Read through some of the comments on this board if you really want to figure out what people’s concerns are.
Oh I’m forgetting Pan’s Labyrinth – OK, it would be a very difficult choice for me between Marie Antoinette and Pan’s Labyrinth. Maybe a BD/BP split with MA taking Director and PL taking Picture.
You never said anything about DIRECTORS in your post — now you’re bringing them in to the discussion and accusing me of having a limited view of diversity because I talked only about the categories YOU mentioned. I used the examples of actors because that is what you were talking about.
In any case, you seem to suggest that having one Korean among the directors nominated “ticks” a diversity box so the problem is solved. It doesn’t work like that.
The rest of your post makes zero sense. I don’t even understand the points you are making. “Are we going to tell black males that white women are more entitled to the awards than they are?” Huh?
The solution is not complicated. People need to be more open minded. They clearly are not.
I agree. It was a pretty good year for movies – I thought The Queen and Little Miss Sunshine and United 93 were all phenomenal, although if I had to choose, I would almost certainly pick Marie Antoinette over them as well as over the Departed.
Completely agreed. It was Sofia’s masterpiece. Like Campion with The Piano, she should have run away with Best Director in particular.
The only films I prefer from 2006 are Children of Men, United 93, The Lives of Others & Candy.
Oh, I totally agree on all counts. I do think that the narrative was mildly uncomfortably lopsided – I think it went out of its way in terms of the narrative and plot to portray Driver’s character as this poor pitiable guy (it does a mostly good job of portraying his flaws as well as strengths and his fundamental goodness, I have no issue with that – it’s when the plot contorts itself in unnaturalistic ways to get us to feel pity for him, like that scene with the social worker – it was kind of funny, I guess, for about a minute, but then it was too long and way too unbelievable and too transparently an attempt to make us feel sorry for Driver for it to actually work.).
The “genius” thing was kind of irritating because of the autobiographical aspect, but by the end I came around to partially interpreting it as Baumbach poking fun at himself. I also thought the overall pacing was odd – it was difficult to distinguish how much time elapses between the various scenes. I also wasn’t convinced by the dialogue or cinematography/camera direction of the “big fight” scene – I think that it doesn’t even begin to compare in terms of writing, pacing, believability, and to a lesser extent, acting, to the masterful equivalent scene in Before Midnight (although that’s maybe an unfair comparison, because the “fight scene” in Before Midnight was like half an hour, and because I think Before Midnight is a true masterpiece and the far better movie overall than Marriage Story).
I thoroughly believe that Marie Antoinette should have swept the Oscars that year, especially if its closest competitor Three Times would have been too artsy for voters.
“By and large, they went overboard for it, giving it a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes…”
Sasha; Critics don’t “give” films scores on RT. The 95% is an aggregate of “Positive” to “Negative” reviews determined by RT’s specific metrics, with those positive and negative reviews likely containing nuanced variants of the critics liking it or not liking it.
It sounds like Rotten Tomatoes is as confusing to you as Little Women’s “Rubik’s Cube” structure, which, truth be told, more closely resembles a Rubik’s Cube where every tile is the same color.
My post really isn’t that far fetched.
The director category was diverse. One of the nominees was Korean, or is that the wrong kind of diversity?
In the last few years, the best director nod has gone to Mexican directors. Is that bad diversity?
How is the PC left (who is fueling this outrage_ going to manage that? Are we going to tell black males that white women are more entitled to the awards than they are? Or that those Latino men that won shouldn’t have won because a woman needs to win it? And what about trans women? Or trans men? Or non binary no gender?
Everyone is going to scream for a piece of the “diversity” pie, and many of the “marginalized” communities are going to be attacking each other for it.
There were things to love about Marriage Story. The performances are universally strong and some of the writing is flat out brilliant. It’s not a bad film, it is just a slightly misguided one. To me the story itself just didn’t feel strong enough : two privileged, good-looking, successful, rich white people decide to divorce just cuz even though they have a small child. I get that it is more complex than that and frankly I should and actually will give it a second look at some point but first time around it just didn’t leave as lasting of an impression as I would have expected. For the record to me the standout was Johansson not Driver. He was excellent but Johansson stole the show in my book.
Agreed with it all –
But I’m mostly commenting to express the glee I always get when someone else considers Marie Antoinette a masterpiece. I just got the itch to watch it again – I’ll have to soon …
Little Women has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 95, an audience score of 92, a Cinemascore of A-. Yet apparently no one likes it and only people who know the source material really well can understand it because there are 12 people among the 13,192 who in the Rotten Tomatoes user reviews are calling it out for being bad because of its structure. For every person who on Rotten Tomatoes in the user ratings named the film “not good” for whatever reason, there are 11.5 people calling it “good”. Yet no one dares to actually express their genuine opinion, even among the mainstream audience who are clearly going to see the film as like the piece mentions it will most likely soon pass $100 million in the US alone.
I have no problem with Sasha disliking the film or not liking it that much. What consistently frustrates me is that she seems convinced that people got together and decided to give Gerwig a break. You can always find 12 critical audience assessments, you can always dislike a movie, it could even be that the people you talk to a lot and spend your time with all dislike a movie, probably because in film circles people seem to gravitate towards those who have similar tastes to us. Perhaps even 5% of critics and 8% of audiences think that it’s genuinely awful. That doesn’t mean that most other people liking it is somehow wrong or built out of false pretenses. And the discussion shouldn’t just suddenly stop because of those 5% or those 8%. Otherwise we wouldn’t be getting anywhere.
Another point that briefly pops up here and has been a larger argument in other writing by Sasha on this topic that I find really annoying about the way that female filmmakers are discussed in the race and that I’d like to talk about: for a Phillips nomination to be acceptable, he needed precursor nominations. Sasha has expressed on several occasions her dislike of Joker but since it got precursor nominations, it’s okay. Gerwig on the other hand seems to be demanded that she both get precursor support so that her nomination seems reasonable (which in terms of predicting is reasonable) and must be in a person’s personal top 5 for director for her nomination to be okay for them, otherwise she isn’t allowed to get in before a personal favorite (for example today on the podcast Phillips getting in wasn’t assessed that much with complaints about quality but when suggested that he be moved from the lineup for Gerwig, everyone seemed to agree that in that case even Gerwig shouldn’t get in because Waititi is more deserving than her at that point).
Gerwig or some other female filmmaker not making your top 5 is not reason to cross your arms, lie down and yell: “I won’t move”. No one has their directing lineups match the Oscars’ every year but we aren’t crying about that stuff all the time so clearly we have learned to live with it. Yet with Gerwig this year the notion of: “She didn’t make my 5, thus she can’t be in the lineup” seems somewhat widespread. Even Sasha praised several aspects of Little Women so why is this film making the lineup so terrifying besides a theory that Gerwig shouldn’t be overpraised (which, unless everyone is conspiring to champion her, would mean that people would have to dampen their actual excitement about a filmmaker and her work as to “not go too fast”. I’d also imagine that a lot of female filmmakers wouldn’t like to be treated so that their careers need to be on first gear for first films until they’ve proven they can be masters. Yes, some female filmmakers are going to drop out of the mainstream when they fail once, like the percieved failure of Sofia Coppola with the masterpiece that is known as Marie Antoinette, but the thing is that a lot of times female filmmakers are pushed out of the mainstream despite not having particular failures, for example did anyone ever particularly decide where Jane Campion supposedly failed? So maybe if something happens to Gerwig’s career, it would actually be beneficial for her to showcase her Oscar nominations, the amount of critical praise her films have recieved and the amount of money her films have made in order to get the next project off the ground). Surely worse films have been nominated and we haven’t heard long cases for why those films aren’t good. So why attack her just because you think that there are 10 films that are better from the year (because everyone has those, I for example have seen 7 of the best picture nominees and think that three are actively bad, one is tolerable, two are very good and one is astonishing despite it not quite making my top of the year, meaning that so far none of the best picture nominees that I’ve seen would in my opinion be deserving of nominations)
Oh, I know, but I think Pete thinks the studio is still delusional enough to be gunning for a highly unlikely BP win.
I was swiftly banned from the site for a few months for cynically suggesting Sasha was arguing for OUATIH in bad faith (not to look cool, but for it ticking the boxes of her characteristic awards season narratives in business terms). Despite following the site for 15 years, I was trampled just like that without reply.
It was a distastefully poor accusation to make on my part, but I hope she can hold herself to the same standards. She didn’t like The Favourite last year either, and was professional about it. I get that we have our villain films as awards followers, and Little Women is a bit of that for Sasha this year. Let’s just not go around accusing others of empty praise. It might be more courteous to simply point out the faults in a film, highlight other excellent female-directed films (or previous Little Women), and suggest that the current acclaim won’t necessarily translate into an ongoing legacy in the long-term.
It would just be sad if awards coverage from now on was simply commentating the trending arguments on twitter. It didn’t impact Green Book last year, and won’t impact Little Women this year. There are so many other things to talk about, that warrant coverage.
I think we all really needed another little women piece.
How about discussing important things like the exciting best picture race?
We have similar taste. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a solid 9 for me (minor pacing issues on top of a lot of great things about it) and The Nightingale is a solid 8 (wouldn’t ever see it again but it was a brutal and very powerful film nonetheless).
“Drag” was an overly dramatic exaggeration, I give you that. And you do know that I have always respected Sasha and still do. But that doesn’t mean I will not disagree with arguments of hers that are unchanged from weeks ago and are still insulting and baseless, especially the one about the critics.
I can drop it if you truly think that’s best for everyone and especially if this really is the last article about this because frankly I am truly fed up with the Little Women talk and I don’t enjoy arguing with the same 5 people about the same thing for months end, either, but it will be a two-way street. So if this is really it for the Gerwig case I will be more than happy to stop talking about the Gerwig case.
But if I just shut up now and the same narrative continues here tomorrow then while I will keep my word and stay silent about it, that will be more of a blanket silence. As in I won’t really have much to say here anymore. I will either speak freely about any topic that any article touches on here at AD or I don’t. There is no in-between area there. Not for me at least.
It sounds drastic but I really don’t mean it that way. That’s just how I feel about this topic. Frankly I would prefer it to be done with already and after the Oscar nominations I genuinely thought it would be. But nope, still not done. And that’s a shame.
I wasn’t’ seriously suggesting LW wins BP… I was making a joke about the craziness of it all.
Marriage Story is really its own piece of work. I’m mildly surprised at how good its reviews have been, though not shocked, given how many elements are, actually, really good, including of course the acting.
My favorite part though was watching the absolutely, delightfully, unapologetically, WEIRD and hilarious Julie Hagerty in a truly bizarre, vaguely out-of-place, but still much welcomed role.
“which is why I think Sasha is taking the defense of Gerwig far too literally – it’s simultaneously a defense of ALL women who have been snubbed”
Exactly. You would be hard pressed to find one of these anti-Oscars articles that didn’t also bring up The Farewell, Queen and Slim, Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, etc.
It isn’t really all that complicated. Most people lack discernment when it comes to information sources (information literacy), and a lot of the internet newsmedia nowadays must be negative clickbait in order to survive. Along with global warming, this lacking education among the populace in engaging critically with news sources is our chief global threat. It would be narrow to simply blame twitter outrage, it is more a problem of education, the hunger for news, and the integrity of those who deliver it whilst having to attend to the bottom-line in a transforming industry.
In 1994, Gillian Armstrong made a pretty good Little Women, and she didn’t get nominated either. But she was 44, Australian and not an actor; a nobody to the Academy. There are only 5 nominees each year. Gotta headline something, and Greta’s figurehead presence as an awards season female director gives them some fuel.
https://media1.giphy.com/media/1wX7rhj3YSWkS48zJ8/giphy.gif
Thanks LOL.
“So why isn’t at least now all the focus on that man instead of still dragging the woman who is no longer a contender ?”
You don’t really think this piece “drags Gerwig.” Why say it that way?
Sasha wants the beating she’s taken to end. She asked on twitter what people believe is the best way to end it.
It was a poll. Multiple choice. 2 options.
– drop it?
– try once more to carefully explain how she feels?
overwhelmingly her followers asked her to please share her final thoughts.
phantom, all the time you and I both advise readers to scroll past posts that they know will bother them.
you always share your carefully considered thoughts and feelings — and the site is a better place with your presence.
if you ever write something that’s controversial and provocative and everyone is hammering you for expressing your feelings, you know I’ll be here to defend your right to write whatever the heck you feel like writing.
as for writing about a director whose nomination is not deserved — you could be writing 20 or 30 paragraphs about that right now, yeah?
I wish you would. I hope you do. I look forward to reading your thoughts.
but first I guess you have to do what you’re wishing everyone would do: drop the topic that you’re sick of hearing about and stop helping to fan the flames of this endless firestorm?
Oh, you clearly didn’t get what Tom and I were asking for. We didn’t expect links to articles with those exact conscious exaggerations you used for comedic effect (thanks for clarifying though, I didn’t catch that was supposed to be funny, either), we were asking for links to articles that claim what you claim : that Gerwig is held in as high regard as you claim she is. Because I read a lot of film articles every day and that I did not see anywhere. Is she brought up as an example in all the think pieces on the Academy bias against female directors ? Sure. But she is just an example, not the one people claim deserves all the praise.
Those bitches !
Tarantino is lucky that Uma didn’t seriously hurt herself on that stunt. He didn’t need her to do it to get the shot. A stunt double would have been fine.
But that’s just it. I knew Little Women won’t be anywhere near BP / BD consideration the second we learned it failed to register properly or at all with key precursor groups that it was seemingly tailor made for (HFPA, SAG). This was further confirmed when guilds kept ignoring it, even ones where it was considered to be a shoo in (Costumes, Art Direction). Then the final blow when it didn’t get BP / BD nods from Bafta nor a nod from the DGA.
It hasn’t been a threat in BP / BD since mid-December. So why are there still two articles per day even here on AD about how undeserving it is ? It is no longer a viable Oscar contender so why all the attention still ?
i wasnt gonna say anything but amy and laurie spit in my mouth. and i was fine with it.
One of the most famous critics of my country said it best. Paraphrasing him: the problem isn’t exactly that the director “Greta Gerwig” was shut out ouf the Best Director category, good to great director are more often than not snubbed in these Oscar races. The problem is how Greta Gerwig became the only female name to truly be discussed in terms of Oscar chances.
Lulu Wang, Lorena Scafaria, Mariele Heller, Joanna Hogg, Olivia Wilde, and Melina Matsouskas made movies that entered, somehow, the Oscar race comments at some point, but never were truly discussed nor considered as players bigger enough to have a real chance to break into the Best Director category. Why is that? On the other side of this wheel, we have Joker and Jojo Rabbit, two mildly received movies, and yet Todd Phillips and Taika Waititi never left the Best Director conversation. Why is that? I mean, even Bong Joon-ho and Céline Sciamma made foreign language movies that were equally acclaimed and passionately received, however just one of them was considered as a threat in the Best Director race. Why is that?
The problem is not only the directors branch, nor only their constant exclusion of women in nominations (Five? In 92 years? Gimme a break!). The problem is in the way we talk when we think about “Oscar Movies”. The problem is in the way we consider which stories are “important” enough to make the cut. The problem is in the way we think about which style of direction are more “award deserving” than the others. For we to see some change, we also have to change the way we talk about Oscars, the way we think about Oscars, the way we create buzz about Oscars. Otherwise, we’ll only see scenarios like this year: despite giving a work considered as one of the best of the year (and here, Sasha’s pov is a minority), Greta’s direction never raised above the shadow of a “token” nomination for diversity, and that is not something that she, or we for that matter, deserve.
Looking forward to the new Oscars, where we have the following.
10 Best Pictures
10 best white actors
10 best black actors
10 best Hispanic actors
10 best Asian actors
10 best Middle Eastern actors
10 best white gay actors
10 best black gay actors
10 best Hispanic gay actors
10 best white actresses
10 best black actresses
10 best lesbian actresses
10 best Muslim actresses
10 best HIspanic actresses
etc.etc…the show is too long as it is. But if every “intersectional” category is represented (which the PC left is demanding), the show will run 24 hours straight.
Well then this is your lucky day : Rotten Tomatoes is STILL considered ridiculous and garbage.
Thank you for picking up on my sarcasm, which I thought was obvious. But then, the PC crowd has difficulty with sarcasm, as it is infused with humor, which is banned in PC circles today.
Um…it’s pretty well known that Baumbach left his wife and newborn son for Gerwig. Their unwillingness to even acknowledge they were DATING for several years backs that up.
Actually Baumbach did get dragged in few circles during the nominating process regarding elements of the script that seemed to be not so subtle jabs at JJL (along with howls of amusement at the sheer number of times Adam Driver’s character is referred to as a “genius” leading all the way up to the McArthur Grant payoff). In a race where 5-8 was pretty fluid on the directing depth chart, I suspect that might have kept him out of DGA.
As for Tarantino, yeah, he does deserve a lot more shit for running an unsafe set on Kill Bill. That’s fucking unforgiveable and I don’t disgree with you there.
Doesn’t it have to be funny to be humor?
Oh, I understand. Especially with Beyonce, it always feels like she is doing something to win an Oscar, and that’s a dangerous look. I was just replying to you my thoughts on why she was snubbed. My point is that certain snubs aren’t about sexism IMO but rather the Academy’s time-honored tradition of snobbism and elitism.
He said that her popularity as an artist is due to being attractive and taking her clothes off, rather than her artistic merits.
His /sarc was pretty obvious there.
Say what you will about the acolytes of Greta of Arc, what they bring to the table in terms of admirable passion does help paper over their general humorlessness about all of this.
Which is CLEARLY the strategy its studio has decided to focus on.
Plus one. I would like to see that, as well.
Joker has 1 billion reasons why it overperformed its expected nominations.
He said she was a “good looking woman’. That is the worst thing you can call a woman in this “enlightened” PC age. LOL.
Usually true but this time around they snubbed the biggest music star of them all (Beyonce) with another megastar (Taylor Swift) not even making the shortlist. And while Cats was shit, that Swift / Webber song was at least as good as 2 or 3 in the final Oscar quintet.
Meanwhile if Charlize had her way, there would be no separately gendered acting awards…and yet she’s thrilled she’s nominated (though she’s lucky she might’ve been nominated up against the men since some of those contenders are not actually that strong). Direction is more subjective a field to honor than, say, cinematography, but I don’t necessarily watch a Gerwig film constantly thinking I’m watching a woman’s film. Therefore, I don’t think a separate Women’s Director category is necessary or fair or flattering.
This is one of the best articles I’ve seen on this site as a long time reader. And, FWIW, I’m a huge fan of Little Women. Thanks for this well reasoned essay and please do keep it up!
Us was also seen as being slightly less “wow” than Get Out, didn’t make as much money, and came out last February. Lupita probably ended up in the 6th or 7th slot, which isn’t that bad considering.
My point is that we are STILL talking about Gerwig on this site even after she missed out on the nod and an arguably mediocre contender got in. So why isn’t at least now all the focus on that man instead of still dragging the woman who is no longer a contender ?
My point is that we are STILL talking about Gerwig on this site even after she missed out on the nod and an arguably mediocre contender got in. So why isn’t at least now all the focus on that man instead of still dragging the woman who is no longer a contender ?
The Best Song category increasingly comes down to what huge star is signing the song.
An article in the Hollywood Reporter today talked about expanding to ten directors. The Guardian has suggested a Best Female Director category.
Sasha didn’t cause those articles to be written. And she is hardly alone wondering why so many people want to fundamentally change a major oscar category on behalf of one person.
(full disclosure, I hated going to 10 Best Picture nominees and thought that the Academy had zero reason to placate Christopher Nolan to the clip they did)
As someone who is studying statistics, I wouldn’t because when assessing hypotheses the direct expression of causation is often a very difficult thing to do, especially if you’re a frequentist rather than a Bayesian. For example most researchers use the p-value in assessing data and all that the p-value is is a description of how well it correlates with what you want to be the case, meaning causation isn’t really even studied.
Also, I think alexsh’s point is pretty clear: if Sasha can discredit Little Women by pulling out 7 user reviews, then any film can be discredited by pulling an equal amount or more user reviews on a film
Well, if Lupita couldn’t get nominated this year, Get Out’s bigger issue was genre bias on a preferential ballot vs. a bigger tech player.
Oh, it’s the big meanie men.
Honestly, I don’t care for her schtick largely because Lady Bird was massively overhyped, the Woody Allen stunt was unforgiveable, and frankly the Jennifer Jason Leigh thing was pretty sleazy as well.
People can dislike her for reasons other than her gender. Try to remember that sparky.
I was literally responding to Sasha’s own attempt to use RT as a way of discrediting the critical acclaim that Gerwig has received – so you must also have an issue with Sasha’s article, then
Roma won three Oscars including Best Director.
Green Book had bad critic’s scores, but it had the “right place right time” thing going for it (the Netflix controversy with Roma, Blackkklansman missing major precursors, a horifically weak field apart from that)
Greta of Arc would have likely won BP last year.
Lol yeah, ok, right. Well, based on your comments, it’s not “acolytes of Greta of Arc” that are the problem – it’s the misogynist people burning Greta of Arc at the stake who are the problem.
Whatever, it’s a stupid goddamn statistic for people to constantly invoke as proof of a movie’s Oscar worthiness.
Roma and Boyhood boatraced the RT/Meta sweepstakes and were largely non-factors when it came to actual Oscar wins.
That’s irrelevant to what alexsh was talking about.
Thanks, Aku.
Real statisticians choke on their drinks when you mention RT and Meta as legit precursors.
Correlation isn’t causation. Find me a SINGLE voting member of the Director’s branch to go on record saying they base their vote on RT/Meta and we’ll talk.
According to most critics, Greta is the only woman to ever direct a movie, she’s never been nominated for best director, her version of Little Women is the only one directed by a woman, she’s the only female in Hollywood, she’s the only actress in Hollywood, she’s the greatest human being to walk the Earth, she is beyond criticism, and that she may be a god.
Soon the media will starting pushing “Greta for president” stories.
The #OscarsSoMeanToGerwig notion has been one that I had only seen touted here, again and again, until I actually searched for it online. It has been a talking point, but this site (posts and comments) has amplified it to a ridiculous degree. No one offline is having this discussion, either among film industry colleagues or moviegoing laymen that I know. People love Little Women but the fact is, not that many people care enough about awards season to be bothered about the nominees for Best Director.
Yet is was. Perhaps the writer’s branch really like it. It helped that Zaillian was a previous nominee and winner (it’s hard for novice screenwriters to get nominated for their first and second features)
And yet out of hundreds of BD nominations over the years, I can only think of two with an MC score under 60 : The Reader and Joker. I don’t think the argument is that members of the Director’s Branch check MC to see if they can vote for their pick because he met the MC score requirement, I think it’s more like BD nods almost always go to films that are critically acclaimed thus have high MC / RT scores.
Sasha and others are trying to save an Academy prone to reactive thinking from ruining the Best Director category with “fixes” to placate the denizons of Greta of Arc.
Except Oyelowo was also flat and lacked the gravitas and presence.
Critical acclaim doesn’t always equate into Oscar nods or wins.
I agree, but (1) they don’t view her seriously as a music professional, (2) nobody saw the movie, (3) the main lyric copied Wizard of Oz too much for them, and (4) didn’t she just write the lyrics as a submission to an existing piece of music composed by the composer for a film? I knew they weren’t going to nominate her.
He’s responding to the high importance that Sasha ascribed to Rotten Tomatoes user reviews in this article.
Bringing up audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes is ridiculous. Many Oscar winners are not well-liked by the public. As a matter of fact, two of the last three Best Picture winners, The Shape of Water and Moonlight, had RT audience scores in the 70s. One of the first reviews for Moonlight says, “Worst movie I have ever seen.” You of all people should no audience popularity has nothing to do with Oscar love anymore. But for the record, my audience in NYC broke out in applause after watching Little Women.
The big joke is how many times has she blatantly pushed a movie by women or POC, regardless of its merits or awards chances? I won’t name names here, but you’d think she’d be glad for a woman director to have another success. Best Director nom or not, GG is proof that a woman director can have a prolific career with the right choices and that the industry by and large will welcome her with open arms. The way she keeps bringing up LW, you would think it received 11+ Oscar nominations including Director and had a chance of actually winning Picture.
Maybe. All I know is that the Glasgow song, to me, was better than any of the 5 Oscar nominees.
I didn’t personally reply to you here earlier but really wanted to go out of my way to second your comments. Idk what world anyone is in that some movies can have a 95% RT score and that be deserved but others are overrated. We all have our opinions, but the bottom line is that the system is broken and critics can’t be trusted one way or the other.
Not to harp too much on Irishman, but talk about a movie with a confusing temporal structure.
Even the flashbacks in OUATIH were more confusing.
Thank God for your mind and eloquence Mr. Phantom
Omg exactly! The Metacritic and RT ratings are a joke anyway! We live in a world where we try to shoehorn our collective assessment of a movie’s quality into a single number. It’s ridiculous and I’m glad that with Bohemian, Joker, and Jojo lately, the Academy is refusing to kowtow to the critics’ increasingly patent agendas. Sure, everyone is entitled to disagree, and the Academy has often nominated big-budget blockbusters like Cleopatra despite middling reviews. But many, many movies are more than the sum of their fresh ratings.
At this speed Little Women will Argo-fuck Best Picture. https://media3.giphy.com/media/ie22riL22QaQBSKAW3/giphy.gif
The Irishman should not have even been nominated for its screenplay, given the other contenders.
Omg Irishman is so effing boring, it should pay the price. I haven’t read LW in a while and need to rewatch the 1994 version, but what I think GG did to play around with the timeline really worked for me. If she doesn’t win, Jojo sight-unseen is surely more unique and moving than Irishman. It was flat all the way through. If they loved it so much, how come they all agreed not to nominate De Niro?
If there’s anything Irishman shouldn’t win (besides visual effects), it’s screenplay IMO
Selma was very boring and flat. She is obviously not yet beloved by the industry based on her Emmy losses to Chernobyl, a bigger pop-cultural juggernaut of a sort. I like and respect her as a fan of film, but I think her filmmaking is not inherently cinematic. Selma was nowhere near close to getting her that nomination anyway.
Respectfully I feel that Mary Steenburgen’s snub is similar to JLo, Sandler, Aniston, even Beyonce. There are factors going on in each of these races other than sexism. I do think Gerwig deserved a nomination but agree you can’t easily say she was ripped off due to sexism or otherwise when people went OTT in praise for Irishman and Once and as a result she missed most of the major precursors.
Agree. You can make her argument with respect to The Farewell and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, as those were never easy sells to the Academy anyway. But it’s not like LW is some inferior piece of filmmaking compared to Beautiful Day, Harriet, Hustlers, etc.
A woman didn’t get nominated because you insisted on Scorsese being nominated again when (1) he doesn’t deserve it this time and (2) the competition is too fierce for him to win anyway.
I agree many were blowing Gerwig’s horn for the wrong reasons and that their loudest voices might have hurt rather than helped her chances. I’m convinced the nominations the film did end up receiving were never really in jeopardy, but maybe she could’ve gotten Director if the industry had more time to see the film and wasn’t turned off by the demands that they HAVE to nominate a woman director. That said, I DO feel she was deserving and that Sasha has been especially hard on her, or focused especially too much of her time on her, in stark contrast to the free passes Scorsese has had all season.
Yep yep yep. The problem I have with the concept of snubs is who should have not been nominated? Five slots for director and the ones nominated did pretty darn good jobs. It’s a very good list.
I admire your tenacity and your guts. Thank you. Some might say that you should stop, but if a person has a passion for what she is saying, she can never stop.
🙂
This discussion is important because it has ramifications for Adaoted Screenplay. Irishman may play the price for this.