New Oscars standards say best picture contenders must be inclusive to compete

[John Dule]

Sorry, I can't get mad about this. My opinion of the Oscars bottomed out a long time ago.

[John Dule]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

[John Dule]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

All three are amazing. LMAO at Moonlight being forgotten.

Tell me one trait about the main character that makes him a unique individual.

[John Dule]

The only time in recent memory the Oscars made the right choice for best picture was "Moonlight" and that film obviously didn't need quotas to win. Amazing movie. I'm against this, but I'm also against giving the Oscars clout at all. They've always been self serving trash, just like the Grammys. The Grammys should've been cancelled the moment they gave Taylor Swift album of the year over To Pimp a Butterfly.

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

All three are amazing. LMAO at Moonlight being forgotten.

Tell me one trait about the main character that makes him a unique individual.

You're going to need to re-phrase that for me to be able to respond to it.

Was there anything about Chiron's personality that stood out to you, not including the identity groups he belonged to?

[John Dule]

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

I thought they were both good movies but not great. Parasite definitely wasn't better than Alita or Endgame. I though 1917 was the best from those nominated.

Endgame barely qualifies as narrative storytelling, let alone a good movie.

[John Dule]

Moonlight was another in a long line of Oscar bait movies that will be forgotten within ten years. Birdman and Parasite were both far superior and were excellent choices.

All three are amazing. LMAO at Moonlight being forgotten.

Tell me one trait about the main character that makes him a unique individual.

You're going to need to re-phrase that for me to be able to respond to it.

Was there anything about Chiron's personality that stood out to you, not including the identity groups he belonged to?

He was a very shy, very reserved and unsure of himself. His father figure motivates him to eventually come out of his shell, at least in ways that didn't put him at odds with his surroundings. He seemed intelligent but not always able or willing to show that socially.

Now, this is an excellent thing you've brought up. Let's compare Chiron to another character in another story who is unsure of himself, conflicted, and somewhat withdrawn-- Hamlet.

I know it's not fair to compare Moonlight to Hamlet, but here's the thing-- if you have a character like this who is going through inner turmoil, can't reach out to anyone, and is unsure of himself, then you need to find a way of showing that. Shakespeare does this through soliloquies and asides, which allow us glimpses into the character's thought process that give us some sense of how he is feeling. But without these sorts of storytelling devices-- an internal monologue, let's say-- Moonlight gives us a protagonist who is completely impenetrable. When we relate to Chiron, we relate to his situation, not to him as a person. We empathize with him due to the circumstances that he finds himself in, but his actual character as an individual remains unexplored. This character, to me, is the epitome of the "blank slate" protagonist, a character who is deliberately underdeveloped so that the audience can project their own experiences and feelings onto him.

Of course, Chiron is supposed to have his emotions bottled up inside of him, but that alone cannot provide a fulfilling and engaging protagonist for a film. You need aspects of his personality-- things he likes and dislikes, things he's good or bad at, preferences, tastes, interests, hobbies, opinions-- aspects of the human experience that Moonlight deliberately chooses not to explore, I think because it wants to turn Chiron into a universal archetype. Speaking as someone who values characters and their development (almost above all else) in films, I found this approach lacking.

[John Dule]

Obviously you are going to have only white people as Nazis. unless the person is so near-white that nobody would notice. Or one will have to do Nazis in whiteface. Right?

As I understand it, the production has to be diverse, not necessarily the movie itself.

Not many people are actually reading the four criteria or the article before posting.

If these rules would actually lead to getting a potential nominee disqualified, then they are valuing identitarianism over art, which makes them stupid. If they would never actually lead to getting a potential nominee disqualified, then they might as well not even exist, and they are therefore pointless virtue-signaling, which also makes them stupid. Either way, they are stupid.

[John Dule]

This was already covered pretty extensively in the New Left Watch Thread on AAD: essentially, almost every movie would already qualify because nowadays it's pretty much impossible to make a movie where the entire cast and crew are straight cis white men.

Ok, so it's stupid for reason #2.

[John Dule]

This was already covered pretty extensively in the New Left Watch Thread on AAD: essentially, almost every movie would already qualify because nowadays it's pretty much impossible to make a movie where the entire cast and crew are straight cis white men.

If you're going to be that narrow, it's basically almost always been impossible to make a movie with just white guys. Even in some action movie or sports movie or war movie, there's going to be some prominent female family member or love interest.

Lawrence of Arabia is an interesting exception. 4 hour movie with a large cast but no women other than a few extras in one scene.

12 Angry Men is another, and both happen to be in my top five favorite films of all time.