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golden armor Starting Rotation
Joined: 24 Jun 2005 Posts: 845
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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Damn. Didn't realize you all were live tweeting the Oscars. Still stunned and thrilled. After so many "Green Books," "King's Speeches," "Crashes" and the like, I didn't think this could happen. |
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ocho Retired Number
Joined: 24 May 2005 Posts: 53796
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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DaMuleRules wrote: | ocho wrote: | Parasite is so great. So nice when good things happen. |
The old white guys got it right tonight. |
You did ok, boomers! _________________ 14-5-3-12 |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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Now this means Hong Sang-soo needs to be nominated for an Oscar. |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Controversial (?) movie thought of the day: Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ is a very good movie. |
A follow-up with a Korean theme:
Kim Ki-Duk's run from 1999-2006 was exceptional. He may be a rapist who abused his actresses on set and his films definitely reflect his hatred of women, but he'll be dead soon and we can all come back to appreciate whate vile little gems movies like Samaria, 3 Iron, Bad Guy, and The Isle were. |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:41 pm Post subject: |
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Memories of Murder > Parasite > The Host > Mother > Snowpiercer > The Dog of Flanders > Okja
All are good. |
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DaMuleRules Retired Number
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 52654 Location: Making a safety stop at 15 feet.
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:45 pm Post subject: |
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ocho wrote: | DaMuleRules wrote: | ocho wrote: | Parasite is so great. So nice when good things happen. |
The old white guys got it right tonight. |
You did ok, boomers! | _________________ You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames
Jason Isbell
Man, do those lyrics resonate right now |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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DaMuleRules trashing sound editing on Uncut Gems was wrong. |
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ChickenStu Retired Number
Joined: 25 Apr 2015 Posts: 31912 Location: Anaheim, CA
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:49 pm Post subject: |
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Just got done watching it with my husband. I was neither moved nor awed. I realize that is a contrarian take here, and maybe it's because I had sky-high expectations after it just won a few Oscars, but yeah. |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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ChickenStu wrote: | Just got done watching it with my husband. I was neither moved nor awed. I realize that is a contrarian take here, and maybe it's because I had sky-high expectations after it just won a few Oscars, but yeah. |
I always assumed you were a straight white man, Stu. |
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ChickenStu Retired Number
Joined: 25 Apr 2015 Posts: 31912 Location: Anaheim, CA
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:09 pm Post subject: |
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Baron Von Humongous wrote: | ChickenStu wrote: | Just got done watching it with my husband. I was neither moved nor awed. I realize that is a contrarian take here, and maybe it's because I had sky-high expectations after it just won a few Oscars, but yeah. |
I always assumed you were a straight white man, Stu. |
I'll have you know that I'm a gay Italian/Sicilian/Irish guy! In all seriousness, I mean, it was good. I was entertained. But do I think it was groundbreaking or incredible? Nah. Again, perhaps my expectations were just sky-high after all the awards it just won. To be fair, I feel this way about many, many films that ended up winning Best Picture. |
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Omar Little Moderator
Joined: 02 May 2005 Posts: 90306 Location: Formerly Known As 24
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:12 pm Post subject: |
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Baron Von Humongous wrote: | ChickenStu wrote: | Just got done watching it with my husband. I was neither moved nor awed. I realize that is a contrarian take here, and maybe it's because I had sky-high expectations after it just won a few Oscars, but yeah. |
I always assumed you were a straight white man, Stu. |
Well, I’ve always thought you were one legged and non binary, for whatever that’s worth. _________________ “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ― Elie Wiesel |
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C M B Franchise Player
Joined: 15 Nov 2006 Posts: 19864 Location: Prarie & Manchester, high above the western sideline
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Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:40 pm Post subject: |
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It was great to see Joaquin Phoenix outing himself as our friend who is AKA Trey. _________________ http://chickhearn.ytmnd.com/
Sister Golden Hair wrote: | LAMAR ODOM is an anagram for ... DOOM ALARM
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:22 am Post subject: |
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Omar Little wrote: | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | ChickenStu wrote: | Just got done watching it with my husband. I was neither moved nor awed. I realize that is a contrarian take here, and maybe it's because I had sky-high expectations after it just won a few Oscars, but yeah. |
I always assumed you were a straight white man, Stu. |
Well, I’ve always thought you were one legged and non binary, for whatever that’s worth. |
One eyed, not one legged |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:36 am Post subject: |
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The older woman speaking at the end of the ceremony (after they put the lights back up) was Miky Lee, billionaire head of CJ Entertainment and granddaughter of the founder of Samsung. Bong Joon-ho is a multimillionaire blockbuster director in South Korea. Parasite was fêted tonight by a wealthy group of privileged elites each wearing thousands of dollars in clothing while the world's richest man looked on and clapped from the audience.
The movie is a subversive dark comedy about the evil core of capitalism. Art and the production of art can be complicated. |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 5:25 am Post subject: |
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ChickenStu wrote: | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | ChickenStu wrote: | Just got done watching it with my husband. I was neither moved nor awed. I realize that is a contrarian take here, and maybe it's because I had sky-high expectations after it just won a few Oscars, but yeah. |
I always assumed you were a straight white man, Stu. |
I'll have you know that I'm a gay Italian/Sicilian/Irish guy! In all seriousness, I mean, it was good. I was entertained. But do I think it was groundbreaking or incredible? Nah. Again, perhaps my expectations were just sky-high after all the awards it just won. To be fair, I feel this way about many, many films that ended up winning Best Picture. |
I often think the worst thing that can happen to a good movie's reputation is that it wins an Oscar, but these awards have power in the industry, which likely means an open checkbook for Bong's next project, hopefully means South Korean cinema has a permanent place at the prestige cinema table in the minds of Oscar voters, and even more hopefully helps inspire average moviegoers to give more foreign language films a chance.
As to the quality of Parasite, the film felt effortless, which is what so impressed me. There were a small handful of more flawed movies that moved me more in 2019, but Parasite is top notch technical filmmaking and Bong's ability to seamlessly blend genres is near the top of the art right now. He's always used genre, humor, and his innate visual talent to create slick, entertaining movies that are a palatable coating to deliver his social critiques of masculinity and violence, the American military, factory farms, capitalism, etc.
I think that slickness can also make his movies feel cold and detached, and I admit I'm not often strongly moved by his films - the endings of Mother and Memories of Murder being exceptions - but the extended sequence in Parasite during the rainstorm from the Kim family drinking to the descent into the flooded basement apartment with Ki-jung/Jessica (Park So-dam) on a toilet spewing sewage as she tries to get WiFi to me was a masterclass and ends with an obvious visual metaphor, but one I've rarely seen executed with such visual flair and wit. Heck, the awkward fingering scene on the couch was uncomfortably funny because it was so perfectly observed (though maybe I'm revealing too much about myself with that comment) and is a microcosm of Bong's ability to step outside and show us how absurd life really is.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. Maybe it'll pay off more for you on a second viewing a few years down the line when it's not so closely linked to its Oscar win, but sometimes the art just never hits right, and that's okay, too. Like, Noah Baumbach and Pedro Costa have passionate fan bases, but I've never really connected with their movies so far.
ETA: Here's a detailed Twitter thread breaking down how Bong uses visual information in Parasite's driving scenes to establish power between characters: https://twitter.com/HeadExposure/status/1220390286754566144 |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 8:48 am Post subject: |
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Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Shudder 7-Day Free Trial
Day 1
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018)
Mildly amusing, mostly bad, elevated by some righteous kills. The casting confuses me, the cinematography sucks, the script feels like a first draft from Zahler, but a guy is decapitated while peeing, his severed head then falls in the toilet, and his dying body pees on its own severed head floating in the blood-filled toilet bowl, so...not that bad?
I do wish the nostalgia for cheap 80s horror would end. The stuff wasn't that great and it ages poorly in a modern context. |
Day ???
I lost track of what I watched when, so here's a dump of movies I caught on Shudder over the past couple days.Free trial ends on Monday, so trying to squeeze a few more horror flicks in, though I'm tempted to keep it for one month.
Boar
Not good. Just not even entertaining in a bad way for most of its runtime, this is a collection of dumb Aussie stereotypes who get to be victims of a giant animatronic boar terrorizing the Australian countryside. Outside of the cool animatronic/puppet boar in closeups this could be a Sharknado sequel with its terrible pacing and straight to cable visuals.
Tigers Are Not Afraid
A ghost story about five orphaned children in Mexico City whose parents have been kidnapped by the local cartel. It's been a festival darling, which points to its strengths as an atmospheric, visually sumptuous horror movie crossed with political commentary, but its constant hammering of shallow metaphors (yes, there are neverending tiger references) gets tedious whereas festival critics seem to have found something "profound" or whatever in its surface symbolism. Great work with the child actors from new-ish director Issa Lopez. Worth a look.
Mayhem (2017)
Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving carry this thin, but gory and fun assault on the corporate elite climbing the corporate ladder floor by blood-soaked floor under the influence of a rage-inducing virus to get to the CEO. Of the recent spate of "kill your bosses" splatter-fests and dark comedies, I've liked this one the most. Weaving and Yeun have charisma and chemistry galore.
Stagefright: Aquarius
One of the last of the great giallo horror movies, this is an often beautiful, distinctive slasher about an escaped serial killer terrorizing an alternative theater troupe at rehearsal trying to stage the world's most ridiculous erotic musical. The characters are mostly dumb, but have the occasional good idea - they actually try to stick together! - and mixed in with the hilarious over-the-top moments are a handful of legit tension-inducing jump scares due to Michele Soavi's skilled direction. The climactic sequence (and its central tableau) played on, below, and above stage is breathraking in its beauty, absurdity, and tension. Plus it has one of the creepiest masked killers in horror cinema. A real gem if you let it unfold past its 80s slasher cheesy setup. |
Day 0
Cannibal Holocaust
Well, I knew what I was getting into, but this movie seems like a good stopping point. I may come back and sign up for Shudder for a month some time in the future, but I've had my fill of horror for the time being.
Anyway, this is an ouroboros of (bleep). If I made a film within a film that was an actual snuff film to show the complicity of art in human suffering or whatever, all I've really done is make a snuff film. Cannibal Holocaust isn't an actual snuff film obviously - though the practical effects with makeup and prosthetics is often top notch and believable - but it does feature a river turtle being hacked apart and dissected in an extended two minute sequence along with 4-5 other live animal killings completely unnecessary except to shock.
This all takes place in the "darkest jungle" of the Amazon nicknamed "the green inferno" where a group of young filmmakers go to be the first to document fabled cannibal tribes "never before seen by white men's eyes" or some such. When they don't come back, an anthropologist - who gets to be the audience surrogate moral compass - is dispatched to find out what became of them. He pacifies the angry cannibal tribe (apparently now really easy to find by anyone) and discovers a set of unprocessed film in cannisters - that's the first half. Then the second half is the anthropologist reviewing the found footage with studio execs who want to air it to boost ratings. The "found footage" is a group of crude 20-something Caucasian idiots - four men and one woman - whose racism, violent temperament, and nihilism become more prominent the deeper into the jungle they go. There are so many rapes it's hard to keep count; a forced abortion; a woman impaled vaginally on a stake; beheadings; a live penectomy; a whole village burned alive; and, of course, cannibalism. All of this is simulated to varying degrees of queasy verisimilitude, but the dark heart of the movie is the completely unnecessary and cruel killings of animals on screen because director Ruggero Deodato was a well-known racist piece of (bleep) human being.
So, avoid except as a pointless cultural artifact. It's the first extensive found footage horror movie. It kicked off a mini-craze of killer cannibal flicks. Some of the practical gore effects are excellent. But it's crappily acted, poorly structured and paced so that it's mostly boring inbetween animal deaths, and it ends with our anthropologist surrogate pithily inquiring, "who's the real cannibal?" that is too stupid to be sincere and yet too stupid to be funny.
Seeing Parasite win at the Oscars last night was a cleansing experience after watching this crap. |
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Cutheon Franchise Player
Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 12161 Location: Bay Area
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 8:57 am Post subject: |
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I hear that for lovers of Korean cinema, or for those wanting to explore the scene, a YouTube channel (Korean Classic Film) has uploaded over 200 Korean movies with English subtitles - for free. |
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DaMuleRules Retired Number
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 52654 Location: Making a safety stop at 15 feet.
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 9:08 am Post subject: |
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Baron Von Humongous wrote: | DaMuleRules trashing sound editing on Uncut Gems was wrong. |
No, I was pointing out that your trashing of FvF while touting that of Uncut was so flat out wrong that I assumed it had to be a joke. _________________ You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames
Jason Isbell
Man, do those lyrics resonate right now |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 9:31 am Post subject: |
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DaMuleRules wrote: | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | DaMuleRules trashing sound editing on Uncut Gems was wrong. |
No, I was pointing out that your trashing of FvF while touting that of Uncut was so flat out wrong that I assumed it had to be a joke. |
Why would I trash FvF in that category? I would've preferred Uncut Gems be nominated and win, but FvF was a fine winner. |
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Cutheon Franchise Player
Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 12161 Location: Bay Area
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:07 am Post subject: |
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Cutheon wrote: | I hear that for lovers of Korean cinema, or for those wanting to explore the scene, a YouTube channel (Korean Classic Film) has uploaded over 200 Korean movies with English subtitles - for free. |
LINK |
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loslakersss Franchise Player
Joined: 31 Dec 2008 Posts: 11853 Location: LA
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:28 am Post subject: |
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As someone who admittedly is pretty dismissive of awards because they are just as often given due to campaigning as they are given due to merit, I am very happy that a lot of deserving people won. Boon Joon Ho getting 4 statues is awesome, especially after being so humble and thinking his "night was over" before he won Director (and then Picture).
I was pulling for Driver or Leo to win but Joaquin deserved it too and his speech was great. Glad Jojo and Little Women got some love. I'm still upset that Greta didn't get a director nomination though. Overall a great night.
Also, I hear Memories of Murder is free on Youtube now (legally). Neon also bought the rights to it and should be doing a theater re-release soon. |
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Baron Von Humongous Retired Number
Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32979
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:30 am Post subject: |
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Cutheon wrote: | Cutheon wrote: | I hear that for lovers of Korean cinema, or for those wanting to explore the scene, a YouTube channel (Korean Classic Film) has uploaded over 200 Korean movies with English subtitles - for free. |
LINK |
Kim Ki-young's work is a great place to start (The Housemaid is streaming on better quality on the Criterion Channel). |
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ocho Retired Number
Joined: 24 May 2005 Posts: 53796
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 11:12 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | but Joaquin deserved it too |
LINK _________________ 14-5-3-12 |
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DaMuleRules Retired Number
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 52654 Location: Making a safety stop at 15 feet.
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 11:21 am Post subject: |
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ocho wrote: | Quote: | but Joaquin deserved it too |
LINK |
Yeah . . . was the typical Academy move of going with a character driven "performance" as opposed to one of genuine substance. Kinda like Malek last year. _________________ You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames
Jason Isbell
Man, do those lyrics resonate right now |
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ocho Retired Number
Joined: 24 May 2005 Posts: 53796
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 11:24 am Post subject: |
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DaMuleRules wrote: | ocho wrote: | Quote: | but Joaquin deserved it too |
LINK |
Yeah . . . was the typical Academy move of going with a character driven "performance" as opposed to one of genuine substance. Kinda like Malek last year. |
Joaquin is a great performer but this role was all ticks and affects. The kind of thing Johnny Depp would star in if he weren’t canceled. He starts at 11 and ends at 11 and the movie he’s in stinks. There were much better choices but I think voters felt he was due. I’ll just pretend he won for The Master or You Were Never Really Here and refuse to let anyone correct me. _________________ 14-5-3-12 |
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