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Oh, this that’s, like, first rotation of Musical Monday’s drama - lol. Across the Universe was a...divisive film (good-naturedly so)

Neil Breen is what you would get if you ordered Richard Gere from Wish.

Key to an Oscar nomination: 1. Biopic of famous, preferably well loved, individual, bonus points if they have debilitating ailment - Firth in King's Speech, Redmayne in The Theory of Everything 2. Movie set in entertainment industry or emphasis on media of some kind, though this usually works more towards Best Picture nominees - The Artist, Argo, Birdman, Spotlight, Chicago 3. Major physical transformation - Theron in Monster, Bale in The Fighter, Leto and McConaughey in Dallas Buyer's Club It's why the final scene of Tropic Thunder is even more funny as when Ben Stiller's character is getting his Oscar you see the other nominees include Tom Hanks as an athlete in the Paralympics, Sean Penn as a blind man, Jon Voight in some sort of period piece, and Tobey Maguire as a gay monk. Also for the original purpose of this thread, I need to add the Jacob's Ladder remake to the worst of last year as that movie is an utter dumpster fire, while if you want a nice chuckle for a fairly short kitchy movie, check out The Velocipastor on Prime. It realizes you're watching it to see how bad it is and plays very well into that in a very Black Dynamite kind of way.

Of for sure, Wiseau's sex scenes were basically narcissistic in that he's basically showing himself off, like if it was him just having sex with a pillow rather than Lisa, he would have been fine with that because people would still see his ass and hump technique. There's also a mix of naivety in Wiseau's as it appears he shot the scenes like that as he thought that's how scenes like that were shot by big film studios, like many other misconceptions he had about the movie making process. That's not to say there wasn't an aspect of perviness on Wiseau's part in having a sex scene with an attractive woman, but Breen's scenes have a very Weinstein feel to them with no irony in them.

I don't know what you're talking about I clearly remember everyone just absolutely loving it!

Yeah, making himself look dirty and scruffy was the thing. There was also a big narrative about how difficult it was to film the movie.

Yeah. I don't have anyone I was pushing for that year. I was probably rooting for Javier Bardem just to be a contrarian. But I'm honestly good with anyone that got nominated winning.

Couldn't agree more. I think the Academy has a habit of celebrating an actor they've realized they should have celebrated in the past for a better performance (see also Colin Firth winning for The King's Speech when it's obvious he should have won for A Single Man instead).

Leo gets dirty and ate meat despite being a vegetarian is about as ugly as I expect he's willing to let himself get. I think he got the Oscar because it was a kind of weak year for lead actors and the whole "can u believe leo never won an oscar!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

Wait... did you think Leo looked ugly in The Revenant? Cause... lol nah Better examples of this would be Gary Oldman for The Darkest Hour, Nicole Kidman for The Hours, or Charlize Theron for Monster (altho Charlize kills it in that role regardless of the physical transformation).

Totally. I liked Bale in Vice, but there's an obvious reason why he gets the nomination for that and not for, say, American Psycho. The other thing that gets awards attention is some big physical transformation, like gaining or losing a lot of weight (Joaquin Phoenix this year) or a normally beautiful actor making themselves look ugly (that's how DiCaprio got his). Again, that's not necessarily an indication of the best acting, but it is the obvious external thing that makes a performance look difficult. I guess you could argue that "looking like another famous person" is just a subset of "extreme physical transformation."

There is this weird thing where if an actor REALLY LOOKS LIKE the real-life person they're playing they seem to automatically get nominations and/or wins. That doesn't necessarily mean they're doing the best acting. But actors also vote on the Oscars, so even they themselves fall into this trap.

I haven't seen either yet so I can't really comment on anything, however, when they showed the clip of Rami for the Oscars during the "here are the nominees for" section. I was struck by how... not acting it seemed. They just played a clip of him lip syncing and I was like jfc this is what they are going to give the Oscar to? At least this year with Taron being a front runner alongside Joaquin you know he actually had to sing all of his own songs in Rocketman (despite me thinking the movie overall was only okay at best).

Yes. A Beatles movie was on my shortlist for my next turn but I hadn't thought of this one. Good pick.