[EDITED BY: GRIFFIN SHERIDAN]
Hello and welcome back to an all-new installment of BEAM FROM THE BOOTH brought to you by GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY!
Our March is off to a great start after our first ever ARTIST SHOWCASE event this past Friday featuring works and commentary by KATE LEVY. It was a powerful and moving evening, and we can’t wait to host more showcase events just like this one in the very near future.
Beam from the Booth has been covering Hollywood’s awards season for the past month. Now that we’re less than a week away from the Academy Awards, we’re diving back in for some final thoughts ahead of the big night...
ROAD TO THE OSCARS 2024
THE FINAL ACT: NOMINATIONS THAT TELL A STORY
[BY: KYLE MACCIOMEI]
This article is the fourth in a series of Beam from the Booth articles covering the upcoming 96th Academy Awards. Continue to check back in throughout these next few issues for further thoughts and commentary on this year’s awards.
[PART 1 from ISSUE #42] [PART 2 from ISSUE #43] [PART 3 from ISSUE #44]
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The Oscars are just stories about the people who make films. Stories about winners, losers, career achievements, agreed-upon villains and likable heroes. Academy voters often want to vote for the story that resonates with them the most. Most would think that voters would be more focused on the stories told within the films they watch, but often narratives behind the scenes are just as interesting. Whether that be the narrative of a surprising Best Actress win, or a talented new screenwriter who has announced the start of a prolific career, or the triumphant admittance of foreign cinema into a historically Americentric organization, or even the filmmaker who neglected to get any recognition at all.
Whatever the category, there is always a story to tell, and it is those stories that draw me into this elite institution. The players in this story can be annoyingly wealthy, socially ignorant, and possess absurdly out-of-touch egos that the awards themselves contribute heavily to, but they represent the craft of filmmaking itself as well as the value industry leaders place on different aesthetic and cultural trends.
So where do these stories come from? Often it’s the Hollywood reporters that cover the event, whether that be established publications like Vanity Fair, Variety, or the Hollywood Reporter. More importantly, the tales told to the press are woven by studio executives and marketing firms that want to drive a certain kind of framing. But don’t discount the ability of vocal critics on ‘Film Twitter’ to steer the plot in a different direction. It’s a combination of insider experts, cinephiles, and the nominees themselves that dictate the cultural impact of Oscar night.
All of this can seem like an exhausting act of self-aggrandizement, which it most certainly is. The Oscars, though, are an important component of American filmmaking and cinema-going, whether we like it or not. So let’s break down some of the most interesting and apparent stories for this year’s nominations...and what to expect going into the March 10th ceremony.
BEST PICTURE
This year is the tale of Oppenheimer dominance, an unstoppable force that is about to barrel its way through the awards as it picks up the big prize and plenty others along the way. It’s arguably the most guaranteed pick of the night, as the Academy finally crowns Nolan the king of modern Hollywood through his three hour-long historical biopic that made almost one billion dollars. It is also inextricably linked to Barbie and the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon that defined 2023 moviegoing and a post-pandemic return to cinema that moviegoers have been craving. In any other year this would be a three-way competition between Poor Things, The Holdovers, and Anatomy of a Fall. But this is Nolan’s year, which leads us to...
BEST DIRECTOR
Christopher Nolan does not have an Oscar, but in one week that is all going to change. One of the most important and influential filmmakers of the 21st century will be crowned as Oscar royalty at this year’s ceremony and nothing can stop him. He has already won the Golden Globe, the DGA, the BAFTA, and the Critic’s Choice. The Academy gave Martin Scorsese an apology Oscar back in 2006 for The Departed, otherwise he would be in contention for his work on Killers of the Flower Moon.
BEST ACTRESS
This is one of the closest and most exciting races to be decided on Sunday, as Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone go head-to-head. Gladstone won the Globe for Actress in a Comedy, while Stone won the Globe for Actress in a Drama. Gladstone won the SAG, while Emma won the BAFTA and the Critic’s Choice. Lily gave a quietly intense performance going toe-to-toe with two silver screen titans, while Emma Stone exemplified capital-A Acting as she physically transformed herself into both Bella the baby and Dr. Baxter the scientist. Emma already has a trophy back from her stellar performance in La La Land, but some believe Lily overplayed her hand by submitting herself in the more competitive “lead” category when she could have won handily in “supporting.”
Despite being nominated in ten categories, Lead Actress is the only award that Killers of the Flower Moon has a shot of winning. The awards campaign for the film has rallied behind Gladstone, centering her as the emotional core in Scorsese’s late-in-life epic, and the significance of her being the first Native American nominated for this category is not lost in the conversation surrounding her.
BEST ACTOR
A similarly close race between two electric powerhouses, Best Actor is another major category to keep your eye on. The two contenders can be found in The Holdovers' Paul Giamatti and the other in Oppenheimer’s titular character played by Cillian Murphy. Both have long careers behind them that has brought them recognition as talented character actors in supporting roles, but for the first time both of them have a clear shot at the gold. Giamatti was famously snubbed back in 2004 for his wine-filled role in Alexander Payne’s Sideways, and it only feels appropriate it would be Giamatti’s and Payne’s team-up 20 years later that brings them both back to the Academy. This is Murphy’s first Oscar nomination, and he has the benefit of being in nearly every frame of the film that is about to dominate Best Picture on top of the difficult balance required to cover almost five decades of Oppy’s life. Murphy has the SAG and the BAFTA, while Giamatti has the Critic’s Choice and an In-N-Out viral picture. It’s a toss up.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
It’s Da'Vine Joy Randolph. Not even up for discussion.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Robert Downey Jr. has three phases to his career. There’s his first few decades as an up-and-comer who cycled through sobriety and relapse. This was followed by his eleven year iron-clad figurehead of the most dominant film franchise in history. After leaving the Marvel cinematic universe, RDJ is kick-starting the third phase of his career, and he would like to begin it with an Oscar. His relentless campaigning behind the scenes as he attempts to charm every voter at every party has worked very well for him, and we will find out soon if he will achieve this dream. If he doesn’t, then Ryan Gosling’s Ken might swoop in and take it from him, but that is highly unlikely.
BEST SCREENPLAY (ADAPTED and ORIGINAL)
This category is particularly difficult because, due to the strikes, we will not know which scripts win in the WGA awards until a full month after the Oscars. The frontrunners right now are Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction in Adapted Screenplay, and Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall in Original. The screenplay category is often a great place for the Academy to reward up-and-coming talents (think Damon and Affleck, Jordan Peele, and Emerald Fennel), so Cord Jefferson’s feature film debut seems like an appropriate choice...and the complexities of how Anatomy of a Fall’s courtroom scenes weave perception, reality, and judgment are an excellent reason to reward the work.
But there are opportunities for upsets. Barbie did win a screenplay award at the Critic’s Choice Awards, The Holdovers has lots of praise for its dialogue, and who knows if the Oppenheimer glory bleeds itself into the screenplay award.
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM
The Zone of Interest is nominated for Best Picture, thus it will win Best International. This is the unwritten rule of Academy voting. What’s more interesting to talk about is the fact that Anatomy of a Fall technically could have qualified for this category, making it competitive. Even more interesting is the fact that France did not submit the French courtroom drama for the category.
The international Oscar category accepts only one nomination per country. This limits the total number of international films members have to watch and vote on, and it also ensures that five different countries will be represented. So why did France not submit its obvious frontrunner that ended up with five nominations? They went with the more conventional (but still lovely) The Taste of Things, which ended up not receiving a nomination. The Taste of Things caters to a more gentle and conventional audience, which is why France’s seven-person committee may have chosen it over the slightly more subversive and complex Anatomy of a Fall. Additionally, Anatomy’s writer and director Justine Triet is a controversial figure in French media.
An outspoken feminist that often rallies against the old guard of French culture, Triet gave a politically-charged acceptance speech for her Palme d’Or win at the Cannes Film Festival. In it, she rallied against the neoliberal establishment of Macron’s government and how it was “breaking down the French model cultural exception.” The backlash was clear, thus the winds shifted towards The Taste of Things.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Does the Academy award Hayao Miyazaki one more time for what may very well be his last masterpiece? Or does it highlight the awe-inspiring sequel to the Spider-Verse franchise which has changed the state of modern 3D animation? Was The Boy and the Heron too inaccessible in its narrative to really resonate with voters? Or will the Academy choose to hold their vote and wait to reward the third film in the trilogy? Only time will tell.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Similar to Best International, the most interesting story here is the films that were not nominated, specifically American Symphony and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. Neither American frontrunners in this category were selected, which reflects the growing shift of the Academy towards international membership and preferences. All five documentary features were not produced in America, and the clear frontrunner right now is 20 Days in Mariupol. A film that covers Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the subject matter appeals to the political advocacy of Academy voters who could see their vote for this film as a move to highlight the conflict in that region and show support for the Ukrainian cause.
BEST SOUND
The question is this: did enough Academy voters connect with how The Zone of Interest used a comprehensive soundscape to tell its experimental narrative? Or will they fall back on the more conventional frontrunner in Oppenheimer? If the Oppenheimer sweep is all-encompassing, then The Zone of Interest may lose out in the one category it has a shot of winning.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
There have been 38 films released in the Godzilla franchise, and this year marks the first time one of them has been recognized with a nomination for an Academy Award. On top of that, this nomination marks the first time the director of a film has been nominated in the Visual Effects category since Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is also a story of the underdog, as the Godzilla Minus One special effects team is comprised of only 35 VFX artists working on an overall production budget of just $15 million, a pittance in comparison to its other competitors in the field. All of this has worked in its favor, as it is the winning pick for most analysts, with the incredible work that Industrial Light and Magic did on The Creator as the clear second pick. But how can you deny the pure joy of the Godzilla team’s nomination reaction?
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Oh Maestro. You’ve become the Oscar villain of 2024. The most #oscarbait of them all this time around — and, of course, you’re forever tied to the now-fraught figure of Bradley Cooper. Cooper wants an Oscar quite badly, and his campaigning for both this film and A Star is Born shows just how invested he is in this institution. While the film has seven nominations, it is very unlikely that it will win in six of them. Which is a shame, because I personally think the performance is electric, Cooper’s direction deft, and the tone deeply complex as the narrative explores the emotionally fraught relationship between its main characters.
But Maestro does have one thing working for it, and that is Kazu Hiro. The famed special effects makeup artist who got his start in fat-suit comedies like Click and Norbit has found himself as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after prosthetic experts. His work on The Darkest Hour and Bombshell has nabbed him two Oscars already, and Maestro is likely to be his third. While his work does have to beat the antisemetic allegations of Cooper’s much-talked-about nose, his win at the Makeup and Hair Guild awards puts him as the clear frontrunner. Poor Things could pull out a win here, but it’s Maestro’s one clear shot at glory for this awards ceremony.
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Tune back in next week for some final thoughts post-ceremony!
Special thanks to Kirsten Fedorowicz for editing assistance.
FOODS ON SCREEN I WISH I COULD EAT
[BY: LAUREN PATCHETT]
The Princess Diaries (Marshall, 2001)
POSTCARD FROM VEGAS
[BY: MATT EVERITT]
I was in Las Vegas for the first time ever this last week for a work trip and had a small window of time to myself. There were hundreds of options, but it was an easy choice to check out Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard from Earth at The Sphere.
Somehow America’s premiere antagonist to the masses was commissioned to direct a 50 minute documentary shot by his go-to cinematographer Matthew Labatique and edited by Jennifer Lame (who cut everything from A Marriage Story to Oppenheimer). Aronofsky’s new film is only playing at The Sphere, a monstrosity of technology and capital that woo’d me over quick enough because it’s just so fucking cool.
Full disclosure: Aronofsky might be my least favorite “good” director. I admire his skill and vision, but out of his nine films only two actually work for me (Black Swan and The Wrestler), some left me indifferent at best (mother!, Noah, The Fountain, Pi), and some occupy my deepest realms of disdain (The Whale and Requiem for a Dream).
Despite his batting average, I really thought Postcard from Earth stood a good chance of being something special. His previous films may not have worked for me personally, but they’re the result of someone who deeply cares about the world. He’s nothing if not passionate. If I like Earth, and he likes Earth, maybe we could find some common ground?
I was a little taken aback by the welcoming committee as I walked into The Sphere: a drunken guy who was in his best Finance Bro Chic zip-up, yelling at people entering the Sphere that “THAT WAS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN.” Never in a million years would I expect a Finance Bro to be screaming about the impact an Aronofsky film had on him. Had the filmmaker gone full populist crowdpleaser?
Tickets said the movie started at 9:30pm, but that was actually just when the doors opened. You could go sit down in The Sphere if you wanted to, but it was very obvious they wanted you to wander around the giant lobby where they had different displays set up to highlight the technology used in The Sphere. There was some generic sci-fi futurism stuff that felt like it was meant to impress people who still find Elon Musk interesting. All in all, not my thing.
I killed some time, got a $16 dollar beer, and took my seat. The lights went down promptly at 10:30pm...and the show began.
It’s impossible to separate the film from the theater it was shown in, so let’s get this out of the way: the quality of the sound and visuals is astounding. The Sphere feels like what IMAX felt like when you were a kid. I hope they find ways to bring this experience to cities across the country because it is a genuinely exciting development for the possibilities of visual storytelling.
The basic gist of the film is this (minor spoilers ahead):
We open on a space ship thawing out its team from cryogenic sleep. The image only takes up a fraction of the Sphere’s preposterously large screen. A voice comes in and nudges the crew members to shake off the fog of awakening by remembering Earth. That voice becomes the narrator as an image of Earth pops up but then slowly zooms in and blows past the initial framing in the center of the screen and reveals the full power of the theater. There were audible gasps in the theater (mine included).
The narration does a decent Terrence Malick impression as it recounts the wonders of Earth. We survey the Earth from the depths of the sea to the different continents. We move to humanity’s relationship to the land and then on to how we’ve destroyed it. We come back to the spaceship and see our recently-thawed crew is actually meant to terraform a planet that closely resembles Jupiter and bring the feelings of Earth to the new planet.
Fundamentally, it’s a gorgeous film. The score is bold and works well with Labatique’s cinematography and Lame’s editing. It’s made to make you capital-F ‘Feel' things,’ and it’s pretty damn successful at that. Think Koyaanisqatsi meets Voyage of Time with a little more flair.
But it is unquestionably a Darren Aronofsky movie. Postcard from Earth is the most on-the-nose movie the writer/director has made. If you thought mother! said the quiet part loud (very loudly), wait until you hear just how loud the speakers are in The Sphere when two disembodied voices talk at you for 50 minutes about how great the Earth is.
The thing I’ve grown to dislike about Aronofsky’s films is the smirky, self-aware antagonism towards the masses who don’t see the world as he does, which is more present here (and obvious) than ever. The moments of simple wonders and momentary transcendence are also present too. There’s the spiritual sci-fi of The Fountain and the confrontational anger of mother!. In true Gen-X nihilist form, it looks at the destruction of our planet by our hands as a foregone conclusion. The thin narrative arc can be boiled down to “Earth is fighting back, we need to find other planets with the technology the film blames for our own demise.”
But in the days since I’ve seen Postcard from Earth, the closet kin to this film is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Another full disclosure: I adore Greta Gerwig. Like Barbie, Postcard is a massive investment from a company that is trying to earn its investment back. After a lifetime of soulless cash grabs, we as an audience start to feel fortunate to experience a product that doesn’t leave us feeling empty. Movies can fulfill a company’s bottom line, increase their cultural cache, AND have something to say? How lucky are we!
Both Barbie and Postcard have this sense to them of ‘can you believe we’re getting away with this?’ And I genuinely can’t. Postcard from Earth is a surprisingly dystopian sci-fi film that does a very good job moving its audience to notice the world around them and value it...but it’s only being shown at a 2.3 billion dollar vanity project for a New York billionaire that requires your participation in facial recognition software which tracks every single person who enters.
But damn: when that seat go brrrrrrrrr with vibrations and an elephant literally towers over you, it’s easy to shut off your brain and wonder at what capitalism is capable of when you’ve got enough money to play along.
One last note: I was only able to afford my ticket because I was on a work trip that covered a vast majority of my expenses.
UPCOMING EVENTS
THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION (presented by CHIAROSCURO INTERNATIONAL FILM SERIES)
WHAT: An 80-year-old widow stands up to a group of local officials who want to build a dam and resettle her village. (FREE screening followed by discussion and reception).
WHEN: Sunday, March 17th, 2:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
WHAT: A program of curated short films from independent filmmakers with a MI connection!
WHEN: Wednesday, March 20th, 7:00 pm.
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES
WHAT: Jeanne Dielman days are divided between humdrum domestic chores, and her job as an occasional prostitute. She seems perfectly resigned to her situation until a series of slight interruptions in her routine leads to unexpected and dramatic changes.
WHEN: Sunday, March 24th, 4:00 pm.
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
And so we’ve arrived at the end of another BEAM FROM THE BOOTH! We appreciate you taking the time to read it and truly hope you’ll continue to do so. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to get each issue in your inbox every MONDAY, and stay up-to-date on all things GRFS.
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Until then, friends...