Status Update: 5/3/21

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May already? 

Folks, we are a third of the way through 2021.  That’s Mathematics.

Anyways, I have a couple of rankings for the month.  Check it out!

• DC Extended Universe
  • You saw this coming.  How else could I follow up the Marvel Cinematic Universe? I really want to see the culmination of the social media-driven phenomenon that was the #ReleaseTheSynderCut campaign, even if it means I have to watch all the non-Wonder Woman/Shazam movies that are supposed to be bad.
• Spike Lee’s Filmography
  • Spike Lee is one of my personal favorite directors, and with the not-so-successful awards push for Da 5 Bloods, I figured it would be a good time to explore some clever and uniquely stylized “Joints”.
• Kathryn Bigelow’s Filmography
  • I’ve never seen The Hurt Locker, and when researching this movie on Wikipedia, I found that Bigelow directed quite a few notable films and is known to have a distinct film style.  That’s exactly what I look for in a director-driven marathon, so I’m giving all her films a shot.
• Potential Extra Marathons
  • As you already know, I have some unpublished marathon rankings that I’ve made several months ago, and instead of simply copying and pasting them here, I want to go back and re-write my thoughts in a way that is more consistent with everything else in this blog.  These are a combination of director-driven and franchise-driven marathons, so for some of them, I’m just waiting for the next movie to release.

Also, I don’t think I’m going to back and revise my Oscar/Razzie predictions into retrospective posts, so if you want my overall thoughts of the awards, here you go:

• 2021 Razzies Thoughts
  • I honestly wasn’t expecting Kate Hudson to win Worst Actress, but I totally get it.  Music was terrible.
  • Thanks for changing the Rudy Giuliani Worst Screen Combo nomination from “Rudy Giuliani and Maria Bakalova” to “Rudy Giuliani and his pants zipper”.  If I had known about this change, I would have had “Rudy Giuliani and his pants zipper” as a Should and Will Win.
  • Dolittle won Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel?  Okay.  I don’t agree, but okay.
• 2021 Oscars Thoughts
  • I’m glad it wasn’t just Zoom call like the Golden Globes and SAG awards, but I still don’t know how to feel about the show’s cinematography and other production choices.
  • I have no issue with Anthony Hopkins’s winning the Best Actor award over Chadwick Boseman.  Hopkins was a VERY CLOSE second choice for me, so I’m actually fine with the result.  I do have an issue, though, with two things that came out of this award:
    • 1) The producers really should have just stuck with tradition and save Best Picture for last.  That was just a really awkward ending.
    • 2) We get it, people in comment sections everywhere.  It’s the same two points in all of your defenses of Hopkins’s win:
      • Point 1: “Anthony Hopkins deserved to win.  He gave a better performance than Chadwick Boseman.” 
      • Point 2: “Just because Boseman was Black and is dead doesn’t mean he’s entitled to an Oscar.”
        • I’m particularly annoyed with this because even though I imagine people on social media were frustrated about the result itself (and not just the bad presentation – no disrespect to Joaquin Phoenix or, of course, Anthony Hopkins), this point is obvious, condescending, and makes way too big of an assumption of people who wanted Boseman to win. 
  • My favorite acceptance speeches (in no particular order): Youn Yuh-jung, Thomas Vinterberg, Jon Batiste, and H.E.R.
  • Worst In Memoriam ever.
  • I’ll say this, though – keep up the no-host shows!

Peace,

Miles