Round-up Week 2: Oscar Buzz

As of writing this, the Oscars will be held on Sunday night, and I am tuned in this year more than years prior. It's probably because I've actually seen a number of the films nominated and have been following the Hollywood news pretty religiously. That being said, I have some thoughts on a couple of the controversies and things being discussed.

First things first, I have to tackle the absolute ridiculousness that is Emilia Perez. My favorite service for aggregate reception of a film, Letterboxd, currently has the average rating for Perez at 2.1 out of 5, with a dramatically heavy skewing to the left. What has happened when a film touting such great trans activism is being ripped apart by the generational demographic it was targeted toward? In my humble opinion, this is the long-time coming of shoddy filmmaking disguising itself as activism coming to an end. The fact that the internet is clowning on the horrible "penis to vaginaaaa" riff is enough evidence to me. I'd say something like, "Who thought this was a good idea?" but the collage of crap coming out of Disney and the likes over the past three years or so is proof that everybody thought this was a good idea. Crowds in the past have been hit or miss, but as long as the critics rave about it, it'll get the green light. Go check the critics' reviews for Perez, they're all mostly positive, the outliers compared to the Letterboxd reviews. Metacritic score is currently resting at 70/100. Pretty disturbing as this has become the norm with many of these activism-based films. All this to say, I am cautiously hopeful that this will be a wake up call to society. Whatever happened to activist-type films like Philadelphia (1993)? Do The Right Thing (1989)? The line being danced on is thick and the area is grey and that's the extent of defense I'll give to Emilia Perez.

The Brutalist is scorned for its use of artificial intelligence. I had a conversation with a close friend who's very knowledgeable about how this topic has infiltrated creatives' psyches. This conversation served as corroboration for what I already believed: people are getting too up in arms too soon when it comes to the implementation of AI in creative fields. The usage of AI to enhance Adiran Brody's accent, and this is what you're up in arms about? An argument was presented that if the database being utilized for the language model stole from other creatives, then yes, absolutely that is a problem. But where is that database? There is none. According to an interview with the editor, David Jancso, in Vanity Fair, the reference point for the AI model was his own, as he is of Hungarian descent. This strikes me as a creative decision made to enhance the immersion of the story, and I for one, can get down with that. Where the conversation does blur slightly in Jancso's admission that AI was used to develop some of the drawings for the buildings towards the end of the film. This I can understand some hesitation and aversion to. As to my previous point, if there was an external database on which the AI was being trained, that utilized other creatives' work without their permission, that would be a huge problem. There doesn't seem to be any conclusion on this in the Vanity Fair article, but there is some push back and contradictions made from the director, Brady Corbet, saying that everything, including the drawings of buildings, were done by hand. What's true, what's false? I'm more inclined to believe the editor, and that Corbet was doing damage-control, but I'll leave that one to you to decide. Does this influence your opinion of the film overall? For me, this is some petty squabble at this point, but I will definitely be keeping my eye on the AI infiltration in Hollywood.

My biggest crush of the year is Sean Baker's Anora, I was absolutely enamored with the fast-paced, somewhat old school tinge of romantic comedy making a comeback. Mikey Madison deserves all the praise in my book, and I am personally rooting for it to win Best Picture... Would love to see Tim win Best Actor for A Complete Unknown as well, unfortunately haven't gotten around to seeing it yet, but I am on the Timmy hype train. Final thought - not that I have any major issue against it, but I feel a little slighted if Conclave took home too many. I've heard it's great, I'm sure it's great, but it just feels like a very stereotypical pick for The Academy. Which is probably why it'll sweep. We shall see.

Next week I'll be sure to go through my thoughts on who won, who lost, and all that fun jazz. I'm very much looking forward to Conan hosting! I think that might be the biggest win of the night. As long as Emilia Perez crashes and burns. Ojala.