The winners of the Critics’ Choice awards
Two notes:
1) Train Dreams was not previously on my radar.
2) The awards persuaded me to start watching The Studio. The first episode is funny. I have to love any show where Seth Rogan crushes Marty Scorsese’s dreams and makes him cry. (Scorsese is a surprisingly good actor!)
Movies
“One Battle After Another” won best picture, while the top acting honors went to Timothée Chalamet (“Marty Supreme”) and Jessie Buckley (“Hamnet”).
Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
Best Cinematography: Adolpho Veloso, “Train Dreams”
Television
Best Drama Series: “The Pitt”
Best Actor, Drama Series: Noah Wyle, “The Pitt”
Best Actress, Drama Series: Rhea Seehorn, “Pluribus”
Best Comedy Series: “The Studio”
Best Actor, Comedy Series: Seth Rogen, “The Studio”
Best Actress, Comedy Series: Jean Smart, “Hacks”
Best Animated Series: “South Park”
Best Talk Show: “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Gotta agree about the Pitt…
1990’s TV.
I haven’t watched it, so is it actually better than the million other medical dramas that I lost interest in 15 years ago?
Or is it just like, “Hey if you like medical shows this is good.”
That’s a good question. I have not given The Pitt a look. I hate medical shows in general, but I guess I would watch one, if it is really a superior show.
Did you love ER?
See below- The Pitt is the Breaking Bad of medical shows…
I don’t usually like medical shows, but The Pitt was just so superbly written and acted, it blew me away…
Sorta like the “Breaking Bad” of medical shows- it was that good.
Wow, that is quite the rec. I’ll give it a shot, thanks!
LaNasa should have gotten it over Wyle.
IMHO She owns that role in a way he doesn’t.
LaNasa did an awesome job! Didn’t recall her in anything else, it damn was she good in The Pitt.
True story- charge nurses determine when or if you get treatment… M y workmate was married to the swingshift charge nurse of the only E.R. In town…
She was pulled over for speeding on her way to work.
She told the cop that he gave her a ticket, god help him if he got shot on her shift.
He wisely let her off with a warning.
Married to a former doctor here- don’t fuck with health care people!
Sinners wins everything or we riot.
Heheh. Sad but funny.
I love One Battle & PTA will probably win Best Director Oscar, but I bet Sinners upsets as Picture
Wait someone WATCHED this?
Finally made the time to see “One Battle After Another”. I agree with it’s nominations. Let’s see how the academy tilts.
I smell a butt-hurt MAGA…
Don’t read too much into that. There’s a pretty intense background-reek everywhere lately.
Free speech for me, but not for thee
That’s funny!
I don’t know whether Jimmy’s show is the best overall, because Colbert is a better interviewer, both Colbert and Tonight have better bands, while Seth Meyers is the best ad-libber, and The Daily Show seems to have the best writers, but Kimmel himself is the smoothest monologist.
Now, if they had given the award to Fallon’s show, that would have been evidence of heavy drug use, but Tonight wasn’t nominated. Talk about the disintegration of a great franchise. Who could have predicted in 1965 that there would be six nominees for Best Talk Show, and The Tonight Show would not be among them. Fallon’s contract is good through 2028, but maybe it allows NBC to find more suitable work for him.
Pitch for a new NBC sitcom for Fallon:
Bobby!
Bobby, a fairly talented guy who can do many things well, but is not good at talking, is ironically given a late-night “talk” show! He keeps pressuring his writers to come up with time-wasting ideas that keep him from the interviewing desk. What will it be? Twister with Bernie Sanders? Charades against deaf people who get every answer immediately? Playing with Pokemon cards? Having rappers re-enact soap operas?
The antagonist is Bobby’s chief rival: Lord Alfred, a scheming, fat English guy, who has been given an entertainment show, but has no skills in any form of entertainment. He does segments like “Laundry Karaoke with Clint Eastwood.”
A running joke in the series is that both Bobby and Lord Alfred have lower ratings than Fox’s re-runs of Gadabout Gaddis, the Flying Fisherman.
Most suitable work for Fallon would be sitting in the audience laughing at whoever is on stage.
Isn’t that his job now?
He just has a really good seat.
Fallon is LCD television.
Kimmel has Trump, particularly the FCC chair to thank for this award.
I had a hard time getting through Train Dreams. The story of the author Denis Johnson is more interesting
I finally saw One Battle After Another last night with my wife. I know that I am in the minority, but I disliked it and I am mystified why it is getting good reviews from so many critics and by audiences as well. My wife felt the same way. Admittedly, any movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in it is already suspect as far as I am concerned, and he certainly fulfilled expectations by giving yet another bad performance. Meanwhile, I am seeing that Sean Penn’s acting in the film is being lauded by some. Really? It was a one-note caricature – albeit that was a theme of most of the depictions in the movie. In addition to the bad acting by the two male leads, the whole thing was an incoherent (politically and otherwise), awkwardly plotted, and unbelievable mess – very painful and tedious to watch. Based on the laughter of some members of the audience, I am thinking that it maybe was intended to be, in part, a comedy, but it’s subject matter was not funny at all, and the one joke it seemed to have had – that Leonardo DiCaprio could not remember a code word – was repeated about 10 times – I get it already. There were a few good points about it, such as Benicio del Toro (who is almost always great), newcomer Chase Infiniti (although she was not given enough to do) and some of the cinematography. But overall, I found it most unenjoyable and I find it depressing that something like this is being so widely praised and might even win the Best Picture Oscar.
Every year since the first year of our marriage my wife and I have had a ‘Movie Day’ during or shortly after the Christmas holiday: a day where we arrange to watch 3 films in cinemas, one after the other, with only break somewhere during the day for a nice restaurant meal as well. It has been a 33 year tradition for us, with only a partial exception for January 2021 when local theatres were closed due to a resurgence of COVID and we watched the movies at home instead, via streaming.
Our movie day this time around was today. We saw “Song Sung Blue”, “Is this Thing On?”, and “Hamnet”. For the first time in recent memory – actually I can’t remember when or even if it necessarily has happened before – all three films were excellent. Not a bad one, not even a medium-good one among them, but all excellent. (Such a nice antidote to the unpleasant mess of One Battle After Another that we saw earlier this week – see above.) I won’t give capsule reviews here (at least not for now) and just give my ratings and very brief comments:
Song Sung Blue – 8/10 This is a strong 8/10. Great acting in a sweet/sad story that is ultimately about celebrating the joy and power of music – even if the music just involves a Neil Diamond cover band.
Is This Thing On? – 9/10 A strongly scripted, very well acted, and quite original tory that is simultaneously about a marriage that is falling apart and stand-up comedy. Funny and moving. Who knew that Will Arnett had something like this in him?
Hamnet – 10/10 Achingly beautiful and sad. The imagined story of the death of William Shakespeare’s young son Hamnet and its influence on the writing of the play “Hamlet”. Shakespeare’s wife Agnes is actually at the core of the story, and if Jessie Buckley does not win the Best Actress award from the Academy this year for that role, I may never watch the awards again. That said, I may never actually watch this movie again, as stunning as it is, as it is just so emotionally wrenching. I was literally sobbing, and that is not usual for me. And I was not alone in crying in that theatre, I can tell you that.