Escape to the Movies: The Kings Speech

[xdom125x]

I am a little upset at the lack of sci-fi movies for best picture and the absence of a movie I loved Scott Pilgrim for Best Picture. I do think the King's Speech is in there because it is every form of Oscar Bait(tm) imaginable. Including it being a good movie.

"And if it wasn't bad enough that he was Jewish, and retarded... he was an alcoholic"

Great episode, Bob. The Oscars really don't do their job, do they.

Oh man, I read through this thread waiting to see any reference to that. It was literally called Oscar Gold. I thank you.

 

[Zer0Saber]

Alrighty, but I rather fish for ancient monstrosities from the abyss.

OHH NOOOOO, GOJIRA!!!!

 

[jigilojoe]

an Australian (not working class (in fact, worse than working class, he was an Australian back in the day when Aussies really were criminals))

...

Are you taking the piss or are you really that ignorant?

Convict transportation to Australia ended in mid-19th century, 1868 to be more precise.

I don't see your point, this film was set 60 years after that so the people around would be close descendants of those first settlers. I didn't mean it how it read however, back then they were treated like the lowest of the low of the Brits, honestly I was reinforcing Bob's point on that one since he was talking about the clash of classes.

 

[Jenkins]

I considered the kings speech filled with great acting and technical camera work, very, very interesting. i loved it!



I guess people are entitled to their opinions.

 

[scott91575]

You left out one big Oscar bait ingredient....white guilt. You can win without it, but with it you may win without a single other redeeming quality. See Crash.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I don't see your point, this film was set 60 years after that so the people around would be close descendants of those first settlers.

*ahem* The first European settlers got here in 1788.

Also, the 1868 is for the last colony (Western Australia) that stopped accepting transported convicts. The trend had started 20+ years earlier in other Australian colonies.

Plus you seem to be of the mindset that somehow all settlers were convicts which is absurd. Around 160,000 convicts were transported to Australian colonies from 1788-1868. In 1868 the population of Australia was around 1 million, which would indicate a rather large influx of free settlers... especially considering that not all transportation sentences were life terms and that one colony, South Australia, never served as a penal colony. Want to guess where Lionel Logue was born?

Here endeth the lecture.

edit: Also, how many other countries have a city founded by Batman like Melbourne was? Sure, it was John Batman and not The Goddamned Batman, but it's still better than most can say.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

I wonder if you liked The King's Speech. I couldn't quite figure it out from that review.

So often I wonder why anyone actually pays attention to the Oscars anymore. For their entire history they've had a shameful track record of ignoring great movies and things people actually liked, based off the most trivial of problems. Elizabeth Grunewald's article a couple of weeks back shows a nice example, denying a film an Oscar because the lead actress was also in something not made for the Oscar-loving art-snob crowd? That's ridiculous.

The Oscars are outdated and far past it. Basically they're the sort of thing Roger Ebert likes, and we all know how in-touch and relevant he is nowadays.

I'd say scrap them entirely and start again, but if there's one thing pretentious arty people love more than pretentious bullshit films, its awards that honour pretentious arty bullshit films and make them fel justified, and as long as the pretentious dickheads have the money, the Oscars will continue to be made.

 

[omegawyrm]

Why would you whine that Moviebob thinks that films centered around nerd topics deserve more recognition?

If you don't think nerdy topics are more interesting than realistic ones, then you're on the wrong fucking website. THE ESCAPIST! It's in the name!

 

[secretsantaone]

That's not what I'm doing at all. Maybe you should look up Ad Hominems yourself.

If you have looked it up, re-read it... Your doing it wrong. Specially if you think I'm committing one. Though please enlighten me on why that is. I'll point out yours for you "This was an amazing film, Bob doesn't like it because he's annoyed its not Sci-fi/fantasy".

To further elaborate, your arguement was pretty much "I like this film, he just hates it because he's annoyed that its not his genre".

Except that wasn't my argument in the slightest. I'm merely suggesting that he didn't give it a fair chance because of his frustration at other films that he prefers being overlooked. I think we've all judged something a bit too harshly when comparing it to other things we prefer. For example, an RPG fan might say 'FPS games are bland and generic', when confronted with the overwhelming popularity of the genre.
I also like how you missed out my qualifier 'I think' which renders it an opinion and not some sort of undisputable fact like you make it out to be. I personally feel that, based on some of his rather vague arguments, he was pretty harsh on the film, especially as many of his arguments apply to just about every film ever.

For instance:

Overcoming something.
Just like Leo overcame his personal demons in Inception, like Shrek overcame his perceived ugliness in Shrek 2, like Edward Norton overcame his anger-driven Nazism in American History X and like Aragorn overcame his fear in making the same mistake as his ancestors. One of the oldest plot devices in the book.

World War 2
I'm seriously not going to list every World War 2 film here that hasn't won an Oscar. The King's Speech wasn't even ABOUT World War 2. It was mostly set in the years before it.

Class
A confusing argument, not a lot of recent Oscar winners come to mind that deal with class. Besides the fact that Lionel Logue wasn't some sort of humble working class male, he was a middle class speech therapist with his own, rather large, home.

Break-up get back together.
It's incredibly hard to name a film with two major characters that DOESN'T do this.

British Accents = Oscar
Hurt Locker - American accents
Slumdog Millionaire - Indian accents
No Country For Old Men - American accents
The Departed - American accents
etc. etc.

The last film with British accents in to win best picture was 'Shakespeare in love' and to be honest I don't think they could swing Shakespeare having an American accent, no more than they could have George Vl with an American accent. If only because it would offend just about every Englishman in the country.

while convieniantly ignoring the fact that the vast majority of Sci-fi/fantasy films appeal to a very specific target audience while character dramas and such appeal to a much larger base.

And what does this have anything to do with their quality? This isn't the MTV movie awards that deal out their awards based on how wide the audience is. This is the Oscars that are supposed to have qualitative judgement. The reason many are frustrated mainly is due to the fact that the Oscars are more about giving awards to what fit a list or to people who it may be "Their time".

Maybe because it's impossible to judge a film objectively? When it comes down to it, it's a subjective opinion on whether you like a film or not. You could make the best gay-necropheliac-monster-fantasy-drama-sci-fi-comedy ever but it's still only going to be the best film ever to the small amount of people who actually like that sort of thing. Drama films also typically allow more room for the actors to do their thing and give more scope to play on the viewer's emotions, which is the whole point of films.

Except this is literally how it happened.

Never said it wasn't... You just asked why it could be seen as a bad thing and I told you why. Which is pretty true... Check this on T.V tropes for more examples http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory

I was talking about in the context of this film. I understand that in some films 'based on a true story' is used rather loosely but it seems really unfair to use it to critisise a film in which it does actually follow real events. Thanks for quoting TV tropes by the way. There goes my saturday.

 

[guntotingtomcat]

Excellent point on Oscar fishing.

I really liked King's Speech, though.

 

[secretsantaone]

The Kings Speech was seriously an awesome movie, it managed to be interesting and enjoyable without resorting to action and sex scenes. I think Bob's just annoyed because it wasn't some sci-fi or other 'geek culture' film that would justify his personal tastes.

I also don't get why he thinks 'based on a true story' is something bad in the slightest. This DID actually happen, it's a classic story of the great British underdog, something which seriously underpins British culture and makes for a fantastic film.

Of everything in your comment, the thing I took the most exception to was the phrase "without resorting to action and sex scenes", as if action is automatically a lower form of movie than drama. THAT is the attitude I and many others (Bob included, apparently) find so infuriating.

Let me say right now, however, that action scenes that manage to be a)exciting and b)deeper than "shit blows up" are few and far between, and sex scenes that aren't just shoehorned in for some extra titillation are even rarer (off the top of my head, I can only really think of Black Swan as an example of a sex scene that actually added something important to the movie), but that doesn't mean action is somehow inherently worse. Quite the contrary, that means that a director has to work extra hard to actually MAKE it good (though, in line with what I said earlier, that doesn't make good action better than drama anywhere but my own preferences).

I'm not saying it's some sort of lower form than drama. I'm just saying it's quite hard to pull off good drama, especially historical drama, and make it as interesting and enjoyable for the audience as a heart-pounding car chase or an erotic sex scene.

But good action sequences can often say a lot more about the characters than dialogue ever could.
This is probably one of my favourite scenes ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2eOc3KNUHc&feature=related

 

[munglai]

I think it's pretty mean to say the makers don't care if audiences like it. I mean there's no doubt that the producers looked over their releases and said "yeah we should put this one out near Academy Award season because it's the kind of thing they like", that's their job. But to cheapen the work of the writers, actors, director and any other creative people working on the King's Speech down to just oscar fishing is really childish. And as far as not daring goes, did you get a load of the editing and cinematography? That was some pretty ballsy stuff man, very confident and subtly unusual. That's not the kind of thing that lures in Oscars, that's a team of talented artists doing a good job because they enjoy it.

I'm not normally bothered by your reviews but I felt real passion from the King's Speech and I think you were too busy angrily ticking off a mental check list to notice.

 

[Mr Companion]

Huh... so that's all it takes?

One question: Forrest Gump was set in America, with a Southern accent, and mostly during the 60's. Does the Viet Nam War override the need for WWII?

Ah but he did have an impediment, and a morally shaky war might not be as simple to understand for the dozy pricks in charge of the Oscars but is very "oscar worthy"

 

[CrazyDave DC]

Regardless of how Oscar-worthy it was made to be, I still liked it quite a lot. And I don't know if I would be so cynical as to assume that this movie was made purely for the Academy Awards, but not also for simple entertainment. Maybe I'm just too idealistic for my own good, oh well...

 

[DSQ]

I find it sad that people are dissmissing this as oscar bait, i thought i was a good film. Just as good as Black Swan or 127 hours.

I think Colin Firth should get the oscar for this role, he is clearly the best of the nominees and i think it is criminal to under rate his preformance as just being 'oscar bait.'

That said if Franco wins i won't be to upset either.

But oh well, i disagree but it was an intersting video..... if a bit dismissive.

 

[Ekit]

This review reminded me of:

 

[sosolidshoe]

The Kings Speech

How to fish for an Oscar.

Watch Video

I'm going to repeat what I said in the other thread; simply because a film targets the Oscar's, or fits the profile of "oscar bait", doesn't mean it was a bad film. To be honest, Bob, you sound pretty bitter and smug here - YOUR favourite genres don't get a look in at the Oscar's, so obviously, any movie that does must be "utterly boring and formulaic", and if a film doesn't win, it's not because the judges simply didn't like it, it's because the judges are somehow incapable of appreciating its majesty. Or rather, that they are incapable of detecting the same depth and nuance in it that YOU can.

The King's Speech was a good film. Good acting? Check. Interesting story? Check. Good cinematography? Check. Good soundtrack? Check. But because it's the type of story that Oscar judges prefer, this somehow transmutes it into a shitty hackjob? Piss off mate. By the standards you present here, every movie ever made outside of poncy indie arthouse rubbish is "boring and formulaic", because every damn movie made follows the same tickbox structure(case in point - your own column here yesterday. Every "Dead" movie after the first was a rehash of the same crap with a tiny twist, yet you practically slobber all over them. So, formulaic Zombie pish - BESTEVAR, formulaic historical pish -ZOMGFILMTRAVESTY?), or can be twisted to fit into it easily by certain reviewers who want to make themselves seem cool, edgy and knowledgeable.

Hmm, isn't that interesting, insinuating what you meant to say using general language when it's patently obvious to everyone makes you seem like a dick. So, what I should say is; this review was bad, I didn't enjoy it, and more and more, Bob's reviews seem like the bitter moaning of a genre movie fan who thinks his incredible genius goes unrecognised. What you should have said, and could have done so in a fraction of the time I might add, is - I didn't like this film.

 

[Sovvolf]

snip snip

I see, thanks for clearing that up. Sorry I came down on you a little hard yesterday... Was feeling a little worse for weather so my mood wasn't the best.