> “CODA” becomes the first film with a predominantly Deaf cast to win Best Picture
Whenever I see a movie/series starring a minority getting high awards I always think about if it was awarded for actually being good, or just because it had a cast filled with a lesser represented group and juries didn't want to come off as racist.
It was up against the biopic of the Williams sisters' father "King Richard", Japanese film "Drive My Car", Stephen Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story", and gay western "The Power of the Dog".
Perhaps the last was the second time such a film has been snubbed by the Academy, after "Brokeback Mountain" was infamously passed over by "Crash" in 2005.
Whenever I see racist used in a sentence about deaf people I always think about if the person saying it has any idea what they're talking about, or if this is an example of language "evolving".
He should have used the term ableist [1] instead of racist, true. Then again, I'm sure you understood what he meant even if he did not use the correct -ist/-phobe/-privilege term of the moment. Also, his question - did this movie get lauded because of being a good movie or because its cast is made up out of people from a certain identity group - is not that far-fetched.
[1] The spell checker in Firefox recognises ableist as a valid word where it would not have done so only a few years back. This is not language evolution, it is revolutionary language.
Greater than one. The academy has put a significant amount of preference on race, so that none of these awards actually represent the movies or the performances, but the racial make up of the cast and crew.
I know difference in hearing ability is not something that constitutes a "race". But I consume a lot of US media I've come to accept that "racism/racist" can be used for anything that describes discrimination against a certain group.
“Racism” is definitely defined as discrimination because of race. It doesn’t matter that the general twitterverse has decided to misuse a term. (don’t get me started on the now constant incorrect use of “calculus” instead of “calculation”)
The ADL changed the definition of the term racism somewhere in 2020 to mean The marginalization of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people. They changed it to something slightly less inflammatory in the beginning of 2022 but the fact stands that this organisation deemed the time to be ripe to go fully anti-white - i.e. to become racist according to the correct, printed-dictionary interpretation of that term. This is not the Twitterverse, it is (or at least used to be) one of the mainstays in the "fight" for a "more just society".
Would you flip that around and say that people are only receptive to movies with white, straight abled leads because it has a group that the majority can identify with, either through being of that demographic or as a byproduct of colonialism?
You can flip it around in the sense that a movie which only stars those specific leads is unlikely to end up with any awards specifically due to the demographics of the cast. This actually reinforces the validity of the question asked by the parent.
How is it unlikely for them to earn those awards? The majority of winners, even last night, are straight, white, abled people. The majority of films that have won in the past have been that way too.
I don't think you actually really follow the Oscars so much as complain about a false sense of virtue signaling
a movie which only stars those specific leads is unlikely to end up with any awards
Movie, not individual actors. Movies with a cast of only this unfavoured identity class are unlikely to gain any awards.
> The majority of films that have won in the past have been that way too
The past is not now, my comment relates to the here and now ('is unlikely to', not 'was unlikely to'). The obsession with D.I.E [1] is a recent phenomenon.
> I don't think you actually really follow the Oscars
There you are right, I don't. I do read quite a bit about it but I never watched any of those shows, it is just not my thing.
> complain about a false sense of virtue signalling
False? We're talking about the organisation which went full Soviet by proclaiming movies needed to abide to their D.I.E. rules to be considered for academy awards [2] as part of their D.I.E. plan [3]. Read [2] and report back on whether this is anything but virtue signalling.
— the members of the jury aren’t widely known, as far as I can tell
— they care little for the reputation of the institution itself
— those that care are more likely to hate it for being snubbed in the past
— those that won obviously deserved the price and feel strongly that a meritocracy abhors loyalty
= this is a great chance to really vote with the heart, including settling a few scores with any group you secretly loath especially because “political correctness” forces you to keep it to yourself the rest of the year
Bonus inconsistency:
— there have been all-deaf movies before that didn’t win
Some groups were systematically or implicitly excluded from honors such as the Oscars for centuries. It’s great to see the trend bending towards justice. Unfortunately, they sometimes see their legitimate success undermined by various “but you didn’t really win the price/get hired/become President” strategies.
So… congratulations to being part of the problem, I guess.
Roma (directed by Alfonso Cuarón and distributed by Netflix) was the first best picture nominee to not have a standard theatrical release, and there was a lot of controversy over it. Despite being the favorite that year it lost to Green Book, which is widely derided today.
In the early years of streaming the academy tried very hard to shut Netflix out of the Oscars. The company had to fight hard (including buying a theater in LA to do limited releases to satisfy their requirements) to get streaming films on equal footing. Only last year did they finally allow streaming-only releases to be considered for the awards.
CODA was clearly the best film from a list of extremely poor films this year. There were only two good films this year, with The Worst Person in the World, and the too intellectual Drive My Car.
CODA is the third remake of an excellent story, with the second remake, with Luane, being unbeatable in Europe. Nobody in Europe wants to see this attempt, but for the American market it's huge. It was already the biggest film at Sundance. So why not, for their domestic market it's good enough. But that's why the big studios bailed on it.
Kind of creeps me out that Apple gets to just slide in and immediately become oscar winning film/tv production company darling, as well.
I'm sure someone at Netflix is cheesed with how quickly and easily Apple can just start drinking their milkshake, though. I remember there being a lot of pushing of ROMA and felt like it was a major nail biter for Netflix to get that to take home anything. But if we're being honest...Netflix doesn't actually try to make a lot of very good things to begin with. Though The Power of the Dog was quite notable, still a bit...sterile.
All that being said, at least HBO has another "quality, not quantity" competitor in the ring, at long last.
This is exactly the Apple model. "Quality not quantity".
ATV+ doesn't have the glut of content that Netflix has, but pretty much all of their stuff is 8/10 or over on most rating sites. They might not be to your exact tastes, but they're still damn good.
Imo, Foundation has so far been well done and produced and I enjoyed it. Their version of the books just isn't that representative of the source material it was based of off
When the first trailers for Foundation came out I decided to re-read the books, I liked them as a kid. So I did. I re-read all of Foundation and Robots of the Dawn.
AppleTV+'s take on Foundation is the best thing that could possibly happen to the books.
Asimov was a bad writer, and the product of his era. His ideas about Seldon crises were rather good, but everything around was just bad. People don't have dialogs, they proselytise and have monologues at each other. Women are non-existent, or serve as furniture (except maybe two characters in both series combined). There's a huge disconnect between what technology is imagined to do (FTL, detailed holographic maps of the Galaxy) and how it's used (calculations done with pen-and-paper, newspapers and communications printed out even on FTL ships). And so on.
Foundation series took the premise and ran away with it. And good for them.
The Foundation books are just people with zero personality talking about their plans in an office or a starship bridge. Usually congratulating themselves on how well their plans went.
Then we jump in time, the previous people are mostly dead and a new group of people talk in a room.
This is nonsense. ATV is struggling to build a library worthy of a subscription.
Over the last 2-3 years, I sign up when a season of a show I hear good things about is completely out (Ted Lasso, Severance, etc) and then watch another show or movie or two for the month it takes me to finish that season.
I have never bumped into another show that made it worth renewing for a consecutive month, despite the show that I came for being totally worth the one month, and there being other shows that are strongly "related".
I will admit the production quality of the shows is very high on average, but that's not the same thing as the shows being very good.
The shows are objectively good, they are just made for very specific niches.
Take Schmigadoon! for example. It's specifically aimed at people who love musicals and can spot all of the homages in it. Without that knowledge it's just a slightly above average comedy with singing bits.
The Morning Show is about women struggling in a workplace, not exactly something that would hook a random midwest dudebro, but still a damn good show for those who it's directed towards.
If you’ve watched anything on Netflix and Apple Tv recently I’m sure you’ve noticed the insane quality difference.
90% of what Netflix is producing feels like “film for tv” in the 90s at best.
Roma? The Irishman? The Two Popes? Marriage Story? Mank? Beasts of No Nation? Power of the Dog? Tick Tick Boom?
Can't really take a comment seriously that puts Apple's film output over this. Besides Coda has Apple produced or even just distributed anything of comparable quality?
Netflix's biggest problem is their extremely poor AI. They might have some excellent shows and series but if its hard to find no one ever sees it.
Instead they end up getting rated on drivel like "The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window" because that's what ends up getting pushed to subscribers to see.
This. I just said 90 PERCENT.
The Netflix output is gigantic, so all that AMAZING 10% drowns into a 90% that shapes the platform with cheap flix with very low production value.
> Kind of creeps me out that Apple gets to just slide in and immediately become oscar winning film/tv production company darling, as well.
If you get some magical “street cred” in the industry for simply being the party to win the bidding war over a film after it was already produced, shown at a film festivals, and critically acclaimed, then yeah, that seems at least silly if not creepy. Surely there’s a big different between a company funding the creation of a film, and a company just buying the rights to stream a completed film.
Which poses another question I was wondering, if netflix had acquired this, would it have still won? They've been famously treated as a bit less "prestigious" than legacy competitors.
Or does Apple get extra goodwill from the logo almost assuredly in many of the pockets and homes of people in the industry?
It's more reflective of HN I think, it isn't a worthy HN submission - even by the loathsome fanboyism that's rampant here - and this particular post is pretty low quality.
Eh, no one is giving Apple credit for this win other than Apple themselves. They bought distribution rights to the film well after production was finished and it was already making waves in the festival circuit. Apple's own studio had zero creative input.
This is very important to note. Apple Studios didn't develop the movie. Apple was just good at selecting a potentially well-performing candidate for their streaming service and for winning awards at different competitions. They did heavily promote the movie though. Who knows, without Apple's support and promotion, CODA may not have gotten to this point
Who knows, without Apple's support and promotion, CODA may not have gotten to this point
Having worked on a movie that had a (short, failed) Oscar push, you cannot underestimate who important (and expensive) promotion is to even just getting a nomination. Had CODA remained an indie darling on the festival circuit it almost certainly would not have won.
> Apple was just good at selecting a potentially well-performing candidate for their streaming service and for winning awards at different competitions.
I mean, there was reportedly a fierce bidding war to acquire the film, between (at least) Amazon and Apple. I don’t even think you can credit Apple for some unique insight into the potential of the film.
Amazon and Apple were the final bidders. Either they were willing to outspend the traditional studios or both somehow determined the movie would have success and help produce profits down the line more so than the traditional studios thought it could
Still, if Apple had a unique insight, it wasn’t “this movie is a strong contender for a best picture Oscar.” It was more like “it’s worth $25m to us to buy this movie,” which from my perspective remains to be shown.
Yeah, it remains to be shown. They definitely had some criteria to believe it'd be successful though. The criteria they were aiming for could have been any or all of the following: getting more Apple TV+ subscribers, sustaining existing subscribers, having that specific movie get more views, and/or building up a good library of content
I get the feeling people here think that the Apple Film/TV crew is somehow related to the actual Cupertino company we know as "Apple". Not really. Not to pretend I'm in the know, but it's clear from every press release that Apple (and Netflix) hire creatives and production executives in LA. Apple provides the budget and some direction (like, put a sexy iphone into every episode of Ted Lasso), and then the Hollywood pros make the creative decisions that actually result in an awesome or mediocre production.
So maybe Apple is spending more money on better talent. Or maybe they're just funneling it better (big productions like Foundations instead of a bunch of cooking shows).
Or maybe they're just funneling it better (big productions like Foundations instead of a bunch of cooking shows)
Is that really funnelling it 'better' though. I bet a lot more people watched that "bunch of cooking shows" that watched Foundation. Squid Games was one of the most talked about shows on TV since Game of Thrones when it came out and had a total budget that was probably less than the catering budget for 1 season of GoT.
Netflix seems to be betting big on the fact that that 50 weird quirky 1 million dollar shows of varying quality will bring in more total viewers than a single 50 million dollar prestige show.
Apple did not have anything to do with producing this film. Their own studio was not involved with it at all. They bought the distribution rights well after the movie had already become a darling in the festival circuit.
Is it "just Apple's", not also Eagle Pictures' or Sun Distribution's?[1]
Interestingly Apple was sold the "worldwide" rights to Coda after rights were already partially sold to other territories all over the world. Apparently, Sun Distribution Group had the rights for Latin America and Eagle Pictures in Italy.
"Andrea Goretti, CEO of Italy’s Eagle Pictures, told Variety that he received a call from Pathé February 1 inquiring if the distributor would be willing to sell back Italian rights. "
Was Apple able to resolve this with their big vault of cash?
Unfortunately this is the confusing way of the world.
IIRC, Netflix is able to run a logo credit for themselves in Star Trek Discovery despite only having licensing rights, but it gives the impression that it's a Netflix show (that being said, their buying the rights to stream it is de facto a large swath of their production budget)
I really wish that "American Animals" had become some sort of indie darling, just so the world will remember that MoviePass co-distributed a really good film. Maybe "Gotti" will become a midnight showing cult classic.
It’s only Apple’s because they bought the world-wide distribution rights, not because they made it, had it made, had the idea for the plot, or, as far as I know, had any hand in it (it may have been edited after the premiere, but I doubt that)
Pretty interesting that every other major player in streaming achieved success by either 1) doing it for a LONG time and catching the rising tide (Hulu, Netflix) or 2) having a huge content of library (Disney, HBO, Paramount, etc.)
Quibi and Yahoo Screens both took the "let's throw money at it" approach, and neither succeeded.
Apple has demonstrated a third viable approach, which is having strong pre-existing distribution. I got so many nags from Apple through emails and notifications on every Apple device I own about 1 free year of Apple TV, that eventually I said "Fine, I'll watch Ted Lasso."
This is also what Amazon and Facebook did by having people constantly on their site, but I think Apple's success in their much shorter streaming existence is far more impressive.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadWhenever I see a movie/series starring a minority getting high awards I always think about if it was awarded for actually being good, or just because it had a cast filled with a lesser represented group and juries didn't want to come off as racist.
Perhaps the last was the second time such a film has been snubbed by the Academy, after "Brokeback Mountain" was infamously passed over by "Crash" in 2005.
Admittedly this is a sample size of 1.
[1] The spell checker in Firefox recognises ableist as a valid word where it would not have done so only a few years back. This is not language evolution, it is revolutionary language.
The word you’re looking for is “bigot/bigotry”.
I don't think you actually really follow the Oscars so much as complain about a false sense of virtue signaling
Movie, not individual actors. Movies with a cast of only this unfavoured identity class are unlikely to gain any awards.
> The majority of films that have won in the past have been that way too
The past is not now, my comment relates to the here and now ('is unlikely to', not 'was unlikely to'). The obsession with D.I.E [1] is a recent phenomenon.
> I don't think you actually really follow the Oscars
There you are right, I don't. I do read quite a bit about it but I never watched any of those shows, it is just not my thing.
> complain about a false sense of virtue signalling
False? We're talking about the organisation which went full Soviet by proclaiming movies needed to abide to their D.I.E. rules to be considered for academy awards [2] as part of their D.I.E. plan [3]. Read [2] and report back on whether this is anything but virtue signalling.
[1] Diversity, Inclusion, Equity
[2] https://www.oscars.org/news/academy-establishes-representati...
[2] https://www.oscars.org/news/academy-announces-next-phase-equ...
— it’s a secret ballot
— the members of the jury aren’t widely known, as far as I can tell
— they care little for the reputation of the institution itself
— those that care are more likely to hate it for being snubbed in the past
— those that won obviously deserved the price and feel strongly that a meritocracy abhors loyalty
= this is a great chance to really vote with the heart, including settling a few scores with any group you secretly loath especially because “political correctness” forces you to keep it to yourself the rest of the year
Bonus inconsistency:
— there have been all-deaf movies before that didn’t win
Some groups were systematically or implicitly excluded from honors such as the Oscars for centuries. It’s great to see the trend bending towards justice. Unfortunately, they sometimes see their legitimate success undermined by various “but you didn’t really win the price/get hired/become President” strategies.
So… congratulations to being part of the problem, I guess.
It was a crime that Roma was skipped over in 2019 for freaking Green Book.
In the early years of streaming the academy tried very hard to shut Netflix out of the Oscars. The company had to fight hard (including buying a theater in LA to do limited releases to satisfy their requirements) to get streaming films on equal footing. Only last year did they finally allow streaming-only releases to be considered for the awards.
"Green Book" had a "white savior" trope which is now considered non-Narrative and shunned by people who support the Current Thing.
CODA is the third remake of an excellent story, with the second remake, with Luane, being unbeatable in Europe. Nobody in Europe wants to see this attempt, but for the American market it's huge. It was already the biggest film at Sundance. So why not, for their domestic market it's good enough. But that's why the big studios bailed on it.
I'm sure someone at Netflix is cheesed with how quickly and easily Apple can just start drinking their milkshake, though. I remember there being a lot of pushing of ROMA and felt like it was a major nail biter for Netflix to get that to take home anything. But if we're being honest...Netflix doesn't actually try to make a lot of very good things to begin with. Though The Power of the Dog was quite notable, still a bit...sterile.
All that being said, at least HBO has another "quality, not quantity" competitor in the ring, at long last.
ATV+ doesn't have the glut of content that Netflix has, but pretty much all of their stuff is 8/10 or over on most rating sites. They might not be to your exact tastes, but they're still damn good.
AppleTV+'s take on Foundation is the best thing that could possibly happen to the books.
Asimov was a bad writer, and the product of his era. His ideas about Seldon crises were rather good, but everything around was just bad. People don't have dialogs, they proselytise and have monologues at each other. Women are non-existent, or serve as furniture (except maybe two characters in both series combined). There's a huge disconnect between what technology is imagined to do (FTL, detailed holographic maps of the Galaxy) and how it's used (calculations done with pen-and-paper, newspapers and communications printed out even on FTL ships). And so on.
Foundation series took the premise and ran away with it. And good for them.
Then we jump in time, the previous people are mostly dead and a new group of people talk in a room.
It's not exactly riveting stuff for TV.
Over the last 2-3 years, I sign up when a season of a show I hear good things about is completely out (Ted Lasso, Severance, etc) and then watch another show or movie or two for the month it takes me to finish that season.
I have never bumped into another show that made it worth renewing for a consecutive month, despite the show that I came for being totally worth the one month, and there being other shows that are strongly "related".
I will admit the production quality of the shows is very high on average, but that's not the same thing as the shows being very good.
Take Schmigadoon! for example. It's specifically aimed at people who love musicals and can spot all of the homages in it. Without that knowledge it's just a slightly above average comedy with singing bits.
The Morning Show is about women struggling in a workplace, not exactly something that would hook a random midwest dudebro, but still a damn good show for those who it's directed towards.
Can't really take a comment seriously that puts Apple's film output over this. Besides Coda has Apple produced or even just distributed anything of comparable quality?
Instead they end up getting rated on drivel like "The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window" because that's what ends up getting pushed to subscribers to see.
If you get some magical “street cred” in the industry for simply being the party to win the bidding war over a film after it was already produced, shown at a film festivals, and critically acclaimed, then yeah, that seems at least silly if not creepy. Surely there’s a big different between a company funding the creation of a film, and a company just buying the rights to stream a completed film.
Or does Apple get extra goodwill from the logo almost assuredly in many of the pockets and homes of people in the industry?
Also when voting, the distributor is not highlighted. So I doubt the brand had any effect on voting itself.
Having worked on a movie that had a (short, failed) Oscar push, you cannot underestimate who important (and expensive) promotion is to even just getting a nomination. Had CODA remained an indie darling on the festival circuit it almost certainly would not have won.
I mean, there was reportedly a fierce bidding war to acquire the film, between (at least) Amazon and Apple. I don’t even think you can credit Apple for some unique insight into the potential of the film.
So maybe Apple is spending more money on better talent. Or maybe they're just funneling it better (big productions like Foundations instead of a bunch of cooking shows).
Is that really funnelling it 'better' though. I bet a lot more people watched that "bunch of cooking shows" that watched Foundation. Squid Games was one of the most talked about shows on TV since Game of Thrones when it came out and had a total budget that was probably less than the catering budget for 1 season of GoT.
Netflix seems to be betting big on the fact that that 50 weird quirky 1 million dollar shows of varying quality will bring in more total viewers than a single 50 million dollar prestige show.
This is expected. Netflix were the trailblazers. Of course everyone who comes after them will have an easier job doing it.
A24/Searchlight do the same thing.
Acquiring rights and succeeding in distribution is an art and unfortunately $$ doesn’t = success.
Interestingly Apple was sold the "worldwide" rights to Coda after rights were already partially sold to other territories all over the world. Apparently, Sun Distribution Group had the rights for Latin America and Eagle Pictures in Italy.
"Andrea Goretti, CEO of Italy’s Eagle Pictures, told Variety that he received a call from Pathé February 1 inquiring if the distributor would be willing to sell back Italian rights. "
Was Apple able to resolve this with their big vault of cash?
[1] https://www.indiewire.com/2021/03/apple-coda-sundance-25-mil...
IIRC, Netflix is able to run a logo credit for themselves in Star Trek Discovery despite only having licensing rights, but it gives the impression that it's a Netflix show (that being said, their buying the rights to stream it is de facto a large swath of their production budget)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoviePass#MoviePass_Venture_fi...
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CODA_(2021_film))
Quibi and Yahoo Screens both took the "let's throw money at it" approach, and neither succeeded.
Apple has demonstrated a third viable approach, which is having strong pre-existing distribution. I got so many nags from Apple through emails and notifications on every Apple device I own about 1 free year of Apple TV, that eventually I said "Fine, I'll watch Ted Lasso."
This is also what Amazon and Facebook did by having people constantly on their site, but I think Apple's success in their much shorter streaming existence is far more impressive.