2019 Oscars

So the Oscars are tonight. Huh. I won’t lie, I really don’t care about this years Oscars. When the nominations were first announced I was disappointed with them, mostly the nominations for best picture. The Oscars moved a few years back to allow up to 10 movies to be nominated for best picture, this year they chose only to nominate 8.

Bohemian Rhapsody, Black Panther, Green Book, Roma, The Favorite, Blackkklansman, Vice, and A Star is Born. We all know I feel Black Panther is overrated so it’s placement here is entirly because of its cultural impact and not on it actually being a quality film which is fine I guess, but films like Bohemian Rhapsody and Vice have no real place in this category, They’re above average (Ok Vice is actually just average) movies for sure, but to say that they should be considered the best movie of the year while First Reformed, Eighth Grade, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, First Man, Creed II, Isle of Dogs and A Quiet Place are ignored is just tragic. It’s the worst-kept secret that money and campaigning determines most if not all of who wins the actual awards, but to not even nominate some of these while nominating others is just plain stupid.

Take a look at Vice, it tried to emulate the style of The Big Short, but playing a biopic about Dick Cheney so fast and loose just doesn’t work at like all. It’s nominated liberal Hollywood elites watched it and thought to themselves, “Yes I also think Dick Cheney was a bad guy who abused power, therefore this movie is good!” It’s so stupid. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t-a fan of Dick, but that doesn’t make an average movie really good all of the sudden.

Oh well, what can I do about it? Not watch probably. I’ll still make some predictions though.

Actor in a leading role: Christian Bale will win for Vice, I know I just bashed the movie a lot, but Bale’s performance is so good it elevated what is otherwise a bad movie to average. It’s exceptional.

Actor in a Supporting Role: Mahershala Ali will win for Green Book and they’ll be 100 articles more written about the historical inaccuracies of Green Book.

Actress in a Leading Role: Glenn Close, The Wife. End of story.

Animated Feature Film: Incredibles 2 will probably win because Disney/Pixar always win, but Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse is miles bedtter.

Directing: This is a toss-up for me, I’m tempted to say Alfonso Cuaron for Roma, but I also really want to say Spike Lee for Blackkklansman. I’ll stick with my initial gut and go with Alfonso.

Original Song: I’M OFF THE DEEP END, WATCH AS I DIVE IN… Shallow’s got this locked up as far as I’m concerned even though I think there are better songs in A Star is Born than it.

Best Picture: I’m gonna go for Roma on this one, I know Netflix really really wanted to win a big Oscar like this and so they probably campaigned super hard and as I said before, money really wins these things.

Adapted Screenplay: Blackkklansman, they gotta give Spike Lee something.

Original Screenplay: First Reformed is actually nominated for this so I’m really tempted to go with it, but something like Green Book will probably win.

No one cares about the rest of them so I won’t make predictions. Someone let me know how I do because I’m not watching. Later.

VidAngel Solves Legal Conundrum, Maybe.

If you talked to me pretty much at all during the months of March and April of this year I’m sure I talked your ear off about the filtered streaming service VidAngel, and  it’s battle against Hollywood’s major studios. I did not hold a kind view of VidAngel at that time, and while I still have some major gripes with some of their advertising and marketing I have to admit that their new business model is one that I can get behind.

For those unaware, before VidAngel got “shut down”  users would effectively pay 1 dollar per film they wanted to watch through the service (2 dollars for HD versions) and you directly streamed from VidAngel. The new model is a monthly subscription (7.99/month) that uses the VidAngel filtering in conjunction with your Netflix, Amazon, or HBO subscription. So in order to use VidAngel you also need to have a subscription to one of these other streaming services.

This solves the critical legal problem that VidAngel previously had in that almost none of the movies offered on the platform were licensed and therefore were being streamed illegally according to  several major Hollywood studios. (Warner Bros, Fox, Disney, ya know little guys) VidAngel believed that the Family Movie Act of 2005 protected them, but that’s not so clear, hence the lawsuit that VidAngel is still fighting with Hollywood. Since the content being watched is coming straight from services like Netflix it’s all licensed and on the up and up. Now people are again able to remove any nasty or unpleasant material from Game of Thrones, (So the episodes are like 6 minutes each) they just have to actually pay HBO for it.

The switch to a monthly subscription is something that doesn’t really have any legal impact, but I’m still really fond of it because it’s so so so much simpler than the old model of buying a movie for twenty bucks and then getting nineteen dollars back so long as I “returned” the movie within a 48 (maybe 24, I don’t remember) hours period so that VidAngel could technically say that I “owned” the movie because they legally couldn’t call it renting even though the model was very obviously a renting model.

VidAngel isn’t totally out of the woods yet though, as I mentioned they do still have a legal battle with the major Hollywood studios that will have to be dealt with and while they are in a much better spot legally they are at least partially at the whims of streaming services like Netflix who have not given their blessing according to this article from Variety. Other streaming services could alter their services to prevent VidAngel from filtering their content. Although personally I’m inclined to think that companies like Netflix are unwilling to give their blessing at this time has more to do with the currently still open lawsuit and not as much about the new filtering model.

Never the less this is a big step forward for VidAngel and a win for anyone who wants their media filtered. Peace out folks.