 |
| congrats to this crew and their atomic pal! |
I made my feelings on Godzilla Minus One very clear over a series of three posts (post 1, post 2, post 3) over the Fall and into Winter. I think there's all sorts of superlatives you can apply to the movie, but I also know that genre film has challenges, and a franchise like Godzilla has 70 years of history dragging behind it like a gigantic, spiked tail. In short, I can understand why a 2023 Godzilla movie might have some trouble getting taken seriously if the last time you checked in with G he was buddying around with Jet Jaguar.
But, indeed, Godzilla Minus One was both compelling human drama and visual spectacle. And it blew the doors off how Hollywood has been doing VisualFX, delivering a full FX-laden movie with both incredibly natural-looking CGI locations and with an 11-story-tall atomic lizard monster on a miniscule budget and with a small team led by the film's director.
The movie had already reset the stage for what Toho could expect out of Godzilla, earning over $100 million on a $15 million budget. But now it has also won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
I want to also mention - just a few days ago, this same movie won 8 Japanese Academy Awards. Including Best Picture.
Reportedly, Spielberg has seen this movie a number of times, which frankly doesn't surprise me. It has a lot of that same Spielbergian character exploration via extraordinary circumstances you find across all of his work. And, maybe some of that silver lining about humanity.
I had not seen all of the movies nominated for Academy Awards - but I am trying to catch up. I felt the crop this year, from what I'd seen, was actually really solid. I'm particularly looking forward to Anatomy of a Fall and Killers of the Flower Moon. But now Zone of Interest has piqued my... interest. I was on record liking Oppenheimer and Poor Things quite a bit, both. I particularly thought the editing of Oppenheimer was extraordinary, so thrilled it won.
I weighed in on a few movies:
Of what I saw of the telecast, which was mere minutes as we actually spent the evening hanging out with some neighbors who don't really care one way or another about movies, the real winner I saw was America. Well, America Ferrera's Barbie-pink gown. Good golly.
No comments:
Post a Comment