It's 2024 and a supposedly radical left wing website near you is discussing worthy/unworthy oscars
it's fun to talk about bullshit hollywood popularity contests
And before you come at me, I saw Oppie on proper film. Don’t tell me I didn’t get it or didn’t have a good experience or whatever. I liked it.
I am coming at you for liking it.
The movie was one hour of magical realism physics and wishy-washy centrist political bullshit, one hour of "Y'all know about how my boy Julie Bob O. got mad pussy?", and one hour of the worst West Wing episode you've ever seen. They could have cut that turd in half and it would have still been too long.
The acting was mid. The history was fictional. The cinematography was amateurish. The sound design just made my ears bleed.
Not only was Barbie better, but Barbie was actually a good fucking movie. Had I known what I was getting in for I'd have just gone back and watched the highlight reels from "A Beautiful Mind" and taken a refund on the balance of my time.
oppenheimer was dogshit that leaned into the idiotic "you don't need to learn stinky math to know physics, you just have to hear the music" bullshit in like three separate scenes and I was over it
Nolan should be arrested unironically
His job in the gulag should be sound editing. He stays there until he gets it right.
The sound design just made my ears bleed.
I liked the sound design specifically for this - the soundscape really supported oppenheimer's moral conflict about his work by sounding conflicted and anxiety inducing.
Yeah that’s fair lol. I haven’t seen it since Barbenheimer and my opinion might be similar to yours if I rewatch it. It didn’t need to be 3hrs long and I felt like a fool falling for the “gotta see it in 70mm imax” bs. Half of it is in a small white room for fucks sake.
Barbie was genuinely a good time and then people i was with and i talked for hours after it ended. And the atmosphere at the cinema that entire weekend was magical. Everyone wearing pink, saying “hi Barbie”…that’s real movie magic.
barbie had a whole scene where a mean angry feminist bullies Barbie for destroying girl's self image, and her character arch is accepting that Barbie are good. it's an anti-feminist movie made to sell toys and punch down on actual feminists. how anyone could call themselves a leftist and think that this toy ad is feminist is beyond me. thisis like when people argue that black panther is a politically sound movie. enjoy your slop, don't pretend its feminist.
I’m not going to argue feminism here. You could argue Barbie and slutty Halloween dresses and fucking bikinis are pro-feminism or anti-feminism till the sun envelopes the earth.
But here’s what I know.
Nearly every woman I know was super excited to see the film. They couldn’t stop talking about it in a way they didn’t about other movies. We were planning out what to wear and if it would match and there was a genuine sense of excitement and camaraderie there even before the movie came out.
Then, on the day, fucking everyone wore pink. Everyone said “hi Barbie” in the theatre. During the film, the entire crowd, which was filled with women in a way I found so comforting and reassuring, laughed and whooped along with the movie.
Afterwards too we couldn’t stop buzzing about it. Anyone we met on the street who was wearing pink? Hi Barbie!
Was it basic? Yes. Was its feminism and (lack of ) criticism of capitalism a bit safe? Of course. But literally everyone I went with knew that going in. We are all leftists of different flavours and we still enjoyed the moment and the communal sense the movie was able to create in a community that often lacks such spaces in cinema.
And we fucking felt that lack when we went and saw Oppie next. The difference was fucking stark. I may not have even caught on it had I not seen Barbie first but I’m glad I did. Watching Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back forces you to see the way women are portrayed on screen by women and by other men. People talk about the “Male Gaze” but this is how you really experience it. It’s not just women’s bodies being looked at.
No, I could feel the camera in Oppenheimer look at its women, especially during certain scenes, like a predator would on a prey. It made me feel disgusted and unsafe.
It’s hard to even explain it properly.
Anyways, what I’m trying to say - there’s a lot more to life, and there’s a lot more to leftism, than just debating theory and whether or not something is good or bad. It’s important to cultivate a sense of community and recognize the things that do it and why they are able to do it. Of course Mattel is a horrible company. Everyone knows it. That doesn’t mean the sense of community we felt during Barbie was not genuine. You’ve got to be able to understand that if you want to take your politics into the real world.
you're the one calling barbie feminist im just diagreeing, so its odd to start your response that way .you could say the exact same thing about black panther, does that make it anti-racist, or pro black liberation? you are the one calling barbie feminist I'm saying its not. i saw barbie in pink with my friends we had fun, I had fun at black panther too, that doesn't mean anything, just because something make you feel good doesn't mean its feminist. lastly its hard to take your condescension about the real world seriously when we you are defending the BARBIE movie, I probably am in the top 20% of grass touchers on this site. in the real world people are allowed to disagree with popular opinions, I don't base my opinion on movies by whats popular, we live in a patriarchy its should not be shocking that an anti feminist move would be popular, that doesn't mean I have to call it feminist. its fun slop, enjoy it, love it, wear pink with your friends every Friday but just don't call it feminist. your allowed to enjoy things just don't try to force everything you like into your politics. also oppenhiemer was dogshit just dogshit in every way, I don't know what you keep comparing these two movies barbie was 100000% better then oppenheimer could ever dream to be.
one more thought.
Of course Mattel is a horrible company. Everyone knows it.
barbie is a CHILDREN's movie, children do not know that Mattel is bad. this is a movie that implies "a bad feminist critiques capitalism, consumerism, and misogyny in the way women are represented, and a good feminist complains about the vague concept of patriarchy and never identifies which systems are oppressing them and also mattel is cool and you should buy barbies" children will see the bad angry anti-capitalist feminist character and try to not be like her and try to be soft and palatable like barbie. this movie send a shitty message to kids, the target audience who are unlikely to know as much as a leftist adult.
I found Barbie pretty underwhelming and did not understand the hype at all. I haven't seen Oppenheimer but I don't see the point in comparing them, the whole point of that meme was that the movies are opposites.
anyway the Oscars are dumb and you should not pay attention to them
Films don't need to have a certain political valence or whatever to be good, but I have a hard to imaging what kind of leftist is enjoying Barbie, a film of shrill liberal Détournement. And, boring didacticism aside, it was very ugly and outside of Ryan Gosling (who carried) I didn't find it very fun or funny. (I loved Greta's Little Women adaptation and enjoyed Lady Bird, so def disappointed.)
But I agree, Oppenheimer was bad, and the amount of people holding it out as "serious, thematic filmmaking" is disappointing (but maybe not surprising).
ah yes i love the barbie movie where one himbo is able to singlehandedly convince an entire matriarchy into giving up power to men. the most libbed up second-wave feminist slop i've ever seen
edit: also what really bugs me about this movie is that it sets up the plot arc of "Stereotype Barbie is malfunctioning because her real-world owner is depressed about capitalism/patriarchy" and does nothing to actually resolve that.
Of course they can't resolve that, just like the plot line involving the CEO falls by the wayside. You can feel the warmth of the sun but you can never look at it
yup... "oh isn't it funny how all the people in charge of mattel are white men (hey just like real life!) but also the people in charge of mattel are good actually? anyways lets just leave it there no criticism just vibes"
Wake me up when Super Mario Bros 2 gets GAME OF THE YEAR at the Oscars.
award shows are industry masturbation
I thought Barbie was underwhelming. You have Dua Lipa in there and you don't even mention Hoxha once? C'mon
Silly Hexbear, you're telling me that somebody out there actually made a Barbie movie? Then how come I've never heard of it?
Barbie is nominated for 8 Oscars.
I hope you are doing a bit, but too many people are saying what you're saying unironically.
another january, another unwarranted argument where we pretend that the oscars matter
Is this a bit? Barbie has 8 nominations including best picture and best adapted screenplay lol.
Oscars are trash. Pure unadulterated trash .
Almost no media produced under capitalism prescribes a solution to real problems and Barbie is no different. I think the movie did a good job articulating the problems some women face in the west but the end of the movie they did a heckin status quo and shrugged their shoulders. If I were a literal person looking to Hollywood to solve my political contradictions, the message I'd take away is that women should do "separate but equal" shit to solve the inequalities and exploitation they face in a capitalist society.
So ya not great but that's what you get when any real message would threaten the system that produced it.
I thought it very odd it ended by denying men full political rights and the matriarchy was so quickly overtaken by Ken and his misogynists. Given that they reversed the power relations it seemed odd to justify their disenfranchisement. I know they nearly did a coup, but the movie set up that plot point.
yeah it fucking sucks. They built this whole fictitious post scarcity world where the entire population of said world has achieved a semblance of consciousness and the best they can come up with is "lets do the same but opposite 
" like come on.
and you see it all the time in capitalist media. Here's the problem, there's a solution that has been rediscovered countless times throughout history but we're just going to pretend we don't know what it is, gosh what a problem you the viewer decide what is to be done roll credits. It is the political/mental equivalent of edging you just want to yell at the screen el problema es capitalismo but w/e. That's what we get can't have any flavor or spice.
I do like to imagine the ending being they abolish their constitution, establish housing for all (are the kens homeless??), give equal voting rights and at least banish the execs back to shitworld. Think of all the awkward car rides home from the theaters by all the lib het couples. But it breaks a cardinal rule in capitalism to put anything on display that shows a hopeful or positive alternative to what we have. You can only display problems and inspire hopelessness and nihilism in the masses - even with hollywoods greatest imagination all they can do is 
Poor things was the best movie of the year
It really did blow everything else this year out of the water. I wish they had expanded on socialism more but it is what it is. At least it was shown positively.
The book Poor Things was based on had a huge overarching theme of Sottish people being colonized and exploited by wealthy Londoners from the south, so erasing the Scottish ethnic identify of the protagonist was definitely a strange move. Completely robs the story of its original anti-imperialist message, but I guess there's not much of an audience for that.
He literally nuts and says "i am become death, destroyer of worlds" bravo Nolan
I liked Barbie fine, but I think Oppenheimer is a much better movie.
Edit: The real snub is Asteroid City not even getting a nomination for production design or Best Original Song. What the fuck does Wes Anderson have to do?
The Oscars are just an advertising scheme these days. Maybe it always was.
Barbie was a good light hearted comedy. Oppenheimer was boring. Poor Things I'm yet to see but from the trailer alone I can see that it's going to be overplayed 'deadpan' and 'surreal' in the way that many modern movies are... or aren't, I should say.
Cinema is in a shite state. I couldn't give less of a fuck about the majority of films that come out these days. Look at the success of Saltburn. It's all mindless garbage based around actors with the star power to put bums on seats. I come out of most movies these days with ambivalence at best.
No, it wasn't. It was nominated for a ton of awards, and while I liked the movie, it was not the best movie of the year. Asteroid City was a much better movie and got far fewer nominations. Godzilla Minus One was also a breath of fresh air after the piece of shit american godzilla movies that came out after 2014, and had an excellent anti-Japanese-imperialism message. Poor Things was also better.
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
