Oscar shout out ?

[Andrew G. Doe]

In a BBC interview, best supporting actor Mark Rylance mentioned Paul Dano... I'm guessing for Love and Mercy ?

[Rentatris]

I obviously biased but I am genuinely shocked at the lack of awards love shown to the film....

[Fire Wind]

I think I read somewhere it's technically a 2014 movie.  I know it's been nominated for other awards, though.  But could it be considered as such?

[KDS]

I obviously biased but I am genuinely shocked at the lack of awards love shown to the film....

So am I.  I thought that, since it was such a different take on the biopic, it would surely get a new nominations.

I also couldn't predict Mad Max getting so many nominations.  Those kinds of movies usually only garner nominations in the technical categories. 

[HeyJude]

Last night's awards were the awards year that L&M was eligible. It simply didn't get any nominations.

But the nominations of course were announced some weeks (or months?) back, so it's not as if the actual ceremony would be the place to go "Whaaa? Where's Love & Mercy?", unless I guess some people like to go into the ceremony completely spoiler-free of any nominees.

I don't think there's any obvious, especially controversial reason L&M didn't get any nominations. It got a couple Golden Globe nominations, which certainly indicates the possibility of Oscar nominations.

I think, for whatever reason (bad luck, bad brand management at BRI, or whatever), the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson stories (not the music, but the actual biographical story) don't resonate as a pop culture phenomenon in the same way that some other "iconic" stories do.

When you think about it, they still haven't done an epic, awards-sweeping film on the Beatles either. "Backbeat" was about as good as it has been, and even that was riddled with problems. "Nowhere Boy" got relatively good reviews as I recall, but it didn't garner a huge number of awards. There are a few other films with cult audiences ("Across the Universe", the charming "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" from Zemeckis), and the rest, like the Beach Boys, are cheesy TV movies.

Actually, as I mentioned in another L&M-related thread, if you look at the all-time grosses on "Music Bio" films, they don't tend to be big money-makers, with only a few crossing even $50 million or $100 million. Awards don't tend to follow box office receipts exactly, so perhaps music biopics have done better at the Oscars than at the box office.

[KDS]

HeyJude,

I thought Backbeat was a pretty underrated movie.  I haven't checked out Nowhere Boy yet. 

I never really thought about it, but it is surprising that nobody has attempted a big biopic of The Beatles. 

Of course, The Beatles themselves did put out the be all end all of rockumentaries with Anthology in 1995. 

And, as you said, there's not a lot of big business in these movies.  I know ones on Freddie Mercury, Motley Crue, and Keith Moon have seemingly been "in the works" for ages. 

[HeyJude]

"Backbeat" had some moments. But McCartney was right, it was stupid to have Lennon singing "Long Tall Sally."

Also, while the idea of having modern bands re-record the songs was interesting and novel, it ultimately doesn’t really work.

I think “Backbeat” had going for it that the actors seemed to put effort into their performances. They are mostly very earnest performances if nothing else, at least among the leads. 

[GoogaMooga]

I think there used to be an audience for musical biopics, but you had to go a bit further back in history. Some made a big splash, Like Coalminer's Daughter and The Glen Miller Story.

[Debbie KL]

Last night's awards were the awards year that L&M was eligible. It simply didn't get any nominations.

But the nominations of course were announced some weeks (or months?) back, so it's not as if the actual ceremony would be the place to go "Whaaa? Where's Love & Mercy?", unless I guess some people like to go into the ceremony completely spoiler-free of any nominees.

I don't think there's any obvious, especially controversial reason L&M didn't get any nominations. It got a couple Golden Globe nominations, which certainly indicates the possibility of Oscar nominations.

I think, for whatever reason (bad luck, bad brand management at BRI, or whatever), the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson stories (not the music, but the actual biographical story) don't resonate as a pop culture phenomenon in the same way that some other "iconic" stories do.

When you think about it, they still haven't done an epic, awards-sweeping film on the Beatles either. "Backbeat" was about as good as it has been, and even that was riddled with problems. "Nowhere Boy" got relatively good reviews as I recall, but it didn't garner a huge number of awards. There are a few other films with cult audiences ("Across the Universe", the charming "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" from Zemeckis), and the rest, like the Beach Boys, are cheesy TV movies.

Actually, as I mentioned in another L&M-related thread, if you look at the all-time grosses on "Music Bio" films, they don't tend to be big money-makers, with only a few crossing even $50 million or $100 million. Awards don't tend to follow box office receipts exactly, so perhaps music biopics have done better at the Oscars than at the box office.

I do believe it was noted in past threads that "One Kind of Love," was ineligible to be nominated for Best Song due to a technicality.  I think there were technical issues about the "original soundtrack" qualifications for Atticus Ross, since he was mixing Brian's work into fantastic sounds, but "original" was a problem.

I don't begin to understand the politics of the Oscars.  I didn't have a problem with the talents, nor the performances of the nominees.  I think possibly the unique quality of L&M made it difficult to categorize, on top of it's not being one of those massive budget movies the studios peddle for Oscars.  And there does appear to be this tendency to nominate people who have been slighted in the past for a better performance than the one for which they're nominated. Paul Dano is a brilliant young actor who's been nominated for, and won a lot of awards.  It was probably someone else's year in some people's heads.

It would have been

[KDS]

"Backbeat" had some moments. But McCartney was right, it was stupid to have Lennon singing "Long Tall Sally."

Also, while the idea of having modern bands re-record the songs was interesting and novel, it ultimately doesn’t really work.

I think “Backbeat” had going for it that the actors seemed to put effort into their performances. They are mostly very earnest performances if nothing else, at least among the leads. 

I don't think they had much choice but to get artists to rerecord the songs for Backbeat. 

Since the movie mostly covered the Hamburg days, many of the songs featured in the movie either don't have recordings or are of poor quality. 

[JK]

In a BBC interview, best supporting actor Mark Rylance mentioned Paul Dano... I'm guessing for Love and Mercy ?

That and/or Youth----even the BBC series War and Peace, but perhaps that was too late to qualify...

Good to see Rylance winning, it has to be said----his portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in BBC-TV's Wolf Hall was stunning.

New US series featuring Paul Dano on the way. Called Codes of Conduct.

That interview (for as long as it's available): http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35685921

[HeyJude]

"Backbeat" had some moments. But McCartney was right, it was stupid to have Lennon singing "Long Tall Sally."

Also, while the idea of having modern bands re-record the songs was interesting and novel, it ultimately doesn’t really work.

I think “Backbeat” had going for it that the actors seemed to put effort into their performances. They are mostly very earnest performances if nothing else, at least among the leads. 

I don't think they had much choice but to get artists to rerecord the songs for Backbeat. 

Since the movie mostly covered the Hamburg days, many of the songs featured in the movie either don't have recordings or are of poor quality. 

It wasn't that the Backbeat songs were re-recordings, it was that they used non-authentic (on purpose) sounding re-recordings from a band made up of various hard rock/punk/grunge sort of folks. They weren't wildly crazy reinterpretations, but it was a bit jarring and didn't sound like something that would have existed in 1961. Again, interesting concept though.

[KDS]

Gotcha,

I didn't really notice the difference in sound.  I also haven't seen the movie in about a decade. 

I'll watch out for it next time.