The 2018 Oscars and Ron’s Films of 2017
My friend Ron Wells LOVES film and music.
He loves attending films and concerts, listening to music, analyzing it all, writing his reflections, and then sharing them with friends. I take his emails and shape them into blog posts.
Usually Ron writes a review or two a month as well as the occasional obituary of an important figure and I try to post them. This year he faced a number of personal challenges and I attributed that to the lack of contributions by him to this blog, but he recently revealed in an email that he was not impressed by this year’s films. The acting? Yes, but the films over all left him only “mildly interested.” Nonetheless, it is still interesting to review his notes on the films of 2017 in the context of the race for the Oscar 2018 — which he think Best Picture will be won by Store of Water or 3 Billboards.
So here with plenty of time to watch a few more before the big night Sunday March 4, are a few of the top films according to the Academy and Ron. Who do you think we should be toasting?
Best Picture Nominees for the Oscars:
- Call Me by Your Name – Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges, and Marco Morabito
- Darkest Hour – Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, Anthony McCarten, and Douglas Urbanski
- Dunkirk – Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan
- Get Out – Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Edward H. Hamm Jr., and Jordan Peele
- Lady Bird – Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, and Evelyn O’Neill
- Phantom Thread – JoAnne Sellar, Paul Thomas Anderson, Megan Ellison and Daniel Lupi
- The Post – Amy Pascal, Steven Spielberg, and Kristie Macosko Krieger
- The Shape of Water – Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, and Martin McDonagh
with a few annotations in italics from me!
1. The Post: Maybe not the best film of the year, but by far the most important. It reminds us that the 4th Estate is a primary protection against an Orwellian future, or even an Orwellian present. Subscribe to a major newspaper today.
2. Molly’s Game: Thank god for Aaron Sorkin. Following in the footsteps of Paddy Chayefsky, his words flow fast like a beautiful river. To hear them said by Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba is pure joy.
3. Lucky: this film is only for those people who had as difficult a year as I had, or those who love Harry Dean Stanton. I loved this film, but I repeat: it is NOT for everyone. Nothing happens in this movie. It is a contemplation on life, death, nothingness, belief, and the meaning of words. When Harry Dean sings, it brought tears to my eyes. Every actor wishes they had a final scene as Harry Dean had in this film. Oh, I love Harry Dean Stanton and this trailer reminded me why! I am looking forward to seeing this!
4. Coco (Animation): I saw only one animated film and foreign film.. Why? Few came to my theaters.
6. The Phantom Thread
12. The Shape of Water: I’ve loved Sally Hawkins forever. Her two films this year reinforced that belief. Though the films were problematic for me, she was magnificent. (Maudie; the Shape of Water). Most nominations with 13.
14. Get Out
23. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: Three Billboards: amazing, amazing acting! But what’s the point? Firebomb offices? Throw people from second story windows? Her cause was righteous, but at some point over time guilt/anger must be let go. A minuscule of hope at the end was not enough for me. Third most nominations with 7.
24. Wonderstruck
26. Wind River: Everyone I know loved Wind River. I had a million reasons not to like it (though Jeremey Renner was excellent). Anyway, you should trust my friends and go see this. I may have gotten it wrong on this one.
27. I, Tonya: Child abuse + spousal abuse + poverty+ being uneducated = a human train wreck. Nancy just happened to be on the tracks. It doesn’t exonerate Tonya or her friends, but it explains them. This film upset me. Some people have found it humorous; I didn’t.
So, which films made your Top Ten list? Why film do you think will win the Academy Award for Best Picture?
UCLA’s Curating Resistance: Punk As Archival Method; Performance by Alice Bag; International Clash Day; and more!
Curating Resistance: Punk as Archival Method
February 9 – 10, 2018 University of California, Los Angeles
plus a few other events like International Clash Day today!
Do you know that women and men do not have equal rights under the constitution in the United States?
It’s true: the Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in 1972, never passed. Men and women do not have equal rights or equal treatment.
Most Americans think we already we have this protection, but we don’t. The ERA needed 38 states to pass it by 1982, but not enough did! Nevada just passed it last year, and we still need two more states to ratify it before it’s actually an amendment!
Perhaps it is finally time to pass the Equal Rights Amendment suggests Kamala Lopez’s documentary film Equal Means Equal Read more…
Super Bowl Ads Tug at Heartstrings, Brains, Morals
Did you get excited during the Super Bowl watching the 60 second film trailer for the new Crocodile Dundee movie Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home?
You know the one where it’s actually a showcase for Australian tourism featuring a scene at a winery and starring Chris Hemsworth and Danny McBride drinking Australian wine? Read more…
STOP SIGN. Ventura’s Botanical Gardens were devastated by the Thomas Fire
In John M. Synge’s tragedy “Riders to the Sea,” the final words come from the widowed matriarch Maura:
…may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of every one is left living in the world. Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely.
What more can we want than that?
No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.
I don’t know when Ventura College chose to produce the opera version of this classic one-act play, but it is timely. The play focuses on the losses of an Irish family as they struggle against nature, and most specifically, the sea. Like Maura, we grieve our recent losses to nature from fire and flood. Read more…
So you LOVE Burning Man, and you DREAM about Burning Man, and you think you want to go to Burning Man 2018 over Labor Day weekend?
Then you might want to check out the video above by Juan Reyes (with text from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos) or the longer video below that recounts the Desert Cosmonauts 2016 Burning Man experience — mostly in Spanish with English subtitles…
center camp robot photo by Gwendolyn Alley
And if you’re excited about exploring this year’s Burning Man “I, Robot” theme which you can read about here…
And if you know all about Burning Man’s 10 Principles and you’re ready to practice them… (If you need a refresher, check out this Burning Man 10 Principles coloring book).
Then maybe you’re ready to get a Burning Man Ticket for 2018!
But just because you want to make the trek to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert located two hours northeast of Reno (and then deal with 2-20 hours at Gate and another 2-20 hours at Exodus) doesn’t mean you’re going to get one of the coveted tickets. But if you want to try, Read more…
This stone plaque graces the entrance of the Engineering building at the University of Wyoming and inspired the title of John McPhee’s book “The Control of Nature.”
Just north of where I live practically in shouting distance of the Ventura Freeway and the burnt remnants of the Thomas Fire, the 101 through Montecito opened a few hours ago, allowing traffic to travel where the debris flowed just over a week ago.
The opening of the 101 once again shows many how “the control of nature is won, not given.” Thousands of workers first had to search for survivors… and then for the deceased. It took a huge fleet of engineers and public service employees working around the clock for almost two weeks to wrest control back when the river of debris chose to flow along the freeway.
Hundreds of people have yet to return home as water, power, and roads are in various stages of recovery and repair. As our attention has been focused on these human dramas and tragedies, much of the infrastructure damage has not even been reported on. The scope of the debris flow is hard to comprehend.
Historic and geologic time converged when Read more…
Last year, on Saturday Jan. 21, 2017, following the inauguration of the 45th president of the US, somewhere between 3 and 5 million Americans joined “The Women’s March”
the largest collective protest march in US history
As we head toward Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday and holiday on Monday, I offer his words below as well as “Breathe and push,” Sikh-American civil rights advocate Valarie Kaur’s shares her plea against racism in the video above. Read more…
The Good, The Bad, The Funny, The Serious: 2017 in Review
photo by Alan Sailer
Well Christmas has come and gone… and 2017 is following close behind.
Good riddance, if you ask me. Here’s why:
Locally, we’ve been dealing with the Thomas Fire, the biggest fire in California’s history which burned a block away from my home, burned the homes to the ground of many friends and acquaintances, disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and that has superseded the shenanigans in the White House for the past few weeks.
And speaking of the White House, here’s more reasons why I’m ready to say good riddance to 2017:
and more reasons…
Read more…
art predator 