Alan Rickman RIP

[CKuykendall]

And I said that mediocre movies don't win awards. You argued that the movie wasn't mediocre when you should've agreed and railed about the Academy's inability to see great performances are available to award in all movies, not just good movies or movies shown in the last two months of the year. We would've had common ground. Instead you keep arguing the wrong thing. It's silly. It was a mediocre movie with a good performance. It's too bad but that's life. Bel Powley should've gotten a nomination for best actress but the movie came out too early. It's the game.

l didn't agree that it was a mediocre movie because it was only *your* opinion that the movie was mediocre. You have support for that from the fact that the movie itself was nominated for almost no awards and it gets mediocre (under 7.0 weighted) IMDb ratings and a 4.8 Rotten Tomatoes rating. I gave examples of non-support for your opinion (Roger Ebert, Rolling Stone, Amazon reviewers, Sundance attendees) because I was challenging your premise that it was a mediocre movie before advancing to the follow-up issue of whether, if something is a mediocre movie, performances in such something ought to be overlooked.

I'm not silly and not arguing the wrong thing. I said that Alan Rickman should have been nominated for an Academy Award for a 2008 movie, and stopped there, period. You're the one who then started in argumentatively with the idea that good performances in mediocre movies get overlooked by the Oscars and then started berating the movie at issue rather than sticking to Alan Rickman's performance which was the *sole* thing my original post related to or sticking to Alan Rickman's acting talent which was the sole thing the RIP thread started with. Anyway, I don't think movies in mediocre movies ought to be overlooked for Oscar nomination, even if there were an objective way of settling what's movie mediocrity the way we have stopwatches, makes and misses, and measuring tapes in track & field. Also, I don't think what you now refer to, that a movie comes out too early in the year, rather than in the hoopla and promotion and lobbying of November-December,should make a difference, either. I don't have any ideas for changing how Oscar voters vote, and know that they do it the way they do it, and recognize that it's a fact of life. But so what? Because I never said I didn't recognize that. I didn't make the contrary argument, that it's not a fact of life, to start with, and haven't since then. I've stated in elaboration, once you began arguing, that I don't *like* the fact of life. Thus, not liking the fact of life, the simple "should have been nominated" I started with, stop there, period, before you're who started a tangential argument, against a movie-mediocrity straw man, with your subjective premise. Why not instead keep the RIP thread to many of us admired Rickman and his acting talent in Galaxy Quest or Bottle Shock or Sense and Sensibility or whatever, rather than diverting the thread into a bully pulpit for your sideshow movie dislikes-premises and fact-of-life argumentation you (not me) raised.

[booond]

l didn't agree that it was a mediocre movie because it was only *your* opinion that the movie was mediocre. You have support for that from the fact that the movie itself was nominated for almost no awards and it gets mediocre (under 7.0 weighted) IMDb ratings and a 4.8 Rotten Tomatoes rating. I gave examples of non-support for your opinion (Roger Ebert, Rolling Stone, Amazon reviewers, Sundance attendees) because I was challenging your premise that it was a mediocre movie before advancing to the follow-up issue of whether, if something is a mediocre movie, performances in such something ought to be overlooked.

I'm not silly and not arguing the wrong thing. I said that Alan Rickman should have been nominated for an Academy Award for a 2008 movie, and stopped there, period. You're the one who then started in argumentatively with the idea that good performances in mediocre movies get overlooked by the Oscars and then started berating the movie at issue rather than sticking to Alan Rickman's performance which was the *sole* thing my original post related to or sticking to Alan Rickman's acting talent which was the sole thing the RIP thread started with. Anyway, I don't think movies in mediocre movies ought to be overlooked for Oscar nomination, even if there were an objective way of settling what's movie mediocrity the way we have stopwatches, makes and misses, and measuring tapes in track & field. Also, I don't think what you now refer to, that a movie comes out too early in the year, rather than in the hoopla and promotion and lobbying of November-December,should make a difference, either. I don't have any ideas for changing how Oscar voters vote, and know that they do it the way they do it, and recognize that it's a fact of life. But so what? Because I never said I didn't recognize that. I didn't make the contrary argument, that it's not a fact of life, to start with, and haven't since then. I've stated in elaboration, once you began arguing, that I don't *like* the fact of life. Thus, not liking the fact of life, the simple "should have been nominated" I started with, stop there, period, before you're who started a tangential argument, against a movie-mediocrity straw man, with your subjective premise. Why not instead keep the RIP thread to many of us admired Rickman and his acting talent in Galaxy Quest or Bottle Shock or Sense and Sensibility or whatever, rather than diverting the thread into a bully pulpit for your sideshow movie dislikes-premises and fact-of-life argumentation you (not me) raised.

Bully Pulpit? I posted one sentence and you've written posts which are paragraphs long - short stories to defend a position using Amazon "critics" who routinely post about dog food and tampons as your experts. Argue the point I made and find better reference points than Roger Ebert or Travers. A consensus of their peers show them as outliers. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 48, their audience members 18,703 of them give it a rotten 58. Metacritic gives it a mediocre 56 and their members give it a 6 both scores are considered average or mixed. Is average a better description? Will that make you walk out of the bomb shelter to greet the sun?

It's average, at best, and average movies don't get awards or award nominations.

[CKuykendall]

Bully Pulpit? I posted one sentence and you've written posts which are paragraphs long - short stories to defend a position using Amazon "critics" who routinely post about dog food and tampons as your experts. Argue the point I made and find better reference points than Roger Ebert or Travers. A consensus of their peers show them as outliers. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 48, their audience members 18,703 of them give it a rotten 58. Metacritic gives it a mediocre 56 and their members give it a 6 both scores are considered average or mixed. Is average a better description? Will that make you walk out of the bomb shelter to greet the sun?

It's average, at best, and average movies don't get awards or award nominations.

You continue to argue that movie X is mediocre, and to aruge that that's what we're arguing about, when my post wasn't at all about the quality of the movie. I did challenge, as your response premise, your argument that it was mediocre, which to start with was just your opinion, and offered counter-opinions (Ebert), and you offered others counter, and I offered examples both ways, and now you've reinforced your examples. Fine. But challenging your premise was just the starting line for challenging your idea, flowing from that premise, that if somebody has a good performance in a mediocre movie, they're getting nominated isn't going to happen and shouldn't be expected.

I never understand why people who essentially make the argument...

"You have said you don't think X should be the way it is or have happened the way it did. Things are the way they are, or they happened the way they did. Get used to it."

...somehow believe that (1) they have made a triumphant argument, (2) such argument reflects steely-headedness on their part, and (3) the individual they construe themselves to be arguing against is hopelessly naive.

I would be interesting to be able to get booond in a time machine, travel back to the mid 1980s, and see if he argues with Ronald Reagan, "The Berlin Wall is there. Get used to it. What a silly person you are." Or then travel back to mid-1975, give me the opportunity to say that Robert Shaw should have received an Oscar nomination for Jaws, and see if booond would say I've made a silly statement. I suspect that he'd instead say, "Shaw should have been nominated, but that's a different situation entirely. Jaws was a good movie." Which would be an excellent counterargument, but still doesn't curb my annoyance about (1), (2), and (3).

[jeremyp]

Much to do about very little, guys.