Alan Rickman RIP

[jeremyp]

Much to do about very little, guys.

[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).

[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]

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]

When I said that Rickman "should" have been nominated for what you yourself call his "great" performance in Bottle Shock, which even detractors of the movie, for example in IMDb reviews, mostly say was the main highlight of a movie they otherwise didn't like, I *really do mean* that he *should* have been nominated. T&FN, USATF, and the IAAF don't remove athletes with good marks from annual performance lists because the mark occurred at a venue some people subjectively think, but others do not, was a crummy track & field meet. In the Hollywood case the corresponding some are the Rotten Tomatoes voters, the IMDb voters, and most critics, whereas the corresponding others were Ebert, the Rolling Stone critic, the Amazon reviewers, and, from I read of IMDb reviews, the audiences at Sundance. But even if one goes along with the some, that a movie wasn't any good, that doesn't mean an acting performance from it should be ignored any more than a good track & field mark in an otherwise crummy track & field meet should be ignored. So please don't consider me a sap for expecting Hollywood to behave like T&FN, USATF, and the IAAF on performance lists, and to recognize fine performances that get lost among average or forgettable movies. I didn't say I *expected* anything, from Academy voters. I just said he *should" have been nominated for that particular movie. So you're either debating a straw man of your own conjuring, or you're telling me what I already am fully aware of, about what Hollywood and the Oscars tend to do. Or, if it's just a non-argumentative observation, yeah, you're pretty much correct about Hollywood and Oscar tendencies, although exceptions could probably be found.

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.

[26mi235]

Galaxy Quest is almost unique for me in terms of being interesting/worth watching for something in its genre.

I think that he did a good job with Snape because he made you dislike him even when started to see what he was accomplishing and what Snape's problems were.

[CKuykendall]

And my point was that mediocre movies - 48% on Rotten Tomatoes - don't garner many awards. I watched the movie and Rickman is great but the movie is forgettable. There are many fine performances in average films but they get lost.

When I said that Rickman "should" have been nominated for what you yourself call his "great" performance in Bottle Shock, which even detractors of the movie, for example in IMDb reviews, mostly say was the main highlight of a movie they otherwise didn't like, I *really do mean* that he *should* have been nominated. T&FN, USATF, and the IAAF don't remove athletes with good marks from annual performance lists because the mark occurred at a venue some people subjectively think, but others do not, was a crummy track & field meet. In the Hollywood case the corresponding some are the Rotten Tomatoes voters, the IMDb voters, and most critics, whereas the corresponding others were Ebert, the Rolling Stone critic, the Amazon reviewers, and, from I read of IMDb reviews, the audiences at Sundance. But even if one goes along with the some, that a movie wasn't any good, that doesn't mean an acting performance from it should be ignored any more than a good track & field mark in an otherwise crummy track & field meet should be ignored. So please don't consider me a sap for expecting Hollywood to behave like T&FN, USATF, and the IAAF on performance lists, and to recognize fine performances that get lost among average or forgettable movies. I didn't say I *expected* anything, from Academy voters. I just said he *should" have been nominated for that particular movie. So you're either debating a straw man of your own conjuring, or you're telling me what I already am fully aware of, about what Hollywood and the Oscars tend to do. Or, if it's just a non-argumentative observation, yeah, you're pretty much correct about Hollywood and Oscar tendencies, although exceptions could probably be found.

[booond]

I appreciate the mentions of Galaxy Quest -- just watched it this week, and it remains a favorite. But for my viewing, my favorite Rickman roles/movies are Truly, Madly, Deeply; and Sense and Sensibility. A really enjoyable actor, across a range of movies, and a range of good to not-so-good movies. Always enjoyed his contributions, regardless.

(And I just noticed that this was my 3,000th post. Do I get a gold star or something for that?)

Truly, Madly, Deeply is one of my wife's favorites. Very underrated movie.

[Master Po]

I appreciate the mentions of Galaxy Quest -- just watched it this week, and it remains a favorite. But for my viewing, my favorite Rickman roles/movies are Truly, Madly, Deeply; and Sense and Sensibility. A really enjoyable actor, across a range of movies, and a range of good to not-so-good movies. Always enjoyed his contributions, regardless.

(And I just noticed that this was my 3,000th post. Do I get a gold star or something for that?)

[booond]

And my point was that mediocre movies - 48% on Rotten Tomatoes - don't garner many awards. I watched the movie and Rickman is great but the movie is forgettable. There are many fine performances in average films but they get lost. Rickman will be remembered for Die Hard, Harry Potter, and Galaxy Quest among others. He was never nominated for an Academy Award but did have 4 Bafta Noms and 1 win as a supporting actor for Robin Hood.

[CKuykendall]

Mediocre movies don't garner many awards.

I don't think a 3-1/2 star Roger Ebert movie (tops for Ebert was 4 stars) quite qualifies as mediocre. Or see the 4.4 star ratings (tops being 5) on Amazon by 600+ ordinary viewers who wrote reviews or brief commentary. The Rolling Stone reviewer liked it. Granted, other reviews, not so much, and almost no awards and IMDb voter ratings pretty average. My point, in any event, was that Rickman was good.

[booond]

He was more renowned for Stage work, as is Mark Rylance. He thought he was slumming when he did "Die Hard." Liked the paycheck.

I'll agree with Rylance but Rickman lost the "stage actor" headline once he did "Die Hard" and especially after he did "Harry Potter". He made his nut in front of the camera. We're not talking Brian Bedford - the actor - (who also passed away this week).

[bambam1729]

Actually I heard this morning that Rickman wasn't paid much for Die Hard. He said that the reason they hired him was that they were paying Bruce Willis so much ($7M) that they needed people who would work cheap for the other roles and he was willing to do it.

[jeremyp]

Mediocre movies don't garner many awards.

He was more renowned for Stage work, as is Mark Rylance. He thought he was slumming when he did "Die Hard." Liked the paycheck.

[gh]

great mashup: every important Snape scene, in chrono order (c15 minutes)

https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/putting-every-professor-snape-scene-140031069.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=fb