Been planning to go see Jojo Rabbit with my cousin for several days now since the damn thing finally started showing in our local cinema. Original plan was last friday, which got bumped to saturday, then sunday, then today, and as it turns out, today ain't happening either.
At this point I'm rather tempted to just go and see the goddamn thing alone.
Yeah ... I couldn't decide whether that actually looks like a good movie or whether it looks like "oscar bait". It just had that vibe to me, and looking further into it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_baitOscar bait is a term used in the film community for movies that appear to have been produced for the sole purpose of earning nominations for Academy Awards or "Oscars", as they are commonly known.[1] They are usually released just in advance of Oscar season, late in the calendar year, so as to meet the minimum eligibility requirements for the awards and be fresh in the minds of Oscar voters.
Check.
Films seen as Oscar bait often have distinct characteristics. Lavishly produced epic-length period dramas, often set against tragic historical events such as the Holocaust or the American slave trade, are frequently seen this way and often contend for the technical Oscars such as cinematography, makeup and hairstyling, costume design or production design.
Check.
The cast may well include actors with previous awards or nominations, a trait that may also be shared by the director or writer.
That's pretty much everyone in the cast except for the new kid.
the explicit use of the Oscar nominations as a promotional strategy dates to 1978. That year, Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter was shown only to limited audiences heavy with Oscar voters and critics for just long enough to be eligible, and then went into wide release after the nominations were announced.
This is literally what they did with JoJo Rabbit. The Oscar nominations were announced on 22/01/2020, and JoJo rabbit went into it's widest release, 1005 cinemas, that same week. So they set it up so that the week that the announcements were out, JoJo Rabbit was playing pretty much everywhere.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2030601729/Plot elements of political intrigue, disabilities, war crimes and show business were also very common element of nominated films. A release during Oscar season, or by an independent division of a major studio were also strong indicators.
Yep, and that's why it's produced by FOX Searchlight pictures, which " specializes in North American production of independent, European, and British films alongside comedy-drama, horror, art-house, and foreign films, all of which the studio sometimes finances".
Not saying it's going to be a bad film by any stretch, but oscar-bait type films also
don't tend to be the movies people are talking about as "must see" years down the track:
"We've found that audiences don't like the kinds of aesthetics that are characteristic of Oscar-worthy movies," Rossman said. "The movies tend to be serious and depressing, and audiences don't like that, so making Oscar-y movies is a riskier strategy than the average moviegoer might appreciate." As for the payoff a movie gets when it receives nominations, "[a]udiences don't like the kind of movies that get Oscars, but they do like the Oscars," he said. It was the economic bonus from getting nominations or winning that made the losses of not doing so worth it.
You know,
might be a good movie, but the overt oscar-baiting type of movies tick me off with how they're expecting you to go see it because it's "oscar-worthy" rather than the type of movie you'll thank yourself for having seen.