Florence – Chapter 1 . Where were we . Let’s try to summarize the minimum of significant elements and events in this first half of the 2023 season. We admit that we were embarrassed before leaving a comment. the night of the 2023 Oscars over three months ago (March 13). The embarrassment was caused by general mediocrity, and an alarming involutionary tendency, even stronger than in the last editionwhere the statuette for best film was actually awarded to the film( Tail) an emblem of the already prevailing mediocrity, a remake of an already not brilliant French comedy.
Even the Best Actor statuette went to an actor who disappeared compared to the five nominees.. But Will Smith – who will go down in history only as a living heel of the good host (also black) Chris Rock – was “positioned at the top” black actor (compared to powerful Hamlet – for the first time black – Denzel Washington, but he was already awarded another time). Bye Tail instead, according to a guide similar to Cecelli’s compiled by the US Academy, he was listed as “hearing impaired actors”.
Let’s say that in the last edition the Academy paid the highest price for distorted irritation politically correct, but which then somehow retained the face of quality along with other awards (director, screenplay, best foreign film outside the US). But in this 2023 edition, the show (so to speak) has now been stripped down to the ephemeral, with a variety of actresses. present, while the presenters and colleagues only surreally exchanged compliments about the designer outfits they wore. A little more on the topic.
“Nothing new on the Western Front” therefore (we are in the Mecca of cinema anyway), to quote, just to paraphrase the title, the German film, nominated, third remake, from the famous book by E. M. Remarque, now almost a secular classic of 1928, this time packaged in a colossal – in a solemn manner. But at least this film was the only one to win a significant award outside of the US production (Best International Film, including production design and photography).
Otherwise, the few films with specific content that were nominated were ignored in the Academy lottery.. We mean Fabelmans Spielberg, Tar with the always magnificent Cate Blanchett, and what she perhaps most agreed with for its quality, alienation and poetic charge: Island Spirits Irish McDonagh. And finally, the one who then had a narrative and a style that dared to go even further beyond, Triangle of SadnessSwede Östlund, who already won Cannes 2023 and the Palme d’Or also in 2017, did not even make it into the final five. If it’s the latter, we’ll talk firstafter these brief reports, in the summer we will talk about other Italians and foreigners as they make a big appearance in arenas alongside the Swedish film and the one that monopolized the 2023 Oscars, the public will be able to appreciate them all with a fresh calm.
All we have to do is register for this round of the carousel, which in the involutionary saga of these last three-year Oscars has stepped forward with arrogance. another fetish/totemready to dictate the trends taking place in the Mecca of the film industry: logarithm and the entire universe of discourse that gives rise to it: artificial intelligence the fact that it will be transplanted here uncritically in order to resolve the issue with the territory through elections is simply imaginary and symbolic.
Thus, it is the mainstream triumph of the algorithm, even if not implied, that determines not only the quality of the best picture at the 2023 Oscars (which is already madness compared to even the slightest common sense), but it has become clear (and even more alarming) that the algorithm will increasingly identify different segments of the public who like a particular product, and that, therefore, this product, far from indicating the strangeness of the utopias of the so-called seventh art, will increasingly be packaged on the basis of these criteria.
The results can be seen in the award-winning products in all sauces. Everything and everywhere at the same time duo known as “The Daniels” with the added hoax of presenting it as a triumph of Asian cinema. ; in fact it remains a very Western film, starting out as an American production , not only in the profile of the wasp Daniel (Scheinert) from the directing duo and deuteragonist Jamie Lee Curtis. Extremely Western in its fashionable content, despite the references to the Chinese-American community of both the main character Oscar (Michelle Yeoh) and the ethnic background of one of the two writers (Daniel Kwan), and despite yet another homage to martial arts, what a novelty. . So Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2 Tarantino, where they were already crowded twenty years ago, can it be considered an oriental film? Once again here at the Los Angeles Film Festival in March, the film is presented as new, which cannot be newer, So the poster even bills it as “The Definitive Movie of the Multiverse.”
And then everyone follows along with the talk about multiverseAI , now increasingly replacing human. And about the magnificent and progressive destinies of the inevitable Parallel Worlds. Only here we don’t reach the disheveled vertigo of dystopia. Blade Runner ’84, no narrative happiness pulp Fiction ’94. Yes, great noise, special effects, brilliant editing (also Oscar-winning), and a mixture of genres and quotes: but then what happens to all this shiny packaging, like war games and Harry Potter? exit of the main character Parallel Worlds with sausage fingers ? What remains at the end of all this agitation? There’s not even that “deep bite” in the gloss, lightning metaphor in “Youth Seminar”, 1984, Adelphi.
And then, to end on a high note, even with a smile, as a derivative association comes another name, also entirely German, to better define it all. : “false movement” based on the novel by Peter Hankl (Nobel Prize 2019) and the film of the same name, based on it by the first Wenders.
Because in the end it’s accepted Everything, everywhere, everything at once in its confusion of images and travels up and down through various parallel worlds, this ultimately makes us a multiverse, which, however, can be defined here without scandal as a multiverse… in a false movement. Everything appears to be moving, but in reality it turns around and looks at its navel. A new exercise for film buffs. Where multiverse it all comes down to a set of ideas, sometimes brilliant from a camera point of view And this summer we have no doubt that it will be adequately revived, and the public will be able to evaluate it on their own outside the spring rush.
It may be fashionable, but it is “almost unmemorable in the history of cinema,” as Antonio Monda noted the next day, making us feel less alone in this riot of outrageous hatred.
It’s a pity that the innovation wave Parasites has subsided, we are in the third year of an ever-increasing drought at the level of cinematic creativity legitimized by the Academy system. In this look at what happened in the first half of 2023 instead, good news comes to us from home . Well, yes. With confirmations from experienced craftsmen and good news.
Recent awarding of the Davids by Donatello. accurately captured a real counter-trend movement in Italian cinema. . Like awards from local film critics, with silver ribbons. as soon as they were appointed, they confirmed. We will talk about this in detail in the review, at least on virtual.scar.