Paddington 2 is hands down a more entertaining film that Citizen Kane
Vol 104: Plus Oscar controversy, Arnold interviews Cameron, Line Rider vs. john Williams, John Wick kills visualized +more
Welcome to Friday. I don’t mean to ruin the magic but technically as I type this it’s Thursday night. Oh, I’m @yojrb btw, back again with another Watchlist, where I’ve recapped the week in Internet film culture from the corners out. Enjoy!
OSCAR THIS
So the mid-pandemic 93rd Academy Awards actually happened last Sunday night and also actually went off pretty smoothly, as long as you don’t count the ratings drop and that buzzkill of a final 20 minutes wherein the producers bumped the top Acting awards to after the traditional last Best Picture award, wherein Frances McDormand attempted to break the record for most wgafart speech in Oscar history (nope, that honor goes to Joe Pesci) - followed closely by the biggest upset of the night in the Best Actor award category, wherein the late Chadwick Boseman was a strong favorite for his performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix) but ended up losing to Anthony Hopkins in The Father. To top it all of, Hopkins wasn’t in the building, or the country, as he also expected to lose to Boseman (he released a video acceptance the next day) - but you know who was in the building? Boseman’s widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, waiting for her expected tearful thank you and goodbye in front of a sympathetic audience and the whole world watching at home. CRINGE. This whole sequence shuffle was a bad idea on top of a bad idea on top of an exploitative idea from the start. I don’t blame her obviously - I blame the producers. You hear me Soderbergh? I blame you.
CORRECT THIS
The film-osphere was abuzz this week after Rotten Tomatoes’ crack team of microfiche diggers unearthed an 80-year-old negative review of the 1941 film Citizen Kane (stream it on HBO Max), commonly considered the best film of all-time - bouncing the classic off of its 100% critics Tomato percentage perch. From there the joke became that the 2017 kids film Paddington 2, which still maintains a 100% rating, had overtaken the legendary film…
No, Paddington 2 did not overtake Citizen Kane on Rotten Tomatoes. Kind of - it depends on what metric you are looking at. While it’s true that P2 remains on the list of films that maintain a 100% score, it’s not true that CK’s drop to 99% has put the film below the marmalade loving Ursidae. Just ask the all-time Rotten Tomatoes ranking page, which takes into account not only percentage but also number of reviews and the “top-ness” of the critics that have contributed to that percentage. While CK did drop a few slots to #4, it’s still handily beating the bear in a blue hat, which is chilling way down the list at #59.
That being said, Paddington 2 is hands down a more entertaining film that Citizen Kane and that is undebatable and I’m serious and you are wrong and you must agree or you should unsub this email immediately.
Related: The credits scene from Paddington 2
WATCH THIS
Arnold Schwarzenegger interviewed James Cameron via Zoom and managed to squeeze out a little Avatar 2/3/4 update from the famously tight-lipped director amidst all of the climate-change proselytizing. Here’s the gist: it’s not done yet.
ALSO THIS
Remember Line Rider? The late-aughts Flash-game that saw players sledding down a simple player-created course, popularized once experts at the game started posting complicated choreographed runs set to music to burgeoning video-sharing websites at the time. Well people are still posting Line Rider videos, and they’ve only gotten more impressive over time, some you might even consider them art - like the example I’ve linked above featuring John Williams’ Oscar winning theme from Schindler’s List. Bravo!
RANDOMS
Speaking of Jack Black, an epic effects-laden, Avengers-infused, post-vaccine instagram post from the comedian made the rounds this week. Warning: multiple speedos will follow this click. I’m sure his mother would be proud.
A Texas woman was charged with “felony embezzlement” 21 years ago over an unreturned VHS rental copy of over a VHS tape of Sabrina the Teenage Witch - and only just found out about it. And we thought Blockbuster fines were excessive back in the day.
In excellent long-reads this week, six screenwriters dished to Vulture on the hardest endings they ever wrote.
Insider asked an IRL former bank robber to break down how IRL-possible the heists are in 11 movies ranging from 1975’s Dog Day Afternoon (HBO Max) to 2021’s Cherry (Apple TV+).
Shock G, star of the hit 1991 comedy Nothing But Trouble and lead vocalist and co-founder of the hip hop group Digital Underground (think Humpty Dance), passed away last week at the age of 57.
For you color nerds out there, Wired dove deep into how Pixar “hacks” our brains by “tweaking light and color to trigger deep emotional responses”.
John Wick’s kills, visualized.
I leave you this week with a quick recommendation - Netflix’s Stowaway, starring Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, and Toni Collette in a story inspired by Tom Goodwin’s controversial sci-fi short story The Cold Equations and directed by Mystery Guitar Man. I enjoyed it quite a bit and I think you might too.
Until next time…
—James