Last chance to talk about Tár
OrchestrasThe Oscar results tonight will determine whether Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of a sadistic conductor will have any shelf-life beyond tomorrow. Newspapers, led by the New York Times, have given it disproportionate exposure on their serious op-ed pages.
Here is the slippedisc.com verdict.
One way or other, the mediat attention will end tomorrow.
And Tár will return to deserved oblivion.
In the sequel she loses everything in the collapse of Woke Garbage Bank, but she has to share the screen with Oprah and the Harkles.
According to Merriam Webster,the opposite of “woke” is “asleep”…Which sums it up perfectly. I prefer being woke to being asleep.I prefer to belong to a large,well informed group of people with basic empathy,who are compassionate to dismantling injustices,and making the world a better place for all of humankind..I prefer this to a group of uneducated goners,who haven´t realized they are already obsolete and dead,stuck in a imagined past….if they ever have been alive
Would be too long to explain but this woke movement is a soft totalitarisme for now, books have been burnt in it’s name, it’s about thinking right, and they know exactly what s right. You re not a victim? Then you will be victim of the woke. Hiding behind good will and good feelings ( just as ” on ne fait pas de la bonne littérature avec des bons sentiments” you cannot lead good politics with good feelings) is a good trojan horse.
What a load of rubbish….Show me one book which has been”burnt” ….My family witnessed the burning of books in 1933…..Those idiotic comparisons of the right…
If you got to “woke” in that dictionary, you must have started from the back.
I prefer to be asleep:that’s why I enjoyed going to see Tár. It worked better than any sleep meds!!!
OK….So you have to look for another pet peeve,Mr.lebrecht…
Mr LeBrecht does what he pleases as the guru of this site. He instigates supposedly positive discourse and diverse opinions. Unfortunately his followers often do not. Thus many off tooic and poorly constructed / expressed viewpoints. Keep up the good work sir.
Why deserved oblivion? The film has given exposure to the world of classical music. Nitpick about its various, minor inaccuracies, it also got a lot right. Here’s hoping it does well tonight.
My local Berlin cinema was packed on the day it opened, such was the build-up on SD and elsewhere.
Spontaneous laughter at Társ first conducting.
Worth staying for the final 30 seconds!
My hopes, my bet is with “everything everywhere all at once”
It also checks off all the nowadays required race, gender & lqbtq boxes but is so much more fun to watch!
It was fine. Any Hollywood, (or foreign film for that matter) that seeks to situate a narrative within a discipline — the sciences, arts or letters — even athletics — is going to look ridiculous to a genuine practitioner within that discipline. Does anyone regard Jude Law’s Thomas Wolfe or Kirk Douglas’s Van Gogh as anything other than a caricature? Did Gary Cooper look like a Lou Gehrig or rather like someone who hadn’t picked up a bat and glove since he was 14? The best of these films, say Mike Leigh’s ‘Mr. Turner’ — the fabulous Timothy Spall in the title role — was convincing, but that is likely due to Turner’s 200 year remove from our time. You go to a dramatic film with those parameters understood and accepted beforehand. You don’t look for ‘reality.’ You look for a dramatic situation that can hold your attention. Of course I’ll watch Blanchett as Tar or as Maid Marian; it doesn’t really matter. She always holds your attention. As for Gilbert Kaplan, 99% of the film public has no idea who he was. I do, but I could never pick him out of a crowd, nor could anyone else who did not personally know him. The real flaw in the production, which reduced it to a melodrama, was Tar’s physical attack on her ‘replacement’ in front of a full house in the Philharmonie. That was way over the top and unnecessary. But that failure lies with the director, who should have left that sequence on the — as they used to say — cutting room floor.
I have not watched the movie and I am not interested in it. But why would not winning the best movie Oscar force Tár to “return to deserved oblivion”? According to that logic each year every movie but one will sink into oblivion. And that is patently not the case. Isn’t it an honor to be nominated – unlike many, many other movies?
Those Best Picture winners of the recent past that have already sunk into oblivion: Coda, Nomadland, Parasite, Moonlight, Spotlight, Birdman, Argo, The Artist, The Hurt Locker, The Departed, or Crash…
Please give it a rest – it’s just a movie! I don’t recall Amy Irving getting similar attention when she tried to portray a pianist in “The Competition” – which was similarly ridiculous.
Let’s not forget Dreyfuss also being one that attemped to portray a pianist as well. I watched it when it came oot and it was equally cringe worthy to say the least.
Not everyone watches a movie for Oscar purposes. I’m baffled as to why the title is “Last chance” as if movies cease to exist after the Oscars. I watched Natalie Portman play a ballerina and Miles Teller play a drummer several times LONG after their release and award season; and in no way was I under the impression those were documentaries. Some of us watch to escape, some for the story, and some on a bad date.
Calm down Mr. Lebrecht, it’s just a movie. It’s not s story about you.
As I’ve said many times, Tar isn’t about conductors or orchestras, but cult of personality, celebrity, and power. It could just as easily have been a film about a tech CEO, actor, popular musician, etc.
And as I’ve also said, the news stories posted on Slipped Disc make the case that what Tar has to say about the classical music industry is actually quite accurate.
Some recent highlights have included: the choreographer who smeared dog poop on a critic’s face, Jeffrey Epstein connected to raping a member of the NY ballet, various sexual assault allegations at music schools, everything that’s going on with Michael Bojesen, wokism and Chi-chi, the “bullying culture” at the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, YNS’s cult of personality at Philadelphia, etc.
To me, it seems like people in the industry are upset and angry that Todd Field has aired their not-so-secret dirty laundry.
Cate Blanchett is so overrated, her entire acting range consists of a single RBF (resting-bitch-face) expression, which serves her in every single role to swing from melancholia to hysteria and back, which basically sums up Tar.
If she wins her 3rd Oscar tonight, I will slap myself.
Nonsense. One of the best reviewed films of the year with a towering central performance. It won’t be disappearing anywhere. Your continued picking on it only shows up how little you know about or appreciate cinema.
In the U.S. the reviews were mixed at best.
Why is it that we’ve heard nothing about Natalie Murray Beale, the Australian-trained, London-based conductor who coached Cate Blanchett & also served as a musical advisor on Tar? Why is windbag John Mauceri, who never even met Blanchett, out there taking all the credit for Tar & promoting himself?
From a review of Tár:
“The look Lydia gives Olga at their first lunch is almost literally wolfish. ”
So, so, so familiar. I know of at least one real life parallel. 🙂
I’ve witnessed both men and women (in this case, in the arts) devoured at lunch by their own sex. Even in my youth…I’d name names, but, discretion is the better part of valor.
What is really past due to “return to deserved oblivion” is the stubbornly narrow-minded opinion of all those who do not get what this movie is mostly about and why it is among most interesting and intelligent movies eligible for this year’s “Academy Awards”. Then, next in line to the same destination, is tonight’s televised event itself, unless someone slaps someone else again or some other scandal of that nature takes place in full view of TV cameras, in which case it would have a chance to become a bit more memorable for those who get excited by that sort of things.
Omg, it’s just a movie. That’s it.
Anyways, as brilliant as Cate Blanchett was I’m rooting for Michelle Yeoh.
Yes, but that’s sort of the point of the backlash. If you shoved Lady Gaga or P-Diddy up their with your symphony orchestra, would you like it if somebody said to you, “omg, it’s just music”? . . . Why is it that many normally discerning people are willing to set the bar so much lower for motion pictures?
Anyone watched it twice?
There you go…
Yes,i did.
This in no way reflects my personal preferences. I have seen almost all of the nominated movies and done a lot of research which will hopefully allow me to extend my winning streak at a local all-night Oscar Watch Party/Contest to four years in a row (I still have passes left from 2020).
Again, I stress my predictions do not in any way match what I would actually like to see win. That being said, here are my predictions for tonight’s top categories:
Picture – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Director – Everything Everywhere All at Once
Actor – Austin Butler (Elvis”)
Actress – Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere all at Once”)
Supporting Actor – Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere all at Once”)
Supporting Actress – Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”)
Adapted Screenplay – Women Talking
Original Screenplay – Everything Everywhere All at Once
The big winners of the night will be “Everything Everywhere all at Once” and “All Quiet on the Western Front”.
Thanks to all for the “up” votes!
I don’t think anyone saw Jamie Lee Curtis as Best Supporting Actress! That was a huge surprise.
It was a virtual tie between Austin Butler and Brendan Fraser, and I chose the wrong guy.
In all, I correctly identified 18 winners in 23 categories. I will learn later in the week if I managed a fourth straight win (it takes several days to count all that ballots). Stay tuned … !
Jamie Lee Curtis won the supporting award at the SAG awards, and the Oscar winners almost always mirror the SAG winners.
Tar attempted to shed some light on the classical music world. There are plenty of inaccuracies and other issues. However, Hollywood mainstream attempted to shed light on classical music the product. Musicians tend to hate it. What does that tell us about the current state of symphonic music?
I am really curious about the phrase “deserved oblivion”. The film has received quite a few positive reviews and has an Oscar nomitation under its belt. It features a really remarkable actress in the main role. So it does not look like something which deserves immediate dismissal.
Or maybe there is another reason for that condemnation? One can see that your blog is eagerly promoting the case for female conductors. And that is fine and certainly there was high time for it. However, this trend of promoting females in conducting positions is already coming with its fair share of discrimination and nepotism. And that deserves some attention too.
In this context I really appreciate the courage of the producers of the film who are showing that simply changing the gender of music directors is not going to address the difficult issues the classical music world is facing today. And on the contrary – if we do not give enough scrutiny to conductors of both genders for their professionalism, musicality and interpersonal skills, we may find ourselves in even more trouble than what we had just few years ago, when there were fewer female conductors around.
The worrying thing may actually be the fact that there was a conductor (conductress?) who took personal offence to the movie! Well, “Every why has a wherefore”.
Gender equality – yes! But not at all cost! The problems presented in the film are applicable to both sexes.
I wondered why the conductor in Tar needed to be gay. Can we not fathom a straight female leading an orchestra? Need she be butched-up in some manner to be considered a leader?
I do not know who one has to portray a female conductors in such a disgusting way. We know how hard it was for women to break into a conducting world, and no, they are not jerks. At the same time the conducting world does have some high-powered male predators. Why not to portray them instead?
Perhaps because we have prosecuted them in real life. No names.
The Academy hath spoken. Good job, everyone. (Sincerity, not sarcasm.)
It is a good documentary about the business.
Everything that happens there, is demonstrably true and happening at this very moment, except the air of grandeur and public media attention that clearly nobody has for anything “classical music” related. That is less believable than Avatar.
Just another swan song of this decaying artform
But for the SD obsessive focus on it, I wouldn`t have watched this intriguing movie! Thanks.