Oscars Line-Up and Trivia 2020

It’s that time of year again – the movies have been chosen, complaints have been made, and ReelTalk is going to cover them one at a time.  Joker leads the pack with 11 nominations; The Irishman, 1917, and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood follow with 10 nominations apiece. 31% of the nominees are women (though this year’s lineup has once again mostly excluded women and nominees of color in the “major” categories), and Netflix has garnered 20 nominations, despite some claims that it is not entirely relevant cinema.

Long Live the King: New is Not Enough

If you go back and read through my reviews of Disney films, you might notice a bit of a pattern – I usually love them. I’ve often wondered if I am being a little easier on Disney films than I am on others because I have always seemed to love them, and even the ones I haven’t loved I’ve at least enjoyed. Now that we’ve reached Disney’s age of remakes, I am definitely being tested – Beauty and the Beast (2017) I loved, Aladdin (2019) I appreciated. But the remake of one of the ultimate classics, The Lion King, is perhaps the most disappointing Disney movie I’ve seen in a long time. Leaving the theater, I expressed this disappointment, and the person I saw the movie with thought that I was being too hard on the movie. Maybe I was (and the current trailer for Mulan is definitely not helping), but at the same time, it’s something to consider when you walk into one of these remakes. If Disney is going to continue remaking their films, they need to add to them; there needs to be a change, a reason to remake them. Beauty and the Beast fixed a few plot holes, included a few songs, and updated a few moments; Aladdin gained a more diverse cast and strengthened its female protagonist. In this case, the change for The Lion King was supposed to be the CGI, making the characters in a new way. I’m sad to say that it’s really not enough, because the story itself does not change. I’m not saying that it should – The Lion King was a great story back in 1994 – but no matter how great it looks, creating a “live action” version of the story is not enough of a reason to redo such a beloved story.