THB #304: Netflix Day! Preview & BAFTA
THB #304: Netflix Day! Preview & BAFTA
Good morning. This will be a short one… anticipating a longer piece this afternoon, after the Netflix quarterly report lands.
Wall Street seems to be all over the place in anticipating this report. CNBC had a “Worst Quarter Ever?” headline before having on a guest who luvs the stock and the company and everything they do is genius. Netflix told everyone that they would not be offering guidance on sub counts in the same way moving forward… so no one knows what this Investor’s Letter will look like… but bulls are still pushing the new ad tier (Netflix Merde) and what they hope will be more than 5 million subs added this quarter. Bears are anticipating 1.7% revenue growth, even with the new ad tier.
But no one knows. They are all guessing. Me too.
The report is about 4 hours away. I can wait to actually have numbers and to the analytical work from there.
BAFTA
Here is the full list of nominations (scroll down to get the simple list instead of links to each category.)
It’s a slice of the list we have been working from for months, with the add-on of All Quiet on The Western Front, a really well made movie that is, to my eye, not one of the best 3 films of this type in the last 5 years.
‘FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE” is a good list, as is the Doc and Animated lists.
No Avatar: The Way of Water, Top Gun Maverick, Babylon or Glass Onion.
The complete abandonment of The Fabelmans and Women Talking feels various degrees of wrong, depending on the category. Sarah Polley is one of the sanest filmmakers in the game, so I would guess she is finding her balance in this rejection. But the movie of hers that broke through in Oscar season had Julie Christie fronting the moment… Sarah really makes films that are grow-ers, not show-ers. She rises above the banal and I believe her films will be beloved for generations to come. As for Mr. Spielberg… I suspect his film will get a large number of Oscar nominations… and no wins. If Sarah Polley had directed The Fabelmans, from writer Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, it might have won Best Picture… as she would have forced the issues that SS simply will not, maybe can not.
Sadly, I feel compelled to point out that every category that has an “extra” nominee feels like the BAFTA powers that be felt compelled to expand in order to include someone of color who might not have been nominated if they stuck to 5. That would be Director and all 4 top acting categories. I don’t know if that is progress.
The overall season is turning into a “2 horse race” between The Banshees of Inisherin and Everything Everywhere All At Once and BAFTA will be a part of that conversation. If they lean Banshees, it will be pushed aside as U.K. bias. If they lean Everything, it will be positioned as a reason to expect the film to win Oscar’s Best Picture and for Michelle Yeoh to pass Cate Blanchett’s performance by.
I hate the “2 horse race” thing. It leads to the memorializing of opinion over fact. But it can’t be stopped, can it?
Phase 2 this year is, yet again, stupidly long. 37 days from nominations announced and final voting beginning… which is now longer than the marketing window for release of most movies and tv shows.
Until later…