Technically accurate but semantically dishonest

Which of these "award-winning movies" is not like the other?

Awards for Past Lives, according to Wikipedia:

Best Woman Screenwriter - Alliance of Women Film Journalists
Top Ten Films of the Year - American Film Institute Awards
Best Director - Asia Pacific Screen Awards
Outstanding Achievement in Casting - Artios Awards
Best First Feature - Astra Film and Creative Arts Awards
Best Original Screenplay, Best First Film - Austin Film Critics Awards

And that's only the A's. Point proven, I will stop there.

Awards for Prey, according to Wikipedia:

Outstanding Sound Editing for a Limited Series or Anthology, Movie or Special - Primetime Emmy Awards
Best Streaming Film Premiere, Best Costume Design, Best Creature FX - Fangoria Chainsaw Awards
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing - Non-Theatrical Feature - Golden Reel Awards
Best Original Score - Streamed Live Action Film (No Theatrical Release) - Hollywood Music in Media Awards

Awards for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, according to Wikipedia:

Feature Big Budget - Comedy - Artios Awards
Best Supporting Actress - Critics Choice Movie Awards
Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy - Golden Globe Awards
Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy - Golden Globe Awards
Best Original Poster - Golden Trailer Awards
Best Supporting Actress - National Society of Film Critics Awards
Best Supporting Actress - Online Film Critics Society Awards
Best Adapted Screenplay - Writers Guild of America

Awards for Movie 43, according to Wikipedia:

Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay - Golden Raspberry Awards

Now, some of these awards may be a bit fringe, but at least you would write home about them.

Not so for the "accolades" for Movie 43.

So I am trying to figure out Amazon's angle here. 

They are promoting four random movies to us that all are considered "award winners" -- a technically true statement. The thing that separates them from being completely random, I would guess, is that perhaps they are all new to the service within the past few weeks, or at least returned to the service after a temporary departure.

But wait -- Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was an Amazon original movie. It debuted there. There would be no conceivable reason it would have ever left, because where would it go? Streamer originals are on the service forever and ever after, amen. 

So that doesn't explain the pairing of these four movies. And surely, if they just wanted four awards winners, they'd have literally hundreds of other movies on the site that would qualify, especially given the number of existing bodies that lavish formal praise on movies that are never going to get an Oscar nomination. (I mean, even the Teen Choice Awards and MTV Movie Awards exist.) 

What possible incentive could Amazon have for elevating Movie 43 alongside these other films, all of which were critical favorites in one way or another, with maybe only a few detractors for Borat and essentially none for the other two? 

The movie was an all-time turkey, and any of their customers who watch Movie 43 will surely know this right away. They may then investigate why Amazon promoted it to them as such, and find out the technical accuracy of the term "award" -- while still grumbling at the deception.

Because technical accuracy only matters in the legalese that comes at the end of an ad for a new erectile dysfunction drug, or a bargain basement attorney. It only matters if you are trying to indemnify yourself against an angry customer who wants to sue you because something happened with your product that you didn't tell them was going to happen. So you tell them what could happen, and wash your hands of it, and basically live with the fact that you may end up burning some of your future customers, because that's the nature of your particular industry. There are enough potential future customers to compensate for the loss. 

There is no good reason to burn a potential steaming customer, given the comparatively small value of encouraging them to watch any individual thing on your service. Streaming content is inherently a crapshoot, and any streaming customer knows that. The streamer's job is to make the content available, to suggest that you might like it if you liked something similar to it, and to give it a certain visibility in accordance with the streamer's own belief in the content, its own advertising philosophy and perhaps its own agreement with whoever leased the content to give it a certain amount of prominence for a certain amount of days. The rest is just caveat emptor.

But then if you go out of your way to label garbage like Movie 43 as an award winner -- and place it next to three other movies that won awards for legitimate reasons -- you are engaging in actual dishonesty toward your customer that could damage your brand. 

And for what? What do you gain if an additional ten thousand people stream Movie 43? (Answer in the comments, if you know. I really want to know.) That is not an exaggeration given the way ads like these tend to flood our devices, likely going to millions of us, if not billions. (Okay, not billions.) 

You're more likely to lose those ten thousand people as customers than to get them to watch another movie that might be recommended according to their interest in Movie 43, or whatever the flimsy value is that Amazon might get out of this. 

They won't leave because they didn't like this one movie. That can happen any time you click play.

They'll leave because you told them they would like this movie because it was an award winner, when the only awards it won were named after that universal gesture you make with your mouth and tongue, expelling breath outward and creating that farting sound that unmistakeably indicates your disgust.

Leave technical accuracy to the pharmaceutical companies.  

MIFF: Clearing up my Past Lives congestion, with an Argento chaser

I have three different podcasts halted dead in their tracks because I hadn't yet seen Past Lives.

Now, I don't have to listen to my podcasts in chronological order. And I don't have to have seen a movie in order to listen to someone talk about it on a film podcast. (I "listen loosely" in those situations, or if I'm really trying to avoid it, I've been known to just fast forward through the segment in question.)

But with the acclaim I'd heard for Past Lives specifically, I thought it would be good to go in fresh. And for the past few weeks, I've been close enough to my viewing of Celine Song's lauded film -- my first official film of MIFF 2023, having watched a MIFF film on Wednesday that I rented through U.S. iTunes -- that I thought I might as well just wait until after I saw it to continue listening to the podcasts Filmspotting, The Next Picture Show and The Slate Culture Gabfest in the order in which they were released. I have other podcasts to catch up on, right?

Well ...

While I clearly do -- two other Slate podcasts, a fantasy baseball podcast and a podcast put out by two ranting screenwriters -- I ended up catching up on them pretty quickly. For a while I had plenty of old Slate Culture Gabfests, because I'd gotten really behind on those, but then I heard them introducing a discussion of Past Lives in that one as well.

It got so that as I boarded the train into the city to see my first MIFF film, I was listening to an NBA podcast about summer league games -- about players I'd never heard of. That was really a case of "listening loosely." When that ended, I listened to -- gasp! -- music.

The walk from the train to the theater was about 25 minutes, which was good, since I'm doing a steps challenge for work. I had plenty of time to get there, plus stop for a slice of pizza as well. The movie started at 6:15, and I figured if I rocked up about 5:55 I'd be in great shape.

Guess it really has been four years since I've seen a MIFF movie in person.

The Comedy Theatre, my old nemesis (the seats are really uncomfortable), is also the place that most screams out "MIFF" to me. Queueing up around the corner, waiting in the cold to get in, passing the large fish tank of the seafood restaurant where all the lobsters have no idea why you're standing out there (or how short the remainder of their live are) ... these are all ingrained in my memory from many previous MIFFs. Even with the prospect of the uncomfortable seats, I was looking forward to this little ritual again. For context, consulting my notes, I can tell you that the Comedy Theatre was where I saw The End of the Tour, The Salesman, Certain Women, Paterson, Ingrid Goes West, a retrospective screening of Fantastic Planet, Let the Sunshine In, The Square, Climax, Shoplifters, Cold War and Everybody Knows. With the large seating capacity, it usually hosts buzzed about movies and big directors.

Except this year -- the first time I've been there since 2018 (it wasn't in use in 2019, my last in-person year) -- they lined the queue up on the other side of the building.

No lobsters.

And my goodness was it long. Twenty minutes was not nearly long enough beforehand to get a decent seat.

Fortunately, my idea of a decent seat differs from that of other people. While most people seem to prefer the image to be as small as possible in their view -- which I will never understand -- I prefer to sit up close, and the second row actually gave me a great vantage point on Past Lives. 

Unfortunately, the film that I thought might be a contender for my #1 of the year wasn't a personal favorite at any distance. Oh, it's really good, no doubt about that. I may sit and think about it and it may get even better. But I knew in the moment that I wasn't wrapped up in it like I expected to be, liked I hoped to be. 

But at least now I can go and listen to my podcasts.

I had about 45 minutes after getting out to get over to Cinema Kino, the one downstairs from where I work, to meet a friend and his two work friends to see Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage from 1970. The fact that they are showing all (?) of Argento's films this year was particularly fortuitous for this particular friend, because at MIFF 2019, we had also seen not one but two giallo-inspired films, both directed by Peter Strickland: his then-new film In Fabric, and his film Berberian Sound Studio, which I was seeing for the third time, and at which he himself was in attendance.

We were supposed to meet for a drink after he finished dinner with his friends and after I got out from Past Lives, but that wasn't all that realistic, especially when they finished late and didn't rock up to the theater until about ten minutes before the movie was supposed to start. So we took our drinks in with us.

Big mistake.

Actually, it was the drink part, not the taking it in part, that was the mistake.

I usually don't drink before or during a film, because it just makes me sleepy. Having gotten a glass of pinot noir at the Kino bar (hey that almost rhymes), in part because I thought the blood red color was well suited to Argento (and in part because they wouldn't make me an old fashioned), I got sleepy in no time. The theater being excessively warm (I had to shed a layer) and the film being in Italian also conspired to keep me fighting off sleep for much of the running time. A 9 o'clock start and a second film of the evening were the other main opponents. 

I did enjoy what I saw (probably 90% of it) but Argento will continue to have trouble living up to the standard he set with Suspiria. Who can blame him. You can't hit like that every time out. 

But it was good to see my friend -- who has also accompanied me to I Lost My Body and First Reformed at MIFF -- and his friends seemed nice.

Well, with the timing of my writing this piece, I've actually already seen my Sunday night film ... but two is enough for this first proper MIFF piece of 2023.