Peter Bart: Can awards season galas help cure Hollywood’s film crisis?

On Thursday night, the curtain will rise on what looks to be a peculiar festival awards season when organizers of the Palm Springs Gala open the Palm Springs Film Festival in hopes that audiences will somehow start talking about films.

The participants are aware that their children are in line for the avatar Sequel, but they probably didn’t pay themselves to see a movie — any movie — this year. The usual excuse: There are no new “adult” movies out there.

In fact, two big-budget ($80 million each) movies have been announced, non-franchise movies aimed at adults, Babylon and white noisehis coffers at the end of the year.

Both shared a provocative theme for the holiday season. The characters in Noah Baumbach’s white noise is obsessed with death. Damien Chazelle Babylon is about the death of the silent film era.

Although both delivered memorable moments and excellent performances, polls showed that sections of the audience felt more offended than entertained.

Meanwhile, the task is to find mainstream or obscure releases such as: After sunor Everything, everywhere, all at onceoften requires sleuthing due to quirky release dates and the locking of many screens.

The Motion Picture Academy’s mandate against screeners encouraged its constituents to rent films from members of the BAFTA or random guilds, rather than delve into the techno-maze of the Screening Room.

Will voters respond? Five years ago, Oscar members apologized if they saw this Rome only once in the face of unrelenting pressure from Netflix.

In contrast, many who were to attend the Palm Springs event admit that they did not see Cate Blanchett tar or in the Steven Spielberg congregation The Fables – again, earning films that ticket buyers couldn’t touch.

Tom Cruise will likely gobble up the Oscars, as many predicted, without taking any time off himself Impossible mission Franchise (seven so far) to flirt with the parties.

Oscar wins for Top Gun: Maverick will definitely boost TV ratings. Yet the biggest excitement in recent years has been fueled by surprise winners Shakespeare in loveor by surprise losers like E.T

This year, festival audiences may prefer sleeper hits such as Everything everywhere at once. Missing this year are mainstream studio favorites like The Martian, Dunkirk or Once in Hollywood – Films with strong casts and accessible themes.

“Why aren’t the studios looking for someone else? terms of endearment with Shirley MacLaine or Jack Nicholson?” asked a film producer. “It caused emotion, not alienation.”

The following sentimental entry is A man named Otto, starring Tom Hanks as Grumpy who ends up taking care of his family (it’s a remake of a Swedish film). Given the phasing out of film festivals and other promotional events, Otto will inevitably compete for attention in the crowded movie room.

Entry ticket to paradise also called a welcome intruder; The George Clooney and Julia Roberts drama grossed $167 worldwide. It’s based on a relentlessly bubbly rom-com original comedy by Ol Parker and David Pipski. As such, it represents the opposite of white noisea film that is undoubtedly faithful to a cult 1985 novel by Don DeLillo.

fans of white noise Admire the Split Personality: The story focuses on an academic (Adam Driver) who teaches Hitler studies at a university. While the first half is bitingly satirical – a typical family coping with the pressures of consumerism – the third act revels in the characters’ dark obsessions (one of the reasons critic Travis Andrews put it on his list of books not to read must be filmed did not have). .

Of course, like movies white noise and Babylon presents enormous challenges to the public. Ticket buyers are tacitly committing to long, sophisticated stories rather than playing the streamer audience’s giveaway games. That kind of loyalty continued through Hollywood’s golden age, when the “captive audience” strongly supported the mainstream releases. Could it happen again at a time when moviegoers are adjusting their expectations?