First of all, shoutout to the fan who found one of these posts from last year with me complaining about the audio description for the Traitors and chimed in with their displeasure. i see you. You just found a post from last year.
Oscar nominations! I did fine. Some categories I fully swept, as you noticed yesterday, including Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, and Animated Feature. The biggest surprises often came with a big snub, so James Mangold instead of Edward burger is a surprise that creates a snub. Some of my favorite picks I had already come to terms with them not being nominated, like Danielle Detweiler for The Piano Lesson. But, as a blind community, Netflix fucked us. The most nominated film has no English Audio Description, and is the only Best Picture nominee not to do so. Demanding audio description from Netflix here is not outrageous. They pull this shit with their International Oscar bait titles, but routinely provide dubs/description for random international titles no one is aware of. Sony Pictures Classics has audio description for I’m Still Here, also nominated. Last year, we went 10/10 with Zone Of Interest and Anatomy Of A Fall both providing audio description. It’s obnoxious, as Netflix looks to raise rates, that they can’t be bothered to put English Audio Description on this. It also has nothing to do with it being a musical. Matilda The musical, originally in English, has multiple audio description tracks with accompanied dubs that require the cast to sing. Sorry, if you can do it one way, you can do it the other way too. End of this rant, for now.
TV Shows Watched: Prime Target: S1E2 (Apple plus) with audio description, The Night Agent: S2E1 (Netflix) with audio description, High Potential: S2E10 (Hulu) with audio description, American Primeval: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description, An update From Our Family: S1E2 (MAX) with audio description, Virgin River: S6E9 (Netflix) with audio description, and celebrity Jeopardy: S3E3 (Hulu) with audio description.
Movies: Coup (Hulu) No Audio Description
Best Episode: High Potential- Like, honestly. I know this might be a surprise, but this show has the clear edge. This week, I thought they did a solid job of painting various different suspects, because so many people felt highly sus. the former detective, the working mom, the stay at home dad, and even within the other nannies, there were multiple. Was it one? All? Plus, I loved when Caitlin Olsen told that awful boy to get out of her house.
Runner Up: an Update On our Family- I’m finding this show fairly interesting. That’s the bare minimum requirement at this point. It was this or Celebrity Jeopardy.
best Performance: Caitlin Olsen (High Potential)- She’s created a really cool character here, and the show has built nicely around her. but, yeah, when she drags that boy for being a brat, that scene won me over.
Runner Up: Daniel Sunjata )High Potential)- I’ve loved him since Rescue Me, so while this is also an indication of an underwhelming day, I’m also not mad at it.
Best Audio Description: the Night Agent- In a rather open field, this show has enough action in it. it also benefits from not really needing to introduce too many new characters, since it is a second season. roundabout did a decent job tracking the action sequences here, so I’ll give it the slight edge.
Runner Up: American Primeval- Really, nothing was above and beyond like I felt about how goosebumps was constantly on top. But, American Primeval has a lot of violence, an also some dubbing needed as the indigenous representation here is more prominent in the second episode.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: The Night Agent- I’ll rope that whole opening sequence that kicks off the season in here. Lots of guns being shot, grenades being thrown. A lot was happening.
Runner Up: Prime Target- This espionage drama had a brief sequence, compared to the one above, which amounted to starting with basically a jump scare, and ending with bullets being shot into water. that’s the easy way to describe it, without major spoilers. But, you need to not know something is about to happen, so when it does, it throws the scene into instant chaos. That balance was found.
Worst Off… Anything?- I mean, everything had audio description. Except, then movie I watched. but, I’d much rather continue on with Netflix being the literal worst of the day, as their major contender, Emilia Perez, is now preventing us from going 10/10 again this year in the Best Picture race.
