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Academy Adds Popular Film Oscar Category in Desperate Ratings Move
At the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors meeting on Tuesday night, the 54 governors voted to add a new category to the Oscars. Per tradition, some 7,000 Academy voters, experts in their field, voted in by their colleagues, will weigh in on the best films of the year in 24 categories covering the crafts of moviemaking, from cinematography to sound, as well as the four acting categories, directing, writing, animation, foreign language, documentary, and fiction shorts and features.
But this year there will be one more: Best Popular Film. The Academy is bowing to pressure from ABC, which is anxious about historic low ratings for its telecast. The next Oscars will air on February 24, 2019 and, in 2020, will move up from February 23 to February 9, the earliest date ever, in a bid to jump ahead of multiple rival awards shows–which will, in turn, move ahead of the Oscars. (In the early days of its history, the Oscars were held in May, moved to April and March, then February.)
The Board also finally succumbed to building pressure to keep the show to three hours and not present live some of the less sexy craft categories, following the lead of other awards shows like the Tonys. (Sexy categories like Sound Mixing and Editing will be presented live during commercial breaks, then edited into the show.) This also serves to undermine the integrity of these annual global awards, which may be losing relevance as a mainstream shared event, but are still revered by cinephiles around the world.
Also at Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Variety, and Collider.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:07PM (7 children)
Wasn't it already a bit of a popularity contest? Now they are just removing the pretense. I doubt it will change the fact that it's horribly boring TV. "Celebs" sitting down and clapping like robots on command.
(Score: 3, Touché) by VLM on Thursday August 09 2018, @02:01PM
Sounds like the State of the Union speech for as long as I've been alive.
Or kinda like twitter. Perhaps the social media aspect is in 1980 if some crazy movie fan wanted to spend an evening gushing over some movie, they had the awards show, but in 2018, 364 out of 365 days of the year they would gush on twitter and get it completely out of their system, then the award show comes on and "Eh, yesterday's news, not interested".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:21PM (5 children)
No, in fact quite the opposite: the main criticism of the Oscars in recent years is that instead of picking films that the public actually liked, they've selected stuff that checks off all the Oscar bait boxes and has a very expensive "for your consideration" campaign, which means they often pick mediocre films over real game-changers that are still enjoyed to this day. It's not that these are bad movies generally, but they aren't beloved today in the same way as many of the films that came out the same year.
Some examples of this:
- 1964: My Fair Lady beats out both Dr Strangelove and Mary Poppins.
- 1967: In the Heat of the Night over The Graduate and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
- 1971: The French Connection over A Clockwork Orange.
- 1979: Kramer vs Kramer over Apocalypse Now.
- 1989: Driving Miss Daisy beats out Dead Poets Society and Field of Dreams.
- 1996: The English Patient over Fargo.
But in the last couple of decades, it's gotten even worse:
- 1998: Shakespeare in Love wins over Saving Private Ryan. The Big Lebowski isn't remotely in consideration.
- 2001: A Beautiful Mind over Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. (And indeed it was entirely possible that LoTR could have ended up with no Best Picture awards at all, despite it completely changing the kinds of films that got made)
- 2005: Crash wins over Brokeback Mountain and Good Night and Good Luck.
- 2008: Slumdog Millionaire wins. Wall-E isn't even nominated for Best Picture.
- 2009: The Hurt Locker beats out Avatar, Inglorious Basterds, and Up.
- 2010: The King's Speech wins over Inception. Inception is the only 1 of the top 10 grossing films to even be nominated.
- 2011: The Artist wins. The only one of the top 10 grossing films to get nominated is The Help.
- 2012: Argo wins. The Hunger Games and The Cabin in the Woods aren't even nominated.
- 2013: 12 Years a Slave wins over The Wolf on Wall Street. Frozen and The Purge aren't nominated.
- 2014: Birdman wins. None of the top-grossing films are nominated.
- 2015: Spotlight beats out The Big Short, The Martian, and Mad Max: Fury Road.
- 2016: Moonlight wins. None of the top 15 grossing films are nominated.
- 2017: The winner, The Shape of Water, was at least the 13th-highest-grossing film. None of the other high-grossing films made the nomination cut.
And what's really striking is that if you were following the Oscar's Best Picture as your guide to what's going on in movies, you would think that no movies based on a comic book character has ever been made, Harry Potter doesn't exist, comedies basically haven't been made in decades, and no animated films are any good.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday August 09 2018, @06:41PM (2 children)
Just a personal opinion of mine: while I enjoyed watching Inception thoroughly, I find that King's Speech was a better movie. I don't normally go for historical dramas like that (I am more into scifi), but I found TKS interesting and entertaining the entire film.
YMMV of course.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday August 09 2018, @07:42PM
As I mentioned, most of these weren't bad films by any means, but they definitely weren't what the box office said was important that year. For instance, I definitely thought 12 Years a Slave was worth my time and money when I saw it, but it didn't have the kind of cultural impact that the others I mentioned that year had.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 10 2018, @12:24PM
I also saw that. It was unique, I usually complain about stereotypical formulaic movies but this was unusual, like how did this get past the gatekeepers who've been keeping things mediocre? Its not amazing or fantastic but it was better than average for sure.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 10 2018, @02:53AM
While I appreciate your overall point, I think your evaluation here is very personal and a bit eclectic. in some cases, you seem to be highlighting popular films that were snubbed and in other cases you're talking about genre films, films that were niche or had (or only later had) a cult following, etc.
And tastes will change over time. Some picks seem particularly culturally relevant to their time but may not have as much staying power decades later -- but that doesn't mean they weren't important at the time.
But yeah, I'd agree with you that the Best Picture winner is often not in my personal top 5 films from a given year. On the other hand I would have chosen some other alternate films in many years to what you listed... there's just no good objective metric for this.
(Score: 2) by termigator on Friday August 10 2018, @05:17AM
I basically agree with your comments, but some of your examples are questionable. Hunger Games? Not good. Who still enjoys that movie? Avatar? Although a technical achievement, the story was formulatic. It has no rewatch value. Fury Road? Still have not figured out why so many people liked the film. Now, Wall-E is masterpiece IMO, but the academy has never taken animated films seriously.
I think a fundamental flaw with award shows is they are too much in the now. It can take time to really know if a movie is good. Movies that did not do well in the theater, find their audience over time and become classics. Movies that were popular and/or well reviewed when released, fade away, do not age well, and/or forgotten. More than once I rewatch and old movie I liked in the past and realize it is not as good as I remembered. I have also appreciated some movies more over time. Time can bring new perspectives and insights in how one judges a movie (or other forms of art).