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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 theluggage on Thursday August 09 2018, @04:16PM (1 child)
...but there's a lot of shows, and the past winners are still on the celebrity circuit.
Black Panther is a complete wildcard because, on the one hand, it represents diversity at a time when the Academy are on the back foot about such things, on the other, it ticks the "Oscar hate" ones (mass appeal fantasy popcorn spectacular). Certainly, it would be very, very embarrassing for the Academy if it walked away with a couple of "Best Make-Up" type awards.
Of course, now that they've created a new category that sounds tailor-made for it, it will be impossible to disprove the claim that it would otherwise have won a "proper" award.
...although, if the competing awards (except the Razzies*) want to get one up on the Academy then all they have to do is make sure BP gets their top award... Wouldn't put it past them.
(* Frankly, I never saw what was wrong with Catwoman given that it was about, well, Catwoman... If I buy a ham sandwich, I expect it to contain ham...)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 10 2018, @12:20PM
With the side dish of embarrassing for who and compared to what, given the industry problems with molestation and rape and meeeeeeeetwooo and all that. Just saying an industry focused around "Weinstein dindu nuthin wrong" would seem to imply some black action flick, no matter how temporarily interesting, can be swept under the rug in a relative sense, although I tentatively agree with you in an absolute sense that they'll get some flack.
To some extent they need some kind of PR like "we luvs black people" to block out all the recent stories of rape and kiddie touching that Hollywood is now synonymous with.