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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: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @06:21AM
Finally, the popularity of aristarchus submissions will rise to the crest of the Academy Awards, shaming all others with their right wing nabobing of negativism. Or At Least We can hope. Hope: the new word of SoylentNews. Or else, perfido, ut flambe.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday August 09 2018, @06:23AM (1 child)
But I think they're focused so hard on politics -- and political correctness -- that they can’t get the act together. It's a little sad.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday August 09 2018, @06:25AM
‘Black Panther’ Blew Up the Academy’s Attempt to Meet ABC’s Oscar Demands [indiewire.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @07:08AM (1 child)
And the award for "Self Congratulatory Awards" goes to ... and the envelope please ... I Don't Care.
Even with the rise of technology these shows are striving hard to remain the same as they were decades ago. Rather than celebrate and promote the technical achievements they still want to focus on personalities. Add some spice by showing some behind the scenes technology and lure some of the more technically savvy generations into the TV audience. Yes, they'll ruin the "magic", but people can already edit their own videos at home so it's not going to shock anyone that it's not really "magic".
Remember that these shows are not about the awards, they're about TV ratings and the accompanying revenue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @08:38AM
With all this copyright and dmca stuff flying around, I thought they were trying to make sure few people, who are in the know, would care much about things like this.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @08:57AM (8 children)
How about an award for sexual abuse? Nominees for the latter could remain secret and when the name is announced, LAPD slap on the cuffs and lead the accused out of the room for questioning. Ratings gold!
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:32PM
Too many of the abusers are of a certain (((religion))) so punishing them would be seen as wildly politically incorrect. So the official party line is "nothing like that ever happens and when it does its just isolated incident number one bazillion"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @04:47PM (1 child)
The statue with the golden handcuffs? They hand those out on a case-by-case basis. One of the few times Hollywood uses a merit-based system.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 09 2018, @08:07PM
That moment when you're on stage to receive your lifetime achievement award and a montage of your accusers starts playing.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:18PM (4 children)
If you want ratings, you need more sexual stuff, not less.
"When the Oscars return, the bathing suit competition! Will Weinstein resist and stay in his chair, or will he invade the stage and drop his pants? Stay tuned!"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 09 2018, @08:25PM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein [wikipedia.org]
I'm a little confused why Weinstein has decided to hang around in the U.S. (he had several months during which he could have fled the country). I guess he thinks he can beat the charges, but at age 66, why take the risk of spending your retirement in a U.S. prison?
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(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Thursday August 09 2018, @10:04PM (2 children)
Probably had something to do with the fact that he has a behemoth of a company out here and his life is basically tied to that no matter what.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantern_Entertainment [wikipedia.org]
Well... Had a company. Past tense now.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 09 2018, @10:26PM (1 child)
He was dismissed from his company in October 2017. Company declared bankruptcy in February and again in March. Acquisition process began on May 1, was finished by July. Weinstein was arrested on May 25, 2018.
He should have pulled a Polanski and GTFO of the United States. Although Polanski fled after already being arrested, reaching a plea bargain, and just before sentencing. However, completely emulating his hero might be difficult or impossible given the amount of scrutiny on his case. Polanski also had French citizenship before he fled. Weinstein only holds American citizenship AFAIK. So he might have to really go far afield to escape justice.
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(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Friday August 10 2018, @12:53AM
Yes, but it was my understanding that the multiple "we're broke, file for bankruptcy!" incidents were in actuality merely ways to try to protect the assets that remained in the company - so that any future lawsuits had nothing to assault? Also, being fired from the company doesn't mean he lost his share in it. I would assume that he would have also been quite central in the attempt to try to save any remaining value in IP and the like?
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:14PM (2 children)
This question might be a bit acidic in nature. But are there any good new actors? And with good I mean that I put the lower end cutoff somewhere between Jack Nicholsson and Toshiro Mifune. Probably also is about where I put the definition of "new" as well for sake of this question.
I really am wondering, mainly since even when watching good shows today most actors feel interchangable (sure, there are a few that just suit their role very well, but that is more a credit to the people doing the casting than the actors)
The only one I can think of that comes close are Anothy Head (but he sadly enough are rarely allowed to explore his range and tends to be typecasted).
So, soylentils, please give me your suggestions for good actors (and not those that just has been aptly casted).
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:25PM
Good question... seems the only thing that comes to my mind anymore when "Movie Star" is mentioned... is "John Wayne".
The DMCA and Copyright people should be congratulated.... If there were more like me, all this law would not be necessary.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:11PM
I think there are good actors. The problem is that there are no good scripts.
Well ... there are some good scripts written, but by the time the final product is cleared for release, feedback-by-committee leaves us with boring stories with plot holes the size of a super-star-destroyer. "Too much money to risk offending anyone" (except the ultra-religious), and "remove this now, since we'll have to cut it for the Chinese market"
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:30PM (4 children)
Dying industries always go hard left. Or maybe hard left industries always die. They're always hand in hand, regardless. The politics is hard left but is irrelevant since the horse is already dead and beaten into a grease stain on the road.
What is interesting is why the awards died. My theory is the movie industry is more formulaic than the past. Nothing out there but sequels, remakes, comic-book-to-capeshit movie conversions... there's nothing worth seeing... reminds me of modern commuter cars.
To provide a bad SN automobile analogy, an era or industry with Prius and Tesla is exciting and you can get millions to tune into an awards show to see the best Tesla ever or debate on air if it crashes too much or now the Prius has a long range battery or whatevs. But do you seriously, seriously think that you can get viewers by the dozens of millions to tune into a party celebrating the 2002 Ford Focus (thats middle aged in the 1st generation, AFAIK nothing exciting happened in that model year).
Movies are boring, thats the problem. And the execs who think you can turn what would be a boring shitty remake into something exciting merely by removing the white males and spending lots of money on special effects are disconnected from reality (see, hard left, for more evidence)
I'd rather paint something and watch it dry. That's gonna be way more exciting.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:40PM (3 children)
Except your mileage may vary as to whether the new "Outstanding Contribution by a movie called Black Panther" category is an act of political correctness or an act of snobbishness to prevent Black Panther winning Best Picture. (Of course, Hanlon's Razor says that it was just a badly-timed attempt to boost ratings).
Also: Social Media and Reality TV are (for better or worse (by which I mean 'for worse')) providing a new glut of celebrities (with the added illusion of 'it could be you') which dilutes the appeal of watching film starts gush at the podium. On the other end of the spectrum, the "high end" of TV production values is getting higher - and the new streaming players are taking greater risks.
...and if you are concerned about race/gender/diversity issues, TV has been ahead of the movies in that game for years (even if you think it could do more). Part of that problem is because of the movies' reliance, as you say, on remakes and (popular) comic-book conversions: when all of your source material is 50+ years old then of course its going to be mainly about straight white males and the occasional bikini-clad amazon. Black Panther deserves a ton of credit for "doing it properly" promoting new or lesser-known characters that can stand on their own merit as do Marvel's TV outings such as Luke Cage or Jessica Jones) rather than blackwashing, gender-flipping or outing established characters, which tends to trigger the trolls.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:59PM (2 children)
Yeah maybe. Reality TV is far past peak, episodes struggle to approach ten million viewers for some years now. One way to test the reality TV theory would be to see if things improve for alternatives as reality TV has declined from its long ago peak. I'd suspect not, but collecting the data to prove one way or another would be rough and probably pretty subjective.
As yet another alternative, there seem to be individual YouTube stars with more subscribers, and even more viewers, than some of the biggest name network reality TV shows. Looking at gross sales and estimating ticket cost, Black Panther as third highest grossing film of all time is about the same number of viewers as PewDiPie had at peak on youtube, so its significant.
"Black Panther winning Best Picture" well is it merely the first/only "serious black people film" in at least one generation, which is, I guess, interesting or "outstanding" but not necessarily "best". Best would seem to imply more than capeshit comic-to-movie conversion with large special effects budget. Or if "best" is redefined to mean that little, then the word best doesn't mean much anymore, in which case its insulting to call "Black Panther" the best, if by the word "best" you mean the new meaning of "shitty". "Outstandingly politically correct and profitable" would be a great category for Black Panther.
(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.
(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).
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 09 2018, @03:53PM (1 child)
So they are suppressing more technical awards, which was the one part I was still interested in.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 09 2018, @08:31PM
They already have the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards [oscars.org]. I would expect them to segregate some of the technical oscar categories into that (and only make it available as a webcast).
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