New Oscar category will actually HURT popular films?

[tomandtish]

So apparently a new category is being added to the Oscars: Outstanding achievement in popular film. Based on analysis, this is apparently the category for the blockbuster films, and other genres that don't normally get Oscar nods (horror, etc.).

Have to agree with the writer of this story (https://www.themarysue.com/academy-awards-new-category/)... This seems like a way for the Oscar committee to keep popular blockbuster films out of the Best Picture category.

Thoughts?

[Rogar Demonblud]

When was the last time a blockbuster was nominated for Best Picture? I honestly can't remember if it's happened since Return of the King.

[Kitten Champion]

That seems fairly condescending.

I suppose its intent is to make the Oscars more popular by having a category which regular movie-goers can be invested in. It's like having a new Olympic event for out-of-shape people because athletes are hard to relate to though.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Well, if the ratings trend continues they can just cancel the big ceremony in a few years and hand out the awards in a conference room in the local Hilton, with a press release most people will ignore as clickbait.

[Iruka]

I don't really see it.

While essentially creating an 'audience award' seems superfluous, I don't understand the reasoning of this being made to keep popular films out of the 'Best picture' category, where only 'artsy' stuff is allowed. I mean, looking at 'Best Picture' since 1990, most of those were won by widely popular, commercially succesfull movies from all kinds of genres.

[Kitten Champion]

Well, if the ratings trend continues they can just cancel the big ceremony in a few years and hand out the awards in a conference room in the local Hilton, with a press release most people will ignore as clickbait.

I haven't watched the Oscars in years - so whatever - but who cares? Like, lots of organizations have internal recognition rewards without it being a bloated international media event.

Granted, it's still a useful PR exercise for Hollywood - which still needs it as much as it did with the Fatty Arbuckle scandal apparently - but there's just so much media in general now that it's impossible to satisfy such a fragmented audience. Particularly when politics show up.

[tomandtish]

I don't really see it.

While essentially creating an 'audience award' seems superfluous, I don't understand the reasoning of this being made to keep popular films out of the 'Best picture' category, where only 'artsy' stuff is allowed. I mean, looking at 'Best Picture' since 1990, most of those were won by widely popular, commercially succesfull movies from all kinds of genres.

Successful, yes. Wildly popular? Not sure if that applies. We're talking about the Blockbusters here, and I have to agree with Rogar, there hasn't been one of those since 2003.

[Iruka]

Successful, yes. Wildly popular? Not sure if that applies. We're talking about the Blockbusters here, and I have to agree with Rogar, there hasn't been one of those since 2003.

Hm, I'll concede that the '90s skewed my perspective. Since 2003, I'd argue that Departed and Slumdog Millionaire might be in the blockbuster league but since 2010, I don't even recognize most of the movies.

[LadyEowyn]

When was the last time a blockbuster was nominated for Best Picture? I honestly can't remember if it's happened since Return of the King.


We're talking about the Blockbusters here, and I have to agree with Rogar, there hasn't been one of those since 2003.

The Martian, in 2015 ($228 million domestic). American Sniper, in 2014 ($350 million domestic). Gravity, in 2013 ($274 million domestic).

In 2010, Toy Story 3 ($415 million - the highest-grossing film of that year) and Inception ($293 million domestic).

And in 2009, one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, Avatar ($750 million domestic).

It's relatively common.

[rooster707]

That is an extremely clickbaity thread title.

And I’m not much of a movie person, so that’s all I have to say about this.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I'm in favour of it, if they rename "Best Picture" to "Outstanding achievement in pretentious film" at the same time.

GW

[Peelee]

I'm in favour of it, if they rename "Best Picture" to "Outstanding achievement in pretentious film" at the same time.

GW

Well, by that reasoning they could rename the whole thing from The Oscars to The Pompous, Self-Fe- ya know, never mind, let's keep it G-rated.

[Mechalich]

I think the story of how this category unfolds will depend on how the Academy defines eligibility. Presumably 'popular' has something to do with commercial performance, so you could group the pool out of box office results (domestic only one imagines, since this is an American award). A possible choice is requiring that a 'popular' film make a minimum of $100 million dollars at the domestic box office, but that will still bar certain films. For instance, in 2017, that would leave out John Wick: Chapter Two ($92 million). There were also only 33 films total that managed to make that much and it is difficult for even high-end horror films to crack that barrier. If you limited candidacy to the top 25 or 30 films of the year that's particularly restrictive, but will still allow the academy to snub blockbusters.

For example, if you had to pick five nominees for this category out of the top twenty-five of 2017 you'd probably get:
1. Wonder Woman
2. It
3. Thor: Ragnarok
4. Logan
5. Dunkirk

Which, actually, isn't nearly as bad as I thought, and Dunkirk is the only double-counted one. Logan would probably win, and I think most of us would be fine with that.

Doing the same thing for 2016 is...less promising:
1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
2. Finding Dory
3. Hidden Figures
4. Deadpool
5. Moana

2016 had a large number of high-grossing animated films with four in the top ten (amazingly Sing was the #10 movie of 2016) and a stunning 7 in the top 25 that distorts the pool. Deadpool probably deserves to win this one, but I struggle to imagine the Academy being that brave.

Let's go for three and do 2015.
1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
2. Inside Out
3. The Martian
4. The Revenant
5. Mad Max: Fury Road

That's even worse. With the exception of TFA - which only makes it do to its juggernaut status, all four of the others were nominated in other categories anyway. Mad Max would win, but this definitely supports the thesis that films like that would be hurt by this category. Mad Max: Fury Road was honored far better by receiving an actual Best Picture nomination than it would be by winning this category.

[Mando Knight]

I haven't watched the Oscars in years - so whatever - but who cares? Like, lots of organizations have internal recognition rewards without it being a bloated international media event.

They're bloated international media events because that's what the industry is--if it wasn't a self-indulgent media blitz, it would be like not serving alcohol at the award ceremony for a wine or craft beer competition.

[tomandtish]

They're bloated international media events because that's what the industry is--if it wasn't a self-indulgent media blitz, it would be like not serving alcohol at the award ceremony for a wine or craft beer competition.

Yeah, I only liked the Oscars when the hosts were humorous, and that hasn't been the case (for my tastes anyway) in a decade or more.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Maybe they want to distinguish between entertainment and art. I hope you'd all know what this means.

I can only really speak for things I've seen and I won't bother trying to compare nominees to one another, so considering that for my example...

Something like Jurassic Park and Requiem For A Dream are really two completely different types of movie. It takes skill to make a movie fun, but it also takes skill to give the movie an impact that lasts longer than it takes to eat all the popcorn.

Maybe there's some confusion or dissatisfaction from their general audiences for that event from people who enjoy one of those categories of movies, but not the other?

[Metahuman1]

Back in the early 2000's, after they snubbed Beauty And The Beast an Lion King for best picture, they created Best Animated Movie. Since then we've seen hugh numbers of animated movies get snubbed cause they now all have to compete in this one category, and were put there by the admission of the academy voters cause they don't watch cartoons. (That's a quite from one of them the year The Boss Baby got a nomination.)


This is them repeating that. At last, they can ignore the movies people actually got to see by ghettoing them into this one category.

[Lleban]

Huzzah now I can rest in peace knowing that fantasy, scifi, and innovate genre fiction will be pigeonholed in this dungeon for the foreseeable future.

[Wraith]

Until 2016, the AMPAS (the committee who votes for the Oscar winners) was something like an average age of 63, 76% male, 94% white and overwhelmingly US citizens. There was a particularly high-profile protest by people such as Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith who boycotted the ceremony that year, and the AMPAS were forced to take on a large number of new, more diverse members - they're now something like 40% female and 13% PoC.

As such, I can't help but feel that this new proposal is just a a snobbish way of the old guard trying to maintain their control over what they see as being the "rightful" winners, giving them an excuse to dismiss popular films compared to "worthy" offerings for the Best Picture award by 'hiding' them in a new category. It's segregation, of a kind - an "the same but not equal" mentality.

So I think that it just proves that we ought to remember more keenly: The AMPAS is a private committee of self-appointed judges who have no formal authority and any prestige they have is entirely illusionary. While I'm sure that winning any award is nice for a film maker, the Oscars represent no one but themselves and their own private opinions - they've never meant to reflect public preference.

[Eldan]

Well, by that reasoning they could rename the whole thing from The Oscars to The Pompous, Self-Fe- ya know, never mind, let's keep it G-rated.

Self-felicitation?

[Razade]

Maybe they want to distinguish between entertainment and art. I hope you'd all know what this means.


That it's a stab at them being utter snobs?

[Chen]

The only reason any blockbusters are nominated for best picture nowadays is because they doubled the number of nominees for best picture in 2009 to specifically allow nominating “popular” movies (to get viewers) with no intention of having them win.

Might as well call a spade a spade and make a specific category instead.

[Peelee]

Self-felicitation?

Not gonna lie, I chuckled.

[Vinyadan]

I have a counterproposal: an Oscar for movies about making movies. Let's be honest, you know that they aren't judged fairly. People in the commission see themselves in the characters and then go all like “oh this film is so deep, it really touches the viewer” and don't understand that it only works like that on people in their field of work.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I'm in favour of it, if they rename "Best Picture" to "Outstanding achievement in pretentious film" at the same time

Further refinement:
In addition to those two categories, and the existing Best animated feature and Best Short, add maybe one or two other categories to cover all major approaches to film, and have Best Picture be voted only from the winners of those categories. The voting to be done by the attending public to the event at the time and/or the viewers via text message.

Grey Wolf

[Keltest]

Further refinement:
In addition to those two categories, and the existing Best animated feature and Best Short, add maybe one or two other categories to cover all major approaches to film, and have Best Picture be voted only from the winners of those categories. The voting to be done by the attending public to the event at the time and/or the viewers via text message.

Grey Wolf

Are you suggesting that a cabal of upper-class socialites are not automatically the most qualified to know quality and to honestly award prizes based on an objective standard? Blasphemy!

[Peelee]

Are you suggesting that a cabal of upper-class socialites are not automatically the most qualified to know quality and to honestly award prizes based on an objective standard? Blasphemy!

What do you expect, for them to actually watch the movies they vote on? Wealthy old people don't have that kind of time, ya know!

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Are you suggesting that a cabal of upper-class socialites are not automatically the most qualified to know quality and to honestly award prizes based on an objective standard? Blasphemy!

Oh, no, no, I wouldn't dare make such pronouncement. They are most certainly the most qualified for the Outstanding Achievement in Pretentious Film. And I will defend their right to believe that such award is the most important one in the ceremony. To their faces, anyway.

(I would pick a non-sarcastic bone with the idea that a popular vote is an objective standard, though)

Grey Wolf

[Keltest]

Oh, no, no, I wouldn't dare make such pronouncement. They are most certainly the most qualified for the Outstanding Achievement in Pretentious Film. And I will defend their right to believe that such award is the most important one in the ceremony. To their faces, anyway.

(I would pick a non-sarcastic bone with the idea that a popular vote is an objective standard, though)

Grey Wolf

I wouldn't call it objective, but I think if you set up the voting structure right, you could establish a reasonable hierarchy of overall enjoyability. Actual filmmaking quality should require more of an objective examination than a popular vote, I agree.

[Anonymouswizard]

Further refinement:
In addition to those two categories, and the existing Best animated feature and Best Short, add maybe one or two other categories to cover all major approaches to film, and have Best Picture be voted only from the winners of those categories. The voting to be done by the attending public to the event at the time and/or the viewers via text message.

Grey Wolf

This isn't actually a terrible idea.


Honestly, I'm surprised that they didn't call the category 'Best Genre Film'. Because I suspect that's part of the intent, get these silly genre films out of the running so that they can concentrate on the cinema....litera....'proper' films. Although I suppose that doesn't get the modern day bang bang films out as well.

[Kitten Champion]

The Shape of Water is a genre film and it won the most prestigious categories the Oscars have just last year.

Besides, big productions win Oscars all the time just for being expensive movies that can do things like elaborate visual effects, very detailed costuming, make-up, musical scores, and so on.

Suicide Squad won an Oscar - a movie I'm pretty sure was made by coke-addled monkeys - because of their make-up designs, for instance.

Besides, top-grossing popular movies already "win" by being top-grossing movies. Having limited artistic merit is fine if you're rolling in cash, I don't think the production staff behind the last Transformers movie is weeping over their latest Oscar snub.

[Darth Ultron]

Award shows have always been a problem. Some people hide in a room, and just pick movies for awards...maybe based on something? Then everyone else just..falls down in awe, because of what they picked. And it works great...if nobody thinks about it. Just who are the ''movie experts'' that make the pics? And what do they use to make the call? How does someone decide that one specific thing is somehow better or the best of similar things?

And maybe most of all, when a movie or whatever wins what does it really mean? Is it somehow ''better'' then all the rest? In what way?

And you already note the backlash of only ''one'' thing can win, so they bend over backwards to say the others are ''special, somehow", just because they were nominated. They did not win, but they, er, ''almost won".

And all of this really, really, really does not fit in with the idea that ''everything is special''. How can they say ''oh well x is special...but, er, no more special, then everything else..but, er, this one is special, but non-special at the same time."


So it woun't ''hurt'' anything, just make the mess more of the mess.

[Devonix]

The Shape of Water is a genre film and it won the most prestigious categories the Oscars have just last year.

Besides, big productions win Oscars all the time just for being expensive movies that can do things like elaborate visual effects, very detailed costuming, make-up, musical scores, and so on.

Suicide Squad won an Oscar - a movie I'm pretty sure was made by coke-addled monkeys - because of their make-up designs, for instance.

Besides, top-grossing popular movies already "win" by being top-grossing movies. Having limited artistic merit is fine if you're rolling in cash, I don't think the production staff behind the last Transformers movie is weeping over their latest Oscar snub.

Things like this are usually reactions to a certain type of film getting nominated or winning an award. The entire reason that there exists an animation category is because animated films were getting too close to winning best picture. The animation award puts them nicely away in their own category.

[Mechalich]

Things like this are usually reactions to a certain type of film getting nominated or winning an award. The entire reason that there exists an animation category is because animated films were getting too close to winning best picture. The animation award puts them nicely away in their own category.

I have mixed feelings about the animation category. While it does lock the occasional supremely awesome animated film out of Best Picture contention - though some like Toy Story 3 have been nominated anyway - animation is different enough from live action film-making and a substantial enough part of the market to deserve recognition. Also, in years where they manage to have 5 nominees (which they ought to have every year) good but smaller animated films can sneak into the Oscars and achieve worthy recognition.

Live-action and animation are clearly different beasts. Popular and niche films are not, it's just a matter of budget, and often not even that. Get Out was clearly a popular film - it was a massive hit - but it had a substantially lower budget than the much more niche Shape of Water. In terms of trying to get mass-market films more awards exposure it would seem to make more sense to go Golden Globes style and divide comedy and drama, though that has its own problems.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Back in the early 2000's, after they snubbed Beauty And The Beast an Lion King for best picture, they created Best Animated Movie.
They did create the new category starting in the 2001 movie season, but just as a side note Beauty and the Beast came out in 1991 and Lion King in 1994. That sentence confused me for just a moment.


Since then we've seen hugh numbers of animated movies get snubbed cause they now all have to compete in this one category, and were put there by the admission of the academy voters cause they don't watch cartoons. (That's a quite from one of them the year The Boss Baby got a nomination.)


This is them repeating that. At last, they can ignore the movies people actually got to see by ghettoing them into this one category.

On the other side, before they created that category they only ever nominated a single animated movie for best picture. They honored a few with a special Oscar for an outstanding achievement, but those were few ad far between. That wouldn't have changed much if not for the new category. In fact, the fact that they have to pick a few animated features as well probably makes those movies more likely to win in the technical categories like sound design or even categories like best original song. Because they are brought to the attention of the academy.

It's an industry award. The International Car of the Year 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Car_of_the_Year) was the Kia K900. I didn't know a thing by that name existed. Film makers will always have a film maker's taste in movies. (Even though it's still a good idea to diversify the group.) We normal people don't have to pay attention to these guys at all. But we do, for some reason. So it's nice that they create categories we can enjoy as well, in contrast to stuff like sound mixing and sound editing, which most members of the academy can't even tell apart, that's how specialized those are.

Honestly, I don't see Rambo VS Predator ever winning best picture, but this way some light may get shined on it anyway.

EDIT: In fact, maybe the best documentary (long and short) and best short film categories are a good comparison as well. A documentary is probably never going to win best film. (Except if it already has, I'm too lazy to check.) It just doesn't have the right kind of story to ever be considered. But there are still some very good documentaries which I like to watch, like say March of the Penguins, which won best documentary.

[Legato Endless]

In fact, maybe the best documentary (long and short) and best short film categories are a good comparison as well. A documentary is probably never going to win best film. (Except if it already has, I'm too lazy to check.) It just doesn't have the right kind of story to ever be considered. But there are still some very good documentaries which I like to watch, like say March of the Penguins, which won best documentary.

No documentary has ever even been nominated for Best Picture. Remember, the 'Academy' is self titled, and it's actually made up of people who aren't all even experts in film. There are a lot of rumors of nominations being made for extremely dubious reasons. Such as Suicide Squad because...Harley was hot. Or Mad Max being nominated for editing...because it used practical effects. <_< (That's not what editing is guys)

I could not care less about the awards, but if this is gonna be a media event, it could at least try to be more egalitarian.

[Rogar Demonblud]

To heck with egalitarian, I'll settle for competency and less politicization. Although that last is likely to occur without the Weinstein deal-making behind the scenes.

[Psyren]

The Martian, in 2015 ($228 million domestic). American Sniper, in 2014 ($350 million domestic). Gravity, in 2013 ($274 million domestic).

In 2010, Toy Story 3 ($415 million - the highest-grossing film of that year) and Inception ($293 million domestic).

And in 2009, one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, Avatar ($750 million domestic).

It's relatively common.

Great, now tell us how many of those actually won :smallconfused:

I'm perhaps a bit more bullish on this idea than most of the thread. An artsy/pretentious/whatever film is always going to win it, so another category to make a blockbuster film also be an Oscar winner seems like a good thing.

[Mechalich]

Great, now tell us how many of those actually won

Just being nominated matters though. The best picture nominees are regularly used as sort of a consensus on the best/most important films of a given year. It's well understood that the winner is highly subjective - freaking Citizen Kane didn't win, but it did get nominated. So if you are going back in time and recommending the best films of a given year, the Oscars nominees are a place to start. For example, in 1975 The Godfather Part II won Best Picture, but the nominees were Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny, and The Towering Inferno. I'm not much of a film buff, but I recognize three out of those four names.

So, insofar as the introduction of this new award prevents popular movies from being nominated for Best Picture that's potentially a problem. Right now, this decision is very clearly about Black Panther. The Academy wants to hand it a statuette, but fifty years from now I think it would matter more to have Black Panther nominated for Best Picture and losing rather than winning this brand new category (especially if further industry changes render this whole award irrelevant and it gets discontinued in a decade or so).

Now, maybe that won't be a problem, but I can certainly see why it would worry people.


I'm perhaps a bit more bullish on this idea than most of the thread. An artsy/pretentious/whatever film is always going to win it, so another category to make a blockbuster film also be an Oscar winner seems like a good thing.

If we're going to expand the Oscar slate - which I'm totally onboard for - I'd rather see it done in a somewhat more coherent way. 'Popular' is a hideously subjective category that seems designed as a specific crisis response.

Personally I'd much rather see any or all of the categories suggested in this vox piece (https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/8/9/17665634/oscars-new-categories) on the subject added instead of the 'Popular' category. It would be easy to use awards like Best Stunt Coordination or Best Casting to reward popular films while also highlighting real achievements in moviemaking. A voice acting or motion-capture based award (especially one that combined the two) would also play towards blockbusters, since those movies feature such roles far more commonly than niche movies.

[Knaight]

Huzzah now I can rest in peace knowing that fantasy, scifi, and innovate genre fiction will be pigeonholed in this dungeon for the foreseeable future.


The Shape of Water is a genre film and it won the most prestigious categories the Oscars have just last year.

These two comments together nicely show a trend familiar from literature. To wit - this is a "literary fiction" versus "genre fiction" split, albeit thinly veiled. Those splits generally aren't clean though, because various biases creep in. The most major of these is that literary fiction is just generally more prestigious, and the literary fiction fans like it that way. So when you get sufficiently good genre fiction that's good in the right way it mysteriously loses that genre classification. This is how Vonnegut somehow consistently isn't classified as science fiction, despite that entire corpus of work fitting neatly in that category. The Shape of Water is another example of this, and while Del Toro is a bit of an interesting director in that he's also made stuff that comes across as big dumb action movies (Pacific Rim, Hellboy) and that gets classified accordingly his more serious in tone work generally sees this sort of thing. Pan's Labyrinth is a fantasy story, and getting that acknowledged by lit-fic snobs is like pulling teeth.

Then there's the biases that creep in in much, much stupider ways. I'm not conversant enough in film to really get into them here (the only reason I was able to pick up on the pattern I'm detailing it is knowing it from literature, which is the only media I have that level of specialization in), but my favorite example in other contexts is romance novels. Romance is generally understood as genre-fiction, but the lit-fic snobs doing the classification tend to dismiss it in a very particular way, as crappy genre-fiction by women, for women. So when you get a man writing a romance novel, well, clearly it can't be a romance novel, it doesn't fit the mold. So it gets tossed in the literary fiction bin instead.

[Legato Endless]

It does not really matter what the awards are or who gets them, that won't solve the real dilemma the Academy trotted this out to fix.

From 1980 to 2003, the best picture winner was usually in the top 20 at the box office. Go back further, and the trend line of films aligns more closely with gross and wins. Since then, blockbusters get nominated less often.

The monetary fall of Oscars didn't start in the mid 2000s, it began in the last four years from 43! million viewers to 26m last year. That's not because winning films were seen as 'pretentious', it's because viewers are taking advantage of an ever more decentralized personalized media experience.

Giving Best Picture to Black Panther won't do anything to bring those people back. A few of them would just watch the acceptance speech on YouTube the next day. You want to resurrect the Oscar's? Kill Netflix and its brethren. YouTube. Torrenting. Kindle. Etc.

Barring the Yellowstone supervolcano erupting, the only thing more than 30 million Americans are going to gather to simultaneously watch anymore is sports and politics.

[Xyril]

Award shows have always been a problem. Some people hide in a room, and just pick movies for awards...maybe based on something?


I'm surprised to see you making this particular criticism. From some of your prior posts, I didn't think you would object to people making conclusionary assertions while declining to be transparent with respect to the evidence and reasoning used to reach those conclusions.

I do agree that individual judging tends to be very opaque with respect to judging. In theory, it would be nice if individual judges would say "I voted for Movie A because it had a great screenplay with good dialogue, pacing, and complex characterization. Movie B had slightly better special effects, scoring, makeup, and costumes, but the difference was minor, and didn't make up for the much worse script." In practice, the academy is--IIRC--in the thousands, and very few people would bother to read all of that.



Then everyone else just..falls down in awe, because of what they picked.


No. Then people debate whether or not they got it right. Whether it was a close--but wrong--call between several good pictures, or a clearly idiot call that snubbed obviously superior candidates. Whether worthy contenders were left out of consideration or terrible choices were wrongly nominated. They speculate about what secret reasons might have motivated apparent mistakes, and argue over precisely what traits make a top movie.



Just who are the ''movie experts'' that make the pics?


Generally, they're directors, producers, actors, etc. who have some sort of experience in the field of making movies. (Thus, the "expert" part of the description.) However--as others have pointed out--there's also a great deal of politics involved. Not everyone working in the industry is invited to join the academy, and while I have no hard data to support this, my guess is that the question of who gets into the club isn't settled by years working, number of projects made, amount of money made, or any other objective criteria.

Are they better qualified than the average random person to articulate standards for artistic merit and then to judge how a movie measures up to those standards? Probably, the way a ballet dancer or choreographer is better at gauging what a good performance is or an engineer or architect is better at gauging how structural sound a building is.

Do they accurately reflect the tastes of the population as a whole? Almost certainly not.



And you already note the backlash of only ''one'' thing can win, so they bend over backwards to say the others are ''special, somehow", just because they were nominated. They did not win, but they, er, ''almost won".


When you say "bend over backwards to say that others are 'special, somehow'," I believe you are referring to what the neurotypical call "being a gracious winner." See also: acknowledging the fact that if you're not Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt, the other guys on the podium with you could very well have been the one in your top spot if they had just had a slightly better day.



And all of this really, really, really does not fit in with the idea that ''everything is special''. How can they say ''oh well x is special...but, er, no more special, then everything else..but, er, this one is special, but non-special at the same time."


I suspect your rant might be conflating your disdain of the liberal leftist media elite with your disdain of the liberal leftist elite in general. I don't think anybody in any award show, anywhere, espouses the idea that "everything is special." Acknowledging that the five or so movies you nominated out of hundreds are all--by some metric or another--special movies does not imply that all those hundreds of movies are also special.

You can nominate Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Lebron James for best basketball player of all time, and no matter who wins, any reasonable person would agree that they're all special--by which I mean, they are all in the top tier of players. That doesn't mean that every forgotten player who made it into the NBA for a couple of years is also special.

[Psyren]

Just being nominated matters though.

No one is denying that. But winning matters even more.



So, insofar as the introduction of this new award prevents popular movies from being nominated for Best Picture that's potentially a problem. Right now, this decision is very clearly about Black Panther.

Assuming this is true - and? So what? Again, good thing from where I'm sitting.



If we're going to expand the Oscar slate - which I'm totally onboard for - I'd rather see it done in a somewhat more coherent way. 'Popular' is a hideously subjective category that seems designed as a specific crisis response.

It's all subjective. Suicide Squad's costumes (for example) are most certainly a matter of taste. So while I hear you, again, not seeing the problem.

[Metahuman1]

They did create the new category starting in the 2001 movie season, but just as a side note Beauty and the Beast came out in 1991 and Lion King in 1994. That sentence confused me for just a moment.


Yes, they created it in 2001 and the first Shriek movie won it. The reason for that was that they'd had too many close calls. Which, they would define as animated movies getting nominated for best picture. Which is a serious award that is definably not for cartoons, which are assuredly low brow entertainment for children, nothing more, and thus assuredly not worthy of being best picture. Ever.

Beauty and the Beast, Lion King and Spirited Away in the same decade would be the close calls they had in mind. They were just slow on the ball. As per normal.



On the other side, before they created that category they only ever nominated a single animated movie for best picture. They honored a few with a special Oscar for an outstanding achievement, but those were few ad far between. That wouldn't have changed much if not for the new category. In fact, the fact that they have to pick a few animated features as well probably makes those movies more likely to win in the technical categories like sound design or even categories like best original song. Because they are brought to the attention of the academy.

It's an industry award. The International Car of the Year 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Car_of_the_Year) was the Kia K900. I didn't know a thing by that name existed. Film makers will always have a film maker's taste in movies. (Even though it's still a good idea to diversify the group.) We normal people don't have to pay attention to these guys at all. But we do, for some reason. So it's nice that they create categories we can enjoy as well, in contrast to stuff like sound mixing and sound editing, which most members of the academy can't even tell apart, that's how specialized those are.

Honestly, I don't see Rambo VS Predator ever winning best picture, but this way some light may get shined on it anyway.

EDIT: In fact, maybe the best documentary (long and short) and best short film categories are a good comparison as well. A documentary is probably never going to win best film. (Except if it already has, I'm too lazy to check.) It just doesn't have the right kind of story to ever be considered. But there are still some very good documentaries which I like to watch, like say March of the Penguins, which won best documentary.

Except that the people making the nominations, by there own at large admissions, are not watching any of the movies before nominating them at all. And also by there own at large admissions, once the nominations are made, there not bothering to watch the nominee's before voting on the winner. There doing it blind.

Cause there cartoons, and these people consider cartoons too low an entertainment form for them to be bothered with by and large.




This hasn't helped. All it's done is helped Disney and DreamWorks kick valid competition in the shins once a year. (Seriously, look at some of the animated things not made by DreamWorks or Disney/Pixar that came our the year The Boss Baby was in the running for the award. Tell me there aren't like half a dozen movies that should have been nominated in it's place for that category.)




Not helped is that they lumped all foreign movies into a single category as well. So live action art house Italian and French movies are competing with Ghibli, instead of letting Ghibli and other studios that do animated movies compete in the animation category, or better still, just compete in general.


Bottom line, this is not a good thing. Not even a little bit.


I only care to point it out in the hopes that the Oscars can do the world a favor, and just fade into obscurity and die.

[Mechalich]

No one is denying that. But winning matters even more.

Not really. In the long term view being nominated matters almost as much as winning - wins are notorious for their subjectivity, while nominations carry an imprimatur of quality simply because they are a pool. Additionally, the different categories have different levels of prestige. For instance, the visual effects Oscar has been essentially conquered by blockbuster films in the last two decades - the LotR films freaking three-peated - and no one cares because it is broadly understood that a genuinely terrible movie can win such a technical category easily - and Pirate's of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest did just that in 2006.

So being nominated for Best Picture - the most important category - may turn out to have more value for a film than even winning this new 'Popular' category. This is quite likely if the criteria used to define the category allow it to become a dumping ground of mediocre films that simply made a lot of money in order to please the big studios.


It's all subjective. Suicide Squad's costumes (for example) are most certainly a matter of taste. So while I hear you, again, not seeing the problem.

Your mistaking the subjectivity of the categorization itself with the subjectivity of achievement in that category. Suicide Squad won for Best Costume Design. That's actually a very clearly defined category because it has such a narrow scope: which movie in the year had the best costumes. Several Oscar categories are far less effectively determined - there has traditionally been considerable controversy about the 'Supporting' vs. 'Lead' acting categories for example.

This new popular category has no good definition behind it. Even strict monetary definitions are unlikely to work, as even seemingly niche prestige films may actually make a lot of money. For instance, Hidden Figures was the 14th highest grossing movie of 2016, beating out Star Trek Beyond and X-Men Apocalypse. In 2015 The Martian reached #8 and The Revenant (a movie that was practically defined by it's Oscar push) #13. Heck, American Sniper - which got nominated for Best Picture - was the highest grossing film of 2014 - a fact my mind struggles to process as having actually occurred.

So there's a huge problem in defining how to classify popular movies and there's a strong case to be made that plenty of popular blockbusters of high quality are already getting nominated for Best Picture. And plenty of genre films have been nominated - Get Out represented horror just last year and Arrival science fiction the year before that. What hasn't yet happened is a superhero movie receiving a nomination for Best Picture despite their now decade-long run of box office dominance. And we finally have a movie (and a cultural moment) where it is broadly understood that Black Panther sure as s*** should be nominated, and the people in charge of the Academy are terrified that won't happen and are seeking to find a way to through recognition at it another way - and Black Panther is the lock-est of locks to win this new Popular category should this change go through.

That just feels patronizing to me. I'd much rather see Black Panther get nominated for best picture and make a real push to win. I'm sure there are plenty of academy members who would vote for it. Heck, if the prestige film crop turns out to be a weak won I'd even give it a decent chance of winning. But with this new category in place freeing up everyone to ignore its massive success and place in the zeitgeist of 2018 everyone will feel free to ignore it for best picture.


Except that the people making the nominations, by there own at large admissions, are not watching any of the movies before nominating them at all. And also by there own at large admissions, once the nominations are made, there not bothering to watch the nominee's before voting on the winner. There doing it blind.

Most such statements come from members of the acting branch. There is some evidence that members of other branches - particularly the more technical categories - take this rather a bit more seriously and watch a much larger percentage of the films involved. Since you can only vote to nominate for your own branch, the quality of nominations in those areas is likely to be higher and there seems to be less of a trend to proxy an Oscar as a sort of lifetime achievement award as commonly happens in the acting categories - most recently evidenced by Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour.

However it is certainly true that getting a movie considered for an Oscar requires a campaign to get the attention of the Academy members - though this is true of any award given out for something like film and some of the broader voting bodies like the SAG (which is open to just about anyone with any acting credits at all) are going to be even more vulnerable to media pressure than the Academy. There are absolutely films that miss out because the studios don't want to back a bid. For example, Funimation chose not to mount an Oscar campaign for your name. despite bothering to conduct a US release for the film. It absolutely should have booted The Boss Baby, but Funimation calculated - probably correctly - that an animation nomination was worthless without a win and that your name didn't have a chance of toppling Coco.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Yes, they created it in 2001 and the first Shriek movie won it. The reason for that was that they'd had too many close calls. Which, they would define as animated movies getting nominated for best picture. Which is a serious award that is definably not for cartoons, which are assuredly low brow entertainment for children, nothing more, and thus assuredly not worthy of being best picture. Ever.

This hasn't helped. All it's done is helped Disney and DreamWorks kick valid competition in the shins once a year. (Seriously, look at some of the animated things not made by DreamWorks or Disney/Pixar that came our the year The Boss Baby was in the running for the award. Tell me there aren't like half a dozen movies that should have been nominated in it's place for that category.)

I don't know. They also nominated Loving Vincent (http://oscar.go.com/nominees/animated-feature-film/loving-vincent) in the same category, a hand painted feature about painter Vincent van Gogh. That's a fancy high brow serious arthouse movie surely? Shouldn't that stay out of best animated feature then?



Not helped is that they lumped all foreign movies into a single category as well. So live action art house Italian and French movies are competing with Ghibli, instead of letting Ghibli and other studios that do animated movies compete in the animation category, or better still, just compete in general.

Foreign language movies released in the US are eligible to compete for any oscar (http://emanuellevy.com/oscar/oscar-history-foreign-language-films-as-best-picture-nominees-1/), although since the creation of the foreign language award only five of them have been nominated for best picture.

Don't forget these are American awards. Many countries have their own movie awards, like the Dutch Golden Calf (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Calf_(award)). That one focuses on Dutch movies.

The problem with the Oscars is not that they exist, it's how we treat them. What they are are an American industry award, where members of the industry congratulate each other with their fine work and select who they feel did best that year. It gets covered as if it's a definitive ranking of the worlds movies that everyone should agree with and is really important you guys. It's not important, it's a "pat yourself on the back committee", like those people in high school who would organize something minor and spent like half the time they had on thanking each other for organizing it. I think it's interesting to hear their ideas on what last years best movies were, there might be films among them I'd like to watch. But it's still an in-group celebrating themselves, that's what the thing was designed to be.

[Peelee]

I'm surprised to see you making this particular criticism. From some of your prior posts, I didn't think you would object to people making conclusionary assertions while declining to be transparent with respect to the evidence and reasoning used to reach those conclusions.

Indeed. And even more surprising that i actually agreed with him for once. Well, for the first sentence or two at least, before the standard DU ramblings came out full force.

[Bohandas]

Well, if the ratings trend continues they can just cancel the big ceremony in a few years and hand out the awards in a conference room in the local Hilton, with a press release most people will ignore as clickbait.

Wow! That sounds way better than what they do now.

[BeerMug Paladin]

So there's a huge problem in defining how to classify popular movies and there's a strong case to be made that plenty of popular blockbusters of high quality are already getting nominated for Best Picture. And plenty of genre films have been nominated - Get Out represented horror just last year and Arrival science fiction the year before that. What hasn't yet happened is a superhero movie receiving a nomination for Best Picture despite their now decade-long run of box office dominance. And we finally have a movie (and a cultural moment) where it is broadly understood that Black Panther sure as s*** should be nominated, and the people in charge of the Academy are terrified that won't happen and are seeking to find a way to through recognition at it another way - and Black Panther is the lock-est of locks to win this new Popular category should this change go through.
Something along these lines strikes me as a possible explanation for the new category suddenly springing into existence. Although I would suspect the reasoning would be closer to something like: "We know that Black Panther was very popular, and it's well-made for a film of its genre, but it has a low chance for being nominated as best. Maybe we can just make a new category it will be capable of winning? That way, we can also recognize those movies which aim to have satisfying action sequences and consider plot/characters as secondary considerations."

Although I would've enjoyed it had Zombieland or something like Shoot 'Em Up had gotten a nomination for best, the kind of fun, silly sort of movies those are probably would only fit in this newer category. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples out there, but I don't watch many newer movies.

[Darth Ultron]

It does not really matter what the awards are or who gets them, that won't solve the real dilemma the Academy trotted this out to fix.

From 1980 to 2003, the best picture winner was usually in the top 20 at the box office. Go back further, and the trend line of films aligns more closely with gross and wins. Since then, blockbusters get nominated less often.


This is the typical, out of touch elitist type, that you find in Hollywood. They are lost in the 'haze' of making 'art' and 'culture' and 'changing the world with fiction'. They think what they think is perfect and right...and everyone should agree with them. And they overly love typical out of touch stories like ''aww the little boy got his mom a spoon!" and such. They utterly hate anything the ''popular mass culture'' likes, as that stuff is just all junk and filler.

So, needless to say, they hate all Superhero, Sci-fi, Animation, Fantasy and Horror. All the junk filler stuff made for the common masses. Such stuff is not a 'real' movie to them: it's just a waste of time.

And in the past, such movies were just like a little distraction in the corner and they did not care much. The movies did not make too much money and no one talked about them too much. And, Once upon a Time, it was the big huge box office cash making movie that everyone loved, both the common folk and the elites, that won best picture.

But not anymore. It really got started in about 2000 with all the Superhero, Sci-fi, Animation, Fantasy and Horror type ''geek" movies taking over at the box office. Just look at 2016. Moonlight was best picture, but did anyone go see it? Wikipedea says it made 65 million. And how much did Suicide Squad make? 746 million!

And it's not just the money. People talk about Superhero, Sci-fi, Animation, Fantasy and Horror type ''geek" movies to death. They make tons of buzz. For Moonlight, you only hear crickets.

And this really hits the eleit people: how can they change the world with thei movies if people don't talk about them and follow the ideas of the movie.


I'm surprised to see you making this particular criticism. From some of your prior posts, I didn't think you would object to people making conclusionary assertions while declining to be transparent with respect to the evidence and reasoning used to reach those conclusions.

My problem is that it is impossible to say many things are objectively good. A person can like something, but that does not make it the best movie 4ever! And if you do want to judge, you have to judge everything the same. If movie A and movie B have the same element, you can't just say ''movie A" is the best as you like it more.



I suspect your rant might be conflating your disdain of the liberal leftist media elite with your disdain of the liberal leftist elite in general. I don't think anybody in any award show, anywhere, espouses the idea that "everything is special." Acknowledging that the five or so movies you nominated out of hundreds are all--by some metric or another--special movies does not imply that all those hundreds of movies are also special.

Well, they think everything in their elite bubble is special, not ''everything". They still hate Superhero, Sci-fi, Animation, Fantasy and Horror type ''geek" movies.



You can nominate Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Lebron James for best basketball player of all time, and no matter who wins, any reasonable person would agree that they're all special--by which I mean, they are all in the top tier of players. That doesn't mean that every forgotten player who made it into the NBA for a couple of years is also special.

The problem is: you have to have a cut off or everything is special. At some point you have to say ''nope, that and everything after that is not special". And you don't want to hurt too many people. A basketball team has a lot of people on it, but you don't want to say ''well only this guy here is special...the rest of you are nothing normal nobodies". The same way they don't want to snub a good movie that ''just missed" getting nominated.

It's the endless circle mess: Billy was the best and he won...but, um, er, everyone else won too just as they played, but, um,er, Billy won more, but, um, er, his winning more does not mean anything...um, but it does, but we will say it does not, but it does, but, um, it does not, but it SO does matter.......

[Legato Endless]

Something along these lines strikes me as a possible explanation for the new category suddenly springing into existence. Although I would suspect the reasoning would be closer to something like: "We know that Black Panther was very popular, and it's well-made for a film of its genre, but it has a low chance for being nominated as best. Maybe we can just make a new category it will be capable of winning? That way, we can also recognize those movies which aim to have satisfying action sequences and consider plot/characters as secondary considerations."

Although I would've enjoyed it had Zombieland or something like Shoot 'Em Up had gotten a nomination for best, the kind of fun, silly sort of movies those are probably would only fit in this newer category. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples out there, but I don't watch many newer movies.

The Academy should just go whole hog and create new categories to better connect with the every person. Best Dumb movie. Best Guilty Pleasure. Best Movie to watch while Inebriated. Most-likely-to-age-poorly.

[McStabbington]

These two comments together nicely show a trend familiar from literature. To wit - this is a "literary fiction" versus "genre fiction" split, albeit thinly veiled. Those splits generally aren't clean though, because various biases creep in. The most major of these is that literary fiction is just generally more prestigious, and the literary fiction fans like it that way. So when you get sufficiently good genre fiction that's good in the right way it mysteriously loses that genre classification. This is how Vonnegut somehow consistently isn't classified as science fiction, despite that entire corpus of work fitting neatly in that category. The Shape of Water is another example of this, and while Del Toro is a bit of an interesting director in that he's also made stuff that comes across as big dumb action movies (Pacific Rim, Hellboy) and that gets classified accordingly his more serious in tone work generally sees this sort of thing. Pan's Labyrinth is a fantasy story, and getting that acknowledged by lit-fic snobs is like pulling teeth.

Then there's the biases that creep in in much, much stupider ways. I'm not conversant enough in film to really get into them here (the only reason I was able to pick up on the pattern I'm detailing it is knowing it from literature, which is the only media I have that level of specialization in), but my favorite example in other contexts is romance novels. Romance is generally understood as genre-fiction, but the lit-fic snobs doing the classification tend to dismiss it in a very particular way, as crappy genre-fiction by women, for women. So when you get a man writing a romance novel, well, clearly it can't be a romance novel, it doesn't fit the mold. So it gets tossed in the literary fiction bin instead.

That's definitely half of it. But I would also note that the other half is simply that the Academy Awards are the annual awards of a trade association, that happen to be televised. And it's the tension between those two things that keeps tying the film industry in knots.

The reason why you would give a film like The Greatest Show on Earth an Oscar over films like High Noon or Singin' in the Rain (or, if you prefer a more modern example, The Reader winning over The Dark Knight and Wall-E) is the exact same reason why the Best Plumber of the Greater Philadelphia Area in 2016 probably didn't go to someone who actually was the best plumber in Philadelphia that year. Because it's an industry award. It's an award that people hang on their walls, and use to market themselves going forward. And for that reason, they typically go out to longstanding, dues paying members who have earned the friendship of fellow members who are tasked with handing out awards. In this case, The Greatest Showman on Earth, and The Reader, won because Cecille B. DeMille and Harvey Weinstein were seen as solid, dues-paying members of the Academy who had successfully scratched enough backs, and paid their dues sufficiently, that they were entitled to the award that year.

The difference is that the hypothetical Plumbers' Association of Philadephia doesn't put their annual awards show on television. And because they don't put their awards' show on television, they don't have viewers calling in, saying that they've compared the work of the plumber that won to Cecil down the street, and wondering WTH, Cecil is clearly the better plumber. By contrast, a lot of people had seen The Dark Knight and Wall-E, and some people had also seen The Reader, and in that case, it was pretty clear that both films that didn't get nominated were superior films to the one that did, so what gives? And precisely because the Academy Awards are on television, and are "art" that the masses consume, the Academy can't just come out and state the obvious: "Dudes, this is a trade show award that we give to reward faithful work and for martketing purposes, and we just gave it to The Reader because Harvey slapped enough backs, and because Kate Winslet had been doing a lot of great acting for a long time that we felt ought to be rewarded. We weren't actually measuring talent or skill here."

Saying that out loud would be more honest. But it would also destroy the illusion that the Oscars are anything but a "You've participated long enough!" sticker that gets handed out to actors that have put in good work for long enough. Nobody would want to watch that. So they have to gussy the Academy Awards up, and pretend they are something they're not.

[sktarq]

Honestly the whole article and many of the post here all reek of "The movies I like best didn't win so therefore academy is .."

Animation wasn't getting too close to winning, it wasn't winning enough and since most of Academy are in the acting branch by numbers films with live actors had a pretty unassailable advantage...so they created Best Animated Feature

these awards are not for the general public, they are for the movie making community by the movie making community. That's a big reason that the Shorts are still around...it is where lots of movie makers get their start and opens up lots of low budget opportunities or interesting ideas that can't support a whole 90 min film. And people who choose to go into movies professionally are pretty likely to have different taste in movies since they see movies in a fundamentally different way (often "art" which since the Academy of Motion Picture ARTS and Sciences is not a surprise).

Also because of the numerical dominance(at least until this last two year massive growth spurt - I have not checked since) of the acting branch those movies that are actor driven have a huge advantage. Which really accounts for a lot of the type of movie that is "Oscar Bait"

That it has become a way of advertising a certain type of movie to the type of people who otherwise don't respond well to advertising dollars and a way for certain industry members to fluff themselves up is a whole kettle of fish.

[Psyren]

Not really.

Agree to disagree.

(But even if you feel that way, more categories = more nominations, so not seeing the need for bellyache.)



Your mistaking the subjectivity of the categorization itself with the subjectivity of achievement in that category.
...
This new popular category has no good definition behind it.

I'm still not convinced it needs one. As you yourself stated, other categories have inherent subjectivity, and while there has been debate, the sky ultimately hasn't fallen. To repeat, from where I sit, more is better.

[Metahuman1]

Honestly the whole article and many of the post here all reek of "The movies I like best didn't win so therefore academy is .."

Animation wasn't getting too close to winning, it wasn't winning enough and since most of Academy are in the acting branch by numbers films with live actors had a pretty unassailable advantage...so they created Best Animated Feature

these awards are not for the general public, they are for the movie making community by the movie making community. That's a big reason that the Shorts are still around...it is where lots of movie makers get their start and opens up lots of low budget opportunities or interesting ideas that can't support a whole 90 min film. And people who choose to go into movies professionally are pretty likely to have different taste in movies since they see movies in a fundamentally different way (often "art" which since the Academy of Motion Picture ARTS and Sciences is not a surprise).

Also because of the numerical dominance(at least until this last two year massive growth spurt - I have not checked since) of the acting branch those movies that are actor driven have a huge advantage. Which really accounts for a lot of the type of movie that is "Oscar Bait"

That it has become a way of advertising a certain type of movie to the type of people who otherwise don't respond well to advertising dollars and a way for certain industry members to fluff themselves up is a whole kettle of fish.





That first one would be a solid argument given the things I explained about the by and large admissions of academy voters in my previous posts. At least, a soilid argument for my position that there getting to close. After all, not only being nominated but requiring an outright snub by people who dismissed it based on it's medium and maybe some professional biases involved that shouldn't matter based on how they presented everything?

That sounds like they were getting way to close to me. Better Ghetto them.



And that second one? Gee, it's almost like it's a snobbish elitist parade that frankly the industry would be better off with out. Almost like what I was asserting.


I do so love when people try to refute my position, open there mouths to do so, and solidification for it comes out instead.





Bohandas: Absolutely it does.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I'm still not convinced it needs one. As you yourself stated, other categories have inherent subjectivity, and while there has been debate, the sky ultimately hasn't fallen. To repeat, from where I sit, more is better.
Now, now, they could've obviously just dumped those special effects blockbuster movies into the "best animated movie" category and leave it at that. Clearly, it's better that way, since those movies rely on animation more heavily than their live-action sequences, it's an obvious place to dump them.

Seriously though, at some point there should probably be a changing of categories to reflect weirdo mixed media movies like Star Wars (one of the ones with CG), Avatar and Lord of the Rings.

[Bohandas]

Well, if the ratings trend continues they can just cancel the big ceremony in a few years and hand out the awards in a conference room in the local Hilton, with a press release most people will ignore as clickbait.

I honestly can't figure out how the televised ceremony has lasted as long as it did. It's basically like watching a high school graduation, except that you don't know anywhere there. As long as the thing's been running there have always been at least two more interesting viewing options available on other channels; I know this because I know that even from the very beginning there have always been at least three tv channels.

[Bohandas]

Regarding elitism, does anyone recall offhand how they usually treat films like Avatar and 2001: A Space Odyssey, where on the one hand they're effects driven science-fiction movies, but on the other hand they're also super pretentious? Do they usually hate them for being science fiction or love them foe being pretentious

[Metahuman1]

Regarding elitism, does anyone recall offhand how they usually treat films like Avatar and 2001: A Space Odyssey, where on the one hand they're effects driven science-fiction movies, but on the other hand they're also super pretentious? Do they usually hate them for being science fiction or love them foe being pretentious

They have a sort of weird love hate relationship with them. It also matters though, who made them. For example, James Cameron get's praised for his Pretentious Sci Fi, but Steven Speilburg is detested and snubbed for his. Because it's Steven Speilburg. (The academy hates him for some reason.).

[zimmerwald1915]

though this is true of any award given out for something like film and some of the broader voting bodies like the SAG (which is open to just about anyone with any acting credits at all)
For what it's worth, these (https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/steps-join) are the requirements to apply for membership in SAG-AFTRA:


A performer becomes eligible for SAG-AFTRA membership under one of the following two conditions: proof of SAG-AFTRA, SAG or AFTRA employment, or employment under an affiliated performers’ union.

Proof of Employment
SAG-AFTRA membership is available to those who work in a position covered by a SAG-AFTRA (or AFTRA or SAG) collective bargaining agreement, provided that any person qualifying through work as a background actor must have completed three (3) days of work as a background actor under a SAG-AFTRA (or AFTRA or SAG) collective bargaining agreement. Membership is also available to those who work one (1) day of employment in a principal or speaking role (actor/performer), or as a Recording Artist in a SAG-AFTRA (or AFTRA or SAG) covered production.

Employment Under an Affiliated Performers' Union
Performers may join SAG-AFTRA if the applicant is a paid-up member of an affiliated performers' union such as ACTRA, AEA, AGMA or AGVA for a period of one year, and has worked and been paid for at least once as a principal performer in that union’s jurisdiction.
This is a little more lenient than I remember. It used to be five days work as a background actor under a SAG agreement to join that union instead of three. Apparently the merger was good for something.


They have a sort of weird love hate relationship with them. It also matters though, who made them. For example, James Cameron get's praised for his Pretentious Sci Fi, but Steven Speilburg is detested and snubbed for his. Because it's Steven Speilburg. (The academy hates him for some reason.).
Possibly because he doesn't exist. Steven Spielberg, however, does.

[sktarq]

And that second one? Gee, it's almost like it's a snobbish elitist parade that frankly the industry would be better off with out. Almost like what I was asserting.


I do so love when people try to refute my position, open there mouths to do so, and solidification for it comes out instead.

Not at all.

Just look at SAG awards or any of the directors, producers etc guild awards....

everyone knows those awards are the local community of people in similar jobs giving out a bit of metal to people who have done what the members themselves see as exceptional work....and what those tradesmen see as exceptional work can be quite diferent than the general public. Because they see what corners/emotive bits/turning a weak script into decent movie via acting etc are trickery and the like.

The oscars are no different. What is different is that so many people seem to think that they are given out to movies that should reflect them.

As for the pomp of the big show....totally meh...I just read the winners in the paper the next day. However people like big show and dance things. Helps cover up issues of potential government regulation and union busting....which is what the Academy was originally for (failed at that). However they now make a lot of money at the show and so its turning into a Frankenstein's monster of trying to be popular.

[martianmister]

More like the Best Marvel Movie Oscar. :smallbiggrin:

[Legato Endless]

Regarding elitism, does anyone recall offhand how they usually treat films like Avatar and 2001: A Space Odyssey, where on the one hand they're effects driven science-fiction movies, but on the other hand they're also super pretentious? Do they usually hate them for being science fiction or love them foe being pretentious

The Oscars are more a political race than anything else. But not politics in the sense of identity politics and cultural acceptance, just marketing. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNRpb_E0jPc) To be sure, people do make evaluations based on expertise, artistry, snobbery and other motives, but they exist in a climate of moneyed interests driving the conversation. There's a reason Casey Affleck got an award despite allegations against him whereas James Franco has supposedly been snubbed. Now that #MeToo has gained traction, those allegations have become toxic to the Oscar brand.

It's an exercise in self promotion by the industry. Winning an award is a form of branding authenticating for an individual. Actors go out on extended tours, media events get drummed up, narratives get launched. For films as a whole, the Oscars themselves are brand that sells. Winning an Oscar gives that Oscar bump, and drums up interest. Huge blockbusters don't get much from an award, it's just winning more. But an Oscar nod can make or break the revenue of a middling weight production. More importantly, there's sales after it leaves the theaters, DVDs, on demand viewing, etc. So long as consumer trust holds enough weight, it's effective for risk reduction.


For a film like ‘The Avengers,’ it wouldn’t have been a big deal if it was nominated because it’s already made so much darn money and it would just be a drop in the bucket. But, particularly for mid-level films, Oscars can be the difference between profit and loss. We’ve seen, particularly in the 1990s when Harvey Weinstein was so effective back with Miramax at working the Oscars and getting nominations for films like ‘American Beauty’ and ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ that the Oscar can be huge for a mid-level or small film. It can really magnify the box office magnitude of those films."
-Jonathan Kuntz, film historian and professor with UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

Beyond all that, and most importantly, the Oscars work as prestige public relations, cash flow and advance the interests of big studios. That's why they spend hundreds of millions campaigning (https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35613630) for the awards annually. Up to 10 million for a movie. Beyond consultants getting paid to manage Oscar campaigns by drumming up awareness there's personal attacks (https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/dirty-tricks-oscar-campaigns-what-expect-2018-academy-awards-n852831) to wear down the competition. This film was plagiarized. This film is historically inaccurate. This film is actually racist. This leading actor is probably antisemitic. And so on.

The Oscars being elitist vs. populist will probably remain secondary to the Oscars being about selling you something for the foreseeable future. Both from the brand itself, and whatever they happen to be promoting for the event. That's not likely to change barring a some sizable restructuring of the industry.

[martianmister]

This whole "they created the best animated feature to stop animated movies from winning the best picture award" thing is quite absurd because there is more animated nominations in the best picture after the creation of the best animated feature. None of other Disney renaissance movies even nominated for it, despite of machinations of Katzenberg, and there was no big drama about it. There is nothing that disqualify an animated movie or a foreign movie from winning the best picture. An award for popular movies, too, will not disqualify these from being the best picture.

[Peelee]

This whole "they created the best animated feature to stop animated movies from winning the best picture award" thing is quite absurd because there is more animated nominations in the best picture after the creation of the best animated feature.

Devil's advocate: the reasoning behind a policy creation may very well be at odds with the eventual actual effect of said policy. Or, more simply put, backfiring is a thing that exists.

[Mechalich]

It's worth noting that between the creation of the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2001 and the broadening of the Best Picture category to 6-10 nominees in 2009, no animated film was nominated for Best Picture. That change appears to have produced a real impact in terms of allowing a greater number of popular films and genre films to be nominated compared to the immediately preceding years. The 2000s decade prior to that change was - outside of the LotR films - really bad in terms of nominating only relatively small movies that had little mass market presence. For instance, in 2008, the year prior to the change the nominees were Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, The Reader, Frost/Nixon, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The top performer out of those was Slumdog Millionaire at #16, and the others did significantly worse. Frost/Nixon didn't even make the top 100 for the year.

So long as the Best Picture slate remains enlarged it's difficult to freeze out mass market or genre films that happen to be genuinely good from the nominations. I suppose the really big risk with this popular film category is that it could be used as an excuse to drop Best Picture back down to just five movies. That really would have a massive impact.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Devil's advocate: the reasoning behind a policy creation may very well be at odds with the eventual actual effect of said policy. Or, more simply put, backfiring is a thing that exists.
I was going to add that just by giving the medium its own category implies it has a certain legitimacy. Which is a thing all its own that has long-term consequences on the public psyche. And those long-term consequences matter more than near-term effects. Just ask Nichelle Nicoles.

Hmmm.. Off-topic, but this just occurred to me. Will Cinematic-Experience-Games get their own category eventually? They do employ actors, have stories and performances and so on... Some of them even unlock a Movie Mode of some kind at the end...

And will people complain about that category if it, too comes to pass? Oh, facetiousness is fun.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Regarding elitism, does anyone recall offhand how they usually treat films like Avatar and 2001: A Space Odyssey, where on the one hand they're effects driven science-fiction movies, but on the other hand they're also super pretentious? Do they usually hate them for being science fiction or love them foe being pretentious

A good Oscar movie is not just pretentious, there's some actual substance to the pretense. 2001 may be slow and boring, but it manages to have its scenes say something. There's minutes of just a man breathing in space, emphasizing how vulnerable and made for life on Earth we are. The academy loves things like that. Avatar has a few sort of similar moments, but they're mostly related to its film techniques rather than its content. In the beginning there's a shot of a close by droplett going in to one of a long, deep spaceship stretching into the background. It says "you have seen 3D films do this before, but have you seen them do this?" That impresses the typical academy member a lot less. It takes the viewer out of the moment rather than drawing it in. Avatar at heart is about looking really cool, I don't think I know anyone who came out of it with the idea of having seen a great story or having picked up on a new idea. 2001 broke ground in effects, but it always seems secondary to wanting to tell a new kind of story in a new kind of setting made possible by these effects. So I'd say that between these two movies, the academy probably goes one way on 2001 and another on Avatar.

[Mechalich]

Hmmm.. Off-topic, but this just occurred to me. Will Cinematic-Experience-Games get their own category eventually? They do employ actors, have stories and performances and so on...


Academy Awards of Merit shall be given annually to honor outstanding artistic and scientific
achievements in theatrically released feature-length motion pictures

So that's a big no, and they go on to define feature-length and theatrical release in significantly more detail. At the moment the theatrical release requirement is actually a fairly significant point of contention - since it forbids movies that only air on streaming services from eligibility. This came up with regard to Beasts of No Nation in 2015, which received a very small theatrical release in part to allow specifically for awards eligibility (since several other industry groups have similar requirements). As streaming becomes more and more a dominant form of entertainment, especially once Disney gets into the game fully, I can see a great deal of pressure being applied to drop this requirement. Frankly, demanding a movie spend a week showing in LA is rather ridiculous in 2018.

[Metahuman1]

This whole "they created the best animated feature to stop animated movies from winning the best picture award" thing is quite absurd because there is more animated nominations in the best picture after the creation of the best animated feature. None of other Disney renaissance movies even nominated for it, despite of machinations of Katzenberg, and there was no big drama about it. There is nothing that disqualify an animated movie or a foreign movie from winning the best picture. An award for popular movies, too, will not disqualify these from being the best picture.

None of the renaissance films, or none of the other renaissance films?

See, the former is answered by no, at least 1 or 2 of them were nominated. Beauty and the Beast, and if I recall right, The Lion King.

If the latter, and this is a good thing? Something they shouldn't be getting called on? Really, go watch Grave Of The Firefly's and tell me the damn thing doesn't scream art house movie that is practically begging to be Oscar Bait. Hell, tell me that's not vastly more mature than a long list of the movies that DO get nominated. I'll wait.


Though so.



And no, by sheer technicality, in a vacuum, assuming machines and not the actual people going through the process, the movies are not disqualified.

As exampled by the dozens and dozens of both popular and animated movies that have won best picture in the last 40 or so years. Oh, wait, precious, precious few popular movies have won Best Picture in that span of time, indeed, since the awards started. And how many Animated movies won Best Picture? I *Think* I remember something about Spirited Away winning it. Think.

*Checks.*

Huh, seems I've been giving the Academy too much credit in not snubbing animation. Lion King and Spirited Away never got nominated for Best Picture. Only Beauty And The Beast, Up and Toy Story 3 have ever been nominated, and none of them won.



I wonder if that might have something to do with the academy, at large, explaining in interviews over the years that they don't WATCH the animated movies cause cartoons are dumbbadlowbrowforchildren?! Wonder if not even bothering to WATCH some of the movies your voting on might maybe, just, just possibly be an influencing factor?

Wonder if the standard operating procedure the academy seems to have of "We can't give 2 of you this award, so will just give one of you this other award as a consolation prize." Comboed with giving Animation it's own category to compete in and then classifying anything not made by one of like 2 studios as a foreign film to make it face even stiffer competition still might, just, just possibly, be further exasperating that?

[BeerMug Paladin]

A good Oscar movie is not just pretentious, there's some actual substance to the pretense.
I'm not really sure how to interpret this sort of statement.

Supposedly, there's actual substance to anything regarded as pretentious. That's part of the whole idea of the perception.

Now if one believes there is worthwhile substance to support the critical reception or reputation, then the work is not pretentious.

Pretentious is a label that is entirely subjective. Mostly it gets placed onto things when people don't connect with the art for whatever reason, but at the same time they understand the people working on it were trying to make something meaningful.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Only Beauty And The Beast, Up and Toy Story 3 have ever been nominated, and none of them won.

I'm pretty sure Up got nominated solely because pretty much no one in the Academy can remember a time when Ed Asner wasn't working on something. Got decades of paying your dues? We'll let you say you headlined an Oscar nominated movie in your obit.

[martianmister]

None of the renaissance films, or none of the other renaissance films?

What I just wrote?


See, the former is answered by no, at least 1 or 2 of them were nominated. Beauty and the Beast, and if I recall right, The Lion King.

Lion King nominsted and won a Golden Globe, not an Oscar.


If the latter, and this is a good thing? Something they shouldn't be getting called on? Really, go watch Grave Of The Firefly's and tell me the damn thing doesn't scream art house movie that is practically begging to be Oscar Bait. Hell, tell me that's not vastly more mature than a long list of the movies that DO get nominated. I'll wait.

Art is subjective. Some may think that visual acting by real actors is most important for a movie to be the best.

[Peelee]

Some may think that visual acting by real actors is most important for a movie to be the best.
Some are also elitist snobs who value appearance as importance.

Billy West earned his nickname of ‘the new Mel Blanc’ not just by being extremely prolific and talented like Blanc, but performing some of Blanc’s original trademark characters. In many cartoons, video games and commercials, West has played iconic Blanc characters like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. A major milestone for West came when he played these characters in Space Jam, a film my father once described as the loudest, most colourful movie he ever fell asleep to. The entire experience was not as glamourous as West likely hoped. Although playing the character billed above Michael Jordan, one of the most famous people on the planet, West was met with much less than the star treatment. When the premiere of Space Jam took place at the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, West and the other voice actors weren’t invited to either the red carpet or the after party. In fact, the voice actors’ viewing of the premiere was in a smaller theatre next door and, upon questioning this, they were told the big theatre was for “the actors.” West is quick to point out that all the actors in Space Jam couldn’t fill that theatre, and that seats that could have been occupied by he and the other voice actors were filled by people who had nothing to do with the movie, who were there merely to be seen and add star power to the premiere.

[lord_khaine]

Well..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhfxo8xPNGU
This guy did manage to ruin the oscar nominations for me.
I think he is so and so when it comes to reliability. But this matches with observations.

[Metahuman1]

*Snip*.

This whole post offers a pretty sound rebuttal to that defense I think.

[Mechalich]

With regard to animation and the Oscars I think people are missing a couple of key points.

First, eligibility. In order to be eligible for Oscar contention a film has to conduct a week-long theatrical run in Los Angeles (not in the US, specifically in LA, though generally any movie that shows in the US will show in LA). This is uncommon for foreign films generally and specifically for foreign animation. It is particularly bad for anime, because the companies that license most feature length anime films are not based in Hollywood (Funimation is based in Texas) and are poorly positioned to mount Oscar campaigns.

Second, nominating pools. Each Academy award's nominees are determined by the relevant branch of the Academy. So directors vote on the director award, sound engineers on sound mixing, and so forth. The one exception is Best Picture, which everyone gets to vote for. Best Animated Feature is voted on by animators - not by the actors who may do voice over work in animated films. The animation branch of the academy is also notoriously insular - recently famous for snubbing The LEGO Movie because it utilized a non-traditional animation method. Best Picture, by contrast, is largely determined by actors, because the Acting Branch has a plurality or possibly even an outright majority, of academy membership as a whole. With regard to Best Animated feature this means that relatively obscure films have a good chance of getting nominated - the past two years have both had two highly niche nominees, Loving Vincent and The Breadwinner in 2017 and My Life as a Zucchini and The Red Turtle in 2016 (the latter, by the way, is about as art-housy as possible, containing no spoken dialogue).

Third, winning. The entire academy - dominated by the actors - gets to vote on who wins all categories. Since it is highly unlikely for any substantial portion of the acting branch to even see the more obscure animated films, the category has always been won by a mass market film - the closest thing to an upset in the category is the win by Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit in 2005, but there was a dearth of Disney or DreamWorks entries that year. Disney/Pixar has managed to win fully three-fourths of all Best Animated Feature Oscars and all Best Picture Nominations for animated films. It's a juggernaut.

[Peelee]

This whole post offers a pretty sound rebuttal to that defense I think.

The article I quoted, or martianmister's post? Because the article was solidly in the "West is right, and voice actors are treated horribly" camp, while mm didn't mention anything about the issue I raised based off the line I quoted.

I'm also not sure if you mean something else entirely, as I don't see any defense in my post, so feel free to correct me if I've got it all wrong.

[Metahuman1]

The article I quoted, or martianmister's post? Because the article was solidly in the "West is right, and voice actors are treated horribly" camp, while mm didn't mention anything about the issue I raised based off the line I quoted.

I'm also not sure if you mean something else entirely, as I don't see any defense in my post, so feel free to correct me if I've got it all wrong.

The Article, and your mention that "Some are also elitist snobs who value appearance as important.".

[Peelee]

The Article, and your mention that "Some are also elitist snobs who value appearance as important.".

More from that article:

"*West’s method at auditions is to come in, look at the drawing of a character, work with the animators, writers and director on the project to get to know what the intended personality is, and then create a voice from scratch. Cameron Diaz in Shrek sounds like Cameron Diaz in everything else, and it is not difficult to see how frustrating this must be to other voice actors. It seems similar to training your whole life to be a marathon runner, and then being replaced by somebody who is allowed to use a car, and also earns an additional $20 million dollars to do so."

"Pixar joined in as well, when their debut feature length film Toy Story gave us Tim Allen and Tom Hanks sounding like Tim Allen and Tom Hanks. With a few exceptions, this is how the heavy hitters in animation have been doing business since."

"Studios look for the recognizable name and face, even if all you get is their untrained vocal chords."

I dunno, it seems that the article wholeheartedly agrees with me.

[Metahuman1]

And things like this are why I whole heartedly take issue with the Academy in general.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The sad thing is that as bad as the Academy is, it's a pinnacle of transparency compared to others. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is just short of a complete black box where not even the voters have an idea of what will get nominated each year, or how the votes will total up.

[Mechalich]

More from that article:

"*West’s method at auditions is to come in, look at the drawing of a character, work with the animators, writers and director on the project to get to know what the intended personality is, and then create a voice from scratch. Cameron Diaz in Shrek sounds like Cameron Diaz in everything else, and it is not difficult to see how frustrating this must be to other voice actors. It seems similar to training your whole life to be a marathon runner, and then being replaced by somebody who is allowed to use a car, and also earns an additional $20 million dollars to do so."

"Pixar joined in as well, when their debut feature length film Toy Story gave us Tim Allen and Tom Hanks sounding like Tim Allen and Tom Hanks. With a few exceptions, this is how the heavy hitters in animation have been doing business since."

"Studios look for the recognizable name and face, even if all you get is their untrained vocal chords."

I dunno, it seems that the article wholeheartedly agrees with me.

Hollywood movies have utilized the practice of casting professional live action actors to do voice over rather than casting professional voice actors to do so for a long time (check the cast list for the 1986 Transformers movie for evidence). It's a source of rivalry between the two groups and largely seems to be a matter of actors protecting their turf (and the lucrative contracts that come with it) in major productions coupled to studio belief in big names as a primary draw. However, it is worth noting that this is pretty much the only place this happens. Outside of the small number of major studio animated films and documentaries (ex. Morgan Freeman in March of the Penguins), the worlds of voice acting and live action acting rarely overlap and the two careers are vastly different, utilizing different agents, locations, methods, and so on. Space Jam was a particularly unusual case where voice actors from the world of television animation were called in to do a major movie.

It's also worth noting, regarding voice acting, that things have changed immensely since 1996. The explosion of voice use in video games and other related media has massively increased the profile of voice actors and the amount of professional work available to them, leading to a huge increase in the number of professional voice actors (though the field is still fairly small, especially for traditional western-style animation projects, and if you watch a bunch you'll hear voices repeated with regularity) and their fame - with certain figures like Jennifer Hale and Nolan North even becoming niche celebrities.

[Peelee]

Outside of the small number of major studio animated films and documentaries (ex. Morgan Freeman in March of the Penguins), the worlds of voice acting and live action acting rarely overlap and the two careers are vastly different, utilizing different agents, locations, methods, and so on.

Yes, this is why people like Wlliam Shatner and Will Smith aren't given voice acting parts solely to draw on their star power to draw audiences in.

Oh wait no the opposite of that. Most animated studios use A-list celebrities in their starting roles, who don't use any distinct voice and sound just like the celebrity. There is significant overlap between live action and voice acting, with studios throwing the proverbial panties at the live action stars.

[Mechalich]

Yes, this is why people like Wlliam Shatner and Will Smith aren't given voice acting parts solely to draw on their star power to draw audiences in.

Oh wait no the opposite of that. Most animated studios use A-list celebrities in their starting roles, who don't use any distinct voice and sound just like the celebrity. There is significant overlap between live action and voice acting, with studios throwing the proverbial panties at the live action stars.

You know, the part you quoted specifically says 'outside of the small number of major studio animated films.'

Hollywood, collectively, produces only about a dozen feature-length theatrical animated films per year. Those films use A-list celebrities in the starring roles, but it is only those films, and those are a tiny fraction of the voice work done in a given year. A-list celebrities don't do voice work in direct to video animated films, animated television series, dubbing, or video games. They don't do most commercials or narration either. The overwhelming majority of voice over work is done by voice actors who do comparatively little live acting.

Yes actors will cross over, many voice actors will take the occasional live role and many lower-tier TV actors take on the occasional voice role - often at a much lower prestige level compared to their typical work, but you can still primarily identify people by what they do most often. This is especially true recently as voice work has become both more prestigious and more remunerative, and as voice actors have integrated fully into the Screen Actors Guild - which many were not part of as recently as a decade ago.

Will Smith, by the way, has a mere four voice credits for his entire career. Shatner has considerably more, but they are extraordinarily back-loaded - with pretty much everything (aside from him playing the voice of Kirk) on the list being 2005 and later representing both his physical decline and the greater opportunities available. By contrast a famous voice actor like Frank Welker has hundreds of credits, often doing as many as a dozen lead voice roles in a given year (voice work tends to prioritize throughput, many high output voice actors actually have very limited ranges, using the same 1-2 voices over and over again).

Ultimately a small group of celebrities manage to hoover up the elite 1% of both live action and voice over roles (and motion capture, which is sort of both at once) - and generally they are expected to 'play themselves' in both. That's a reflection of the influence of star power and celebrity culture. There was also historically elitism, but in terms of how things have changed for voice actors 1996 and Space Jam was an awful long time ago.

[martianmister]

This whole post offers a pretty sound rebuttal to that defense I think.

Rebuttal to my post?

[zimmerwald1915]

and as voice actors have integrated fully into the Screen Actors Guild - which many were not part of as recently as a decade ago.
Voice acting (and the related fields of broadcast radio and audiobooks) were traditionally in AFTRA's organizing bailiwick. That distinction became moot. . . six years ago. Go figure.

[Peelee]

You know, the part you quoted specifically says 'outside of the small number of major studio animated films.'

Yes, it does indeed seem as if I've only ever talked about major studio animated films. That's weird, it almost makes it seem as if my argument has been perfectly consistent. Who'da thunk it?

[Darth Ultron]

Hollywood, collectively, produces only about a dozen feature-length theatrical animated films per year. Those films use A-list celebrities in the starring roles, but it is only those films, and those are a tiny fraction of the voice work done in a given year. A-list celebrities don't do voice work in direct to video animated films, animated television series, dubbing, or video games. They don't do most commercials or narration either. The overwhelming majority of voice over work is done by voice actors who do comparatively little live acting.

What? A-list celebrities do a lot of voice acting. Commercials, video games, TV cartoons...oh, and don't forget documentaries and audio books, A-list celebrities are everywhere.

[Bohandas]

BTW, does the academy have any significance other than awarding the Oscars? Why does anybody care why they think?

[Peelee]

BTW, does the academy have any significance other than awarding the Oscars? Why does anybody care why they think?

Not at all, and I have no idea.

[Rogar Demonblud]

We care, because they told us we care. Which was a performance that should've gotten someone a special Oscar just because.

[BreaktheStatue]

A "Best Popular Movie" category isn't going to bring people back to $150 a month cable tv. You want to know where your viewers are? They're watching Netflix.

Traditional television is dying, and unless the Oscars figure out a way adapt to that, this is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

[Z3ro]

I don't think this move was done to "ghetto-ize" popular films, I think it was a naked attempt to grab more viewers by awarding a film like Black Panther with an award it otherwise wouldn't win. But I totally see it backfiring in a few years, heck maybe even this year. Imagine your an average film-goer, sees a handful of films a year. Black Panther, which you saw, wins best popular film. Some pretentious oscar bait film, which you didn't see, wins best picture. Do you come away feeling slighted, or like the best popular film is the "real" winner. Like the people's champ.

[Mando Knight]

A "Best Popular Movie" category isn't going to bring people back to $150 a month cable tv. You want to know where your viewers are? They're watching Netflix.

Traditional television is dying, and unless the Oscars figure out a way adapt to that, this is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

The award ceremony is on broadcast television (not cable) and its viewership dropped precipitously this year, but in spite of the self-indulgent media blitz, that's not what the Oscars (which predate commercial TV) are actually about. Oscars don't have any TV awards, that's the Emmys.

[Rogar Demonblud]

I think that was a reference to tuning in to the Awards Ceremony. Which people won't do. The primary complaint about the Oscars (and the Globes, and the Grammys, and both Emmys): It's too long (with added profanity in varying amounts). Their fix: Let's make it longer!

[Lemmy]

Who cares? The Oscar is just politics and marketing. Let the out-of-touch celebrities keep their pretentious BS. Instead of watching Hollywood's fancy circlejerk, you'd be better off spending that time doing... Well... Anything, really.

Why anyone outside Hollywood cares about celebrities' opinions on anything is beyond me.

[BreaktheStatue]

The award ceremony is on broadcast television (not cable) and its viewership dropped precipitously this year, but in spite of the self-indulgent media blitz, that's not what the Oscars (which predate commercial TV) are actually about. Oscars don't have any TV awards, that's the Emmys.


Okay, broadcast or cable, television - the kind that depends on people sitting in front of their big box at a pre-determined time - is increasingly irrelevant.

I am aware that the Oscars are for movies, but people still watch them on television, right?

[Mando Knight]

Okay, broadcast or cable, television - the kind that depends on people sitting in front of their big box at a pre-determined time - is increasingly irrelevant.

I am aware that the Oscars are for movies, but people still watch them on television, right?

In spite of being the least-watched Oscars in over 40 years, the 2018 award ceremony still pulled 26.5 million viewers (https://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/weekly-ratings/week-23-broadcast-top-25-and-network-rankings-feb-26-march-4-2018/), and will probably still be the most-viewed not-American-Football event on broadcast TV in 2018. Netflix notoriously doesn't release its actual numbers, but the Nielsen estimates (that Netflix disputes without actually providing the data) would point toward Netflix Originals getting less average viewership than "The Big Bang Theory", and at 50-something million Netflix subscribers, the Oscars would have to pull in 50%+ viewership to match US broadcast numbers (of the least-viewed Oscars) if it was on Netflix instead.

Since ABC has the broadcast rights for the event through 2028, if the Oscars start streaming in the next decade it will probably be as video-on-demand on Disney's streaming service in addition to the live event on ABC, not as a replacement to the main broadcast.

[Rogar Demonblud]

In spite of being the least-watched Oscars in over 40 years, the 2018 award ceremony still pulled 26.5 million viewers (https://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/weekly-ratings/week-23-broadcast-top-25-and-network-rankings-feb-26-march-4-2018/), and will probably still be the most-viewed not-American-Football event on broadcast TV in 2018.

Depends on who gets to the World Series this year. There were over 22 million viewers to watch a not very good Series that ended with Houston getting their first ring last autumn, and the year before that had the juggernaut of a Cubs-Indians Series (Game 7 had almost 30 million).

[Bohandas]

WWhy anyone outside Hollywood cares about celebrities' opinions on anything is beyond me.

Seconded. Can anybody explain this?


Since ABC has the broadcast rights for the event through 2028, if the Oscars start streaming in the next decade it will probably be as video-on-demand on Disney's streaming service in addition to the live event on ABC, not as a replacement to the main broadcast.

Right, because noody would see it if it was on Disney's streaming service

[martianmister]

Okay, I think this thread is too hateful for any kind of decent discussion. People don't even seem to read or understand what others said.

[Eldan]

I suggest they just rename it to Best Popular Film and Best Unpopular Film. :smalltongue:

[Malimar]

Saw a tweet that I don't know if I agree with the implication of malicious intent but does make me go "hmmm":
It truly is something that in the year Black Panther, a movie made just about entirely by and with black people, grosses $700 million, the Academy's reaction is, "We need to invent something separate...but equal."

In other news:

I think that was a reference to tuning in to the Awards Ceremony. Which people won't do. The primary complaint about the Oscars (and the Globes, and the Grammys, and both Emmys): It's too long (with added profanity in varying amounts). Their fix: Let's make it longer!
Except that the Academy is proposing to make it shorter by, among other things, handing out some of the more irrelevant awards during commercial breaks?

[Peelee]

Saw a tweet that I don't know if I agree with the implication of malicious intent but does make me go "hmmm":

Oh that made me laugh. Regardless of intent, I'd say that is pretty damn scathing.

[Bohandas]

Except that the Academy is proposing to make it shorter by, among other things, handing out some of the more irrelevant awards during commercial breaks?

That's a bad fix. If anything it will make things worse. What they need to do is just hand out the bloody awards and do all the other useless filler during the commercial breaks

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Saw a tweet that I don't know if I agree with the implication of malicious intent but does make me go "hmmm":


It truly is something that in the year Black Panther, a movie made just about entirely by and with black people, grosses $700 million, the Academy's reaction is, "We need to invent something separate...but equal."

To be fair, both 12 years a slave and Moonlight did win Best Picture. So I've also already seen people swing it the other way around: the moment there's a good blockbuster made by black people they need to be able to win an award.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

12 years a slave and Moonlight [...] blockbuster

Neither of those films are blockbusters by any definition I normally see. I'm guessing you classify them thus due to money grossed, but as I understand it, it is in fact defined by large budget, not large returns. 12 years a slave is a period drama (22 million budget) and Moonlight seems to be a regular drama (27 million budget).

Compare that to, say, Avengers (220 million budget) or Gladiator (100 million budget)*. That money goes to spectacle, neither of which those films was built around.

Yes, Black Panther would not be the first African-(American)-centered, African-American-produced film to win an Best Picture Oscar (or be nominated for one, which was what was expected of it), but the irony of a "separate but equal Best Picture but for Blockbusters" Oscar going to a black film is not lost on anyone... but the Academy, it seems.

Grey Wolf

*The only sub-100 million blockbusters I can find (although I haven't done a deep search, admittedly) are also not US-made: LotR and Kingsman.

[Lemmy]

Yes, Black Panther would not be the first African-(American)-centered, African-American-produced film to win an Best Picture Oscar (or be nominated for one, which was what was expected of it), but the irony of a "separate but equal Best Picture but for Blockbusters" Oscar going to a black film is not lost on anyone... but the Academy, it seems.
TBF, Black Panther isn't such good a movie that not getting an Oscar or any other award is such a grievous mistake (it's a good movie, but not amazing), but yes, the Academy's decision is indeed so ironic it's almost funny.

Who would have guessed that millionaire celebrities would be out-of-touch, huh?

[Malimar]

To be fair, both 12 years a slave and Moonlight did win Best Picture. So I've also already seen people swing it the other way around: the moment there's a good blockbuster made by black people they need to be able to win an award.

Neither of those films are blockbusters by any definition I normally see. I'm guessing you classify them thus due to money grossed, but as I understand it, it is in fact defined by large budget, not large returns. 12 years a slave is a period drama (22 million budget) and Moonlight seems to be a regular drama (27 million budget).

Compare that to, say, Avengers (220 million budget) or Gladiator (100 million budget)*. That money goes to spectacle, neither of which those films was built around.

Yes, Black Panther would not be the first African-(American)-centered, African-American-produced film to win an Best Picture Oscar (or be nominated for one, which was what was expected of it), but the irony of a "separate but equal Best Picture but for Blockbusters" Oscar going to a black film is not lost on anyone... but the Academy, it seems.

Grey Wolf

*The only sub-100 million blockbusters I can find (although I haven't done a deep search, admittedly) are also not US-made: LotR and Kingsman.
Pretty sure Lvl 2 Expert was contrasting Black Panther (a blockbuster) against Twelve Years A Slave and Moonlight (not blockbusters, but won Best Picture), not saying the latter two were blockbusters.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Pretty sure Lvl 2 Expert was contrasting Black Panther (a blockbuster) against Twelve Years A Slave and Moonlight (not blockbusters, but won Best Picture), not saying the latter two were blockbusters.

Yes, this is what I meant. Thanks.

So the argument I'm not making but I've seen people make is "the Academy is so obsessed with giving black people oscars (maybe to counteract people calling them too white?) that they created a blockbuster category specifically so they can reward Black Panther". This in contrast to the tweet I was replying to, which made the argument "the academy dislikes giving black people oscars so much that when a movie by black people arrives that should obviously win best picture they side track it into a new smaller category".

Neither seem (compleyely) true to me, but the claim of the academy hating movies by or about black people and not wanting to reward them has 12 years a slave and Moonlight going against it.

And honestly it seems kinda dumb to be rooting for a "white" movie to win this category because any new separate category being won by black people would be racist. It's a funny observation to make ones, it just doesn't seem like a serious argument, not with the knowledge that the category will be dominated by movies aimed at white teenaged boys.

[snowblizz]

not US-made: LotR .

Point of order. New Line Cinema is part of Hollywood, a WB company. Seeing as they will have been the source of most of the money producing this I have no idea how LotR can be classified as anything but a US film. And ultimately, what makes a film a X film really? In this day and age where you film in dozens of location and take advantage of as many tax dodges in production, combine a multitude of investors, actors from half the world and so on.


The one question I'd like people to reflect over is, why do blockbuster actually deserve an Oscar? No really. This is not a question about popularity or not rewarding those who financially rewarded the creators (the Oscars as a consolation prize for those who can't make money theroy).

Out of 20ish (yes I lost count) by now Marvel movies say 12 are the exact same story (and I feel am generous with that low number). The rest are sequels or mid-trilogy plot pieces. Most of the good ones IMO belong to the first category too. I swear there must be a mad-lib for "Marvel superheroe movie script".

Popular, or made money, is no gauge of quality. The Marvel movies seem to have their own cultists. I went to see Jurassic World and Independence Day 2 due to nostalgia twinges and wanting to see where they went with dinosaurs and aliens, but no matter how much they may gross (and they won't I suspect) neither were very good movies. I enjoyed them okish intheatre but when rewatching at home on tv can see cracks where I just go "meh". Point is I got suckered in by advertising. A large amount of blockbusters do the same, much of their budget is advertising.

Similarly I in odds ways enjoy watching Sharkando movies, but they are absolutely terrible in almost all aspects of moviemaking. If there was 200 million more people thinking like me we would be here clamouring for those to compete for best picture.

What exactly from the process of making a movie makes Black Panter deserving of an Oscar? The novelty of a minority-majority movie? The gross take? Is there an Oscar for Best Casting Decision or Luckiest Guess at What Moviegoers Want Right Now? Movies can be good or have great qualities in aspects not necessarily connected to the process of making a movie. Which in essence the Oscars represent.

And the reason so many care about what Hollywood Insiders think about the movies been made is that people are insecure and want outside validation for their choice. Which is also why people get so angry when "their" movie didn't win. It's basic tribalism.

Also, yes, I do think the Academy knows much more about what makes a movie good than 99% of the movie going public. Regardless of how much money a movie does opening week-end or whatever random financial gauge you want to use. It's not judging how you like a movie after all, it's looking at the process of making one.

[georgestawn]

Blockbusters are already blocked away from the Oscars, so nope, this category won't to any harm to them. Moreso, it'll do them a favor, as they'll finally be able to receive an Oscar

[Mechalich]

Well, the Academy has apparently listened to the uproar online and decided this was a bad idea and they won't be doing it this year at least. I'm glad that's the decision, since this idea was clearly introduced without properly considering all the implications, good or bad.

[Bohandas]

The new category is good but the implementation is poor. Optimally it should replace the award for Best Picture