New rule for Best Picture Nominees

Uri
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Post by Uri »

Frankly my dears, I don't give a damn.

I'm rather baffled at how unbaffled I am. I guess had it happened 10 or even 5 years ago I would have been campaigning passionately against this move – it's a cowardly act of total lack of self belief by the academy – but I'm so totally not emotionally involved with the actual outcomes of the Oscars anymore, so why bother.

I'm kind of sad, in a strange way.
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Post by Damien »

It'll be interesting to see if there are any Best Picture nominees that receive no other nominations, a la Ruggles of Red Gap, Libeled Lady and The Ox-Bow Incident.

There was apparently discussion about doing away with the Goddamn Cartoon category but, sadly, that brilliant idea went nowhere.


Tee, I don't like the Wild Card either, except for those years when the Giants get into post-season because of it (and they're in the lead right now).




Edited By Damien on 1245890139
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Post by OscarGuy »

I think the one genre that still will get no Academy respect is horror...it's the red-headed step-child of the Oscars...but, I don't know if we can think in the critics-recognition circles anymore. Those do help the Academy choose nominees, but it's more likely that mass popular films will make a bigger splash in the nominations.

And, we could also see a slide in the quality of Best Picture winners. Here are the winners of the years where there were more than five nominees:

1931/32: Grand Hotel
1932/33: Cavalcade
1934: It Happened One Night
1935: Mutiny on the Bounty
1936: The Great Ziegfeld
1937: The Life of Emile Zola
1938: You Can't Take It With You
1939: Gone With the Wind
1940: Rebecca
1941: How Green Was My Valley
1942: Mrs. Miniver
1943: Casablanca
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Post by Penelope »

Conversely, this might spur the critics to think even further outside the box when handing out their awards; not just Up and Star Trek are currently earning raves, but so are films as diverse as Drag Me to Hell, The Hurt Locker and Summer Hours. I'd especially love to see the latter make Oscar 10 nominees.
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Post by OscarGuy »

I think what we are likely to see happen here is Pixar will not only be guaranteed a Best Animated Feature spot, it will also be the new guaranteed Best Picture nominee. I don't foresee ANY situation where that would not be true. But, we could also see more than one nominated Animated film. We could also see some foreign entries...

While I agree this will more than likely expand to include The Dark Knight-type movies, it could also include crowd pleasers (like The Hangover as was mentioned earlier).

Let's use last year as an example because we are most recently familiar with it. The expansion then would have meant BP nominations for The Dark Knight and WALL-E as well as, most likely, Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler and Gran Torino. It might have also meant that Iron Man would have eked out a nomination. But, more than likely, with Dark Knight and WALL-E mostly filling the populist category and Gran Torino making a dent with audiences, I really think that would have been the result.

However, I think what this means this year is a bigger likelihood of Hangover and/or Star Trek getting nominated because so far, there really isn't a major Oscar contender out there Most of what's been released and has been talked about for fall just don't seem like they are going to succeed. I mean we could actually end up seeing three nominees from the Animated Feature making the Top 10...because Up, Princess and the Frog and Ponyo are almost assured nominations in Animated Feature and could be supported well enough by critics and audiences to manage nominations, though Ponyo's foreign origin might be a detriment as, even though many people are familiar with Miyazaki, he's not exactly an Oscar-contending name outside of animation.

But, we'll have plenty of time to discuss our own predictions. It's going to be an interesting year, that much is guaranteed.

btw, the topics are merged now.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Sonic Youth wrote:I'll be content to pretend that the five true Best Picture nominees are the ones with Best Director nominations, not that it means that the winning Film will be among those five.
For what it's worth, it always meant that in the old days. Though today there's the fear that a massive split of grown-up tastes could make it easier for a single big-studio junk candidate to amass a plurality.
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Post by OscarGuy »

I'll combine them all. give me several minutes though, I'm at work.
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Post by OscarGuy »

Well, at least something like Up now has a better shot of making the final list, but I dread to see movies like American Gangster making the list.
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Post by kaytodd »

What is wrong with "some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories [being] squeezed out of the race for the top prize."? Every year worthy films and performances are left off the list of five nominees, leading to some great debates before and after the nominees are announced. A similar entertaining debate takes place among US college basketball fans when the 64 team championship tournament is chosen.

This is obviously a reaction to the recent low rating the ceremony has gotten in recent years as big money makers that are entertaining but not Oscar worth are properly left off the list of five in favor of less seen films that are (usually) properly recognized by critics and people in the film industry as the true best of that year. Many columnists have attacked the Academy for being snobby and somewhat anti-American by passing over the films American audiences embraced.

Maybe AMPAS thinks this is a good compromise. People remember how dreck like Dr. Doolittle made the top five over far better films like In Cold Blood and Wait Until Dark. Many Academy members felt compelled to include one big budget Hollywood studio film. In recent decades, I think AMPAS has done a pretty good job of at least trying to pick the five best without considering box office. Some truly dreadful films have made the cut but they have been huge moneymakers (The Green Mile comes to mind right away). By going up to ten, the truly five best films can be nominated and fans of the top moneymakers can have the satisfaction of knowing theyr fave film at least has a shot.

What does this do to Best Animated Feature? Can Up be nominated in both? And when big moneymakers that would not have had a chance before make the cut the studio that released it will have the means to conduct a big campaign to win the top prize.

But I think the process of predicting the BP winners will be the same. I read nothing about increasing the number of nominees of any other categories, including the key categories of Director, Original or Adapted Screenplay or Editing. I say the BP winner will also make the top five in those categories.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Whatever this decision may add in terms of inclusiveness, it also loses in terms of sacred aura. (Does anyone take the BFCA top ten list seriously?) I'll be content to pretend that the five true Best Picture nominees are the ones with Best Director nominations, not that it means that the winning Film will be among those five.
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Post by Penelope »

(Is there a way to combine these threads into one? I'm going with the one that currently has the most responses!)

I think it's mostly a bad idea. While I'm hopeful that this will mean more art house, indie and foreign films will make the list, I'm afraid Magilla and others are right: this is about getting the big blockbusters like The Dark Knight and WALL-E into the line-up to boost ratings.




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Post by Eric »

Bad idea.

Just ... bad idea.
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Post by Mister Tee »

This is, first and foremost, a shocker. Moving the ceremony from late March to late February was a tweak -- like, say, electing a non-Italian Pope. This is like choosing a black lesbian Pope -- something that upends all the presumptions of a lifetime (for some of us, a not-short span).

I think BJ's take is likely right -- some of the admired-but-not-quite-popular enough efforts of recent years will likely make the best picture list now (the tradition of lone director will likely vanish; I assume almost all of those will now achieve top nominations). But so will many of the "popular" contenders, extending all the way to crud -- The Dark Knight, Wall E or, lesser, Walk the Line perfectly acceptable...but things like Memoirs of a Geisha (six nominations at it was!) or American Gangster far less appealing (to say nothing of Iron Man or Transformers). And, let's be honest: hoping for some from that latter batch is what this rule change is about, not getting United 93 or Vera Drake nominated.

The thing is, this might have been an exciting system to have in place in the 70s (imagine 1979 adding Manhattan, Being There, The Black Stallion) or the 90s ('93 might have seen the Age of innocence, Short Cuts, Philadelphia). But in this day and age when it's often hard to come up with five films that meet the classic criteria, I think it'll mostly mean a cheapening of any already shaky brand.

So, while I agree with BJ that this makes things interesting (as in, it upends many of the time-honored formulae for figuring outcomes), I'm more with Sonic in terms of it making the best picture nomination race less engaging because just about anything decent will have a clear slot and the fight will only be among lessers. (Of course, I still hate the baseball wild card, too)
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Post by rudeboy »

Good grief. Even looking at the 'golden age' line-ups of ten there were always plenty of fillers... what amount of dreck is set to be nominated now?
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Post by The Original BJ »

Sonic Youth wrote:
The Original BJ wrote:Whatever the outcome, it certainly just made this year a hell of a lot more interesting.
Oh, I disagree. For me it's exactly the opposite.

Now the "fun" will be in guessing which films will make the 8th-10th slots. Not quite as exciting, is it?
I guess what I meant is that there literally is no precedent in terms of predicting which films will fill those 5-10 spots. We all THINK we have a pretty good idea of which films are the runners-up in any given year, and in some cases, I bet we're probably right. But there's definitely the possibility for some REAL wild cards in spots 8-10, don't you think?

Let me put it this way...I think this rule change just made Up a Best Picture nominee. But isn't it also possible that something that wouldn't have even remotely contended in the past, like, say, Star Trek, could squirm into that tenth spot?

Plus...doesn't this make the race for the win more interesting, too? We often talk about how the other films on the ballot have an effect on the top prize...with votes scattered between not five but ten contenders, couldn't we see a much more complicated race? (At least depending on the year -- in a year with Slumdog/Return of the King, it wouldn't be that interesting. But what about '06 -- wouldn't that race have seemed a LOT more complicated with films like Dreamgirls and Pan's Labyrinth added to the mix?)
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