Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Oh, I see. I thought you meant that Parasite won a majority straight away; no need to redistribute ballots.

MaxWilder wrote

Sabin wrote
As was posted elsewhere, Parasite is one of the few non-split winners since the balloting changed and it won by their ranked choice ballot 50%+1 as well as simple majority

Did an accountant leak this info? I didn't know the Academy disclosed anything about the voting.

It's how the voting works. Best Picture continues balloting (through ranked choice) until one film gets to 50% of the Number One votes + 1. While Best Director just wins through simple majority.

Sabin wrote:As was posted elsewhere, Parasite is one of the few non-split winners since the balloting changed and it won by their ranked choice ballot 50%+1 as well as simple majority

Did an accountant leak this info? I didn't know the Academy disclosed anything about the voting.

There have only been three times ever where my favorite movie at the time won Best Picture: my first Oscars in 1995 (Braveheart; I've been atoning for it ever since), in 1999 (American Beauty; not an unpopular opinion at the time), and last year with Parasite. I was electric when it won and clearly I wasn't alone. The audience clearly adored this film. As was posted elsewhere, Parasite is one of the few non-split winners since the balloting changed and it won by their ranked choice ballot 50%+1 as well as simple majority, so it was chosen as favorite film of the year by almost any metric (as well as Best Original Screenplay). I would love to know the margin by which it won Best Film Editing as well. Usually whenever a movie clearly wins "Most Film Editing" (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mad Max: Fury Road, Hacksaw Ridge, Dunkirk, Bohemian Rhapsody), it's because there isn't really a strong enough rival contender that could really win. Parasite is clearly a strong enough contender for this award and that win would have tied it for Most Wins by a Best Picture Winner of the Decade with -- checks notes -- wow, The Artist.

I thought that all of the nominees were very good to excellent. The films that I thought were at the top were 1917, Jojo Rabbit, and Joker, though there wasn't really much separating them from the rest. My least favorites from the nominees were The Irishman and Parasite, but I still thought that they were very good.

Waiting a couple of months for things to settle down before making the nominations seems like a good idea to me. Hopefully they could still send out the screeners to voters on the early side to give them more time to watch them and decide.

A year ago my choices were 1917 and its director, Sam Mendes, and I haven't changed my mind although Parasite and Bong Joon Ho are a close second.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood..., The Irishman and Marriage Story still hold up as my third, fourth and fifth favorites of the year. Beyond that, it gets a little dicey.

I still have affection for Jojo Rabbit and The Two Popes, the only film on my top ten list that wasn't an Oscar nominee, which were one-of-a-kind films, but was The Joker really better than The Lighthouse or the umpteenth version of Little Women better than Diane? Was Ford v Ferrari really better than Pain and Glory, The Last Black Man in San Francisco or A Dark Place?

I'm thinking that the old way of doing the Oscars made more sense. Don't put the nominations out as soon as the eligibility period ends. Let things settle for a while. Put off the nominations for two or three months and see what still holds up beyond the heat of the moment. They could have done it this year, voting in March but on films released by December 31, not February 28. Would that have been too much to ask for?

Little Women for Picture, Bong for Director, although I think The Irishman is on an equal level with those two films, I really liked Marriage Story, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood really clicked for me on a second viewing as well. Jojo Rabbit is the only nominee I had zero use for, and I even have a sentimental attachment to it because it was the last movie I saw in a theater I went to for years and years that did not reopen last fall when other theaters did. (I was hoping it would be sold and would reopen, but when I drove by last month the entire building was being dismantled.)

On Oscar night, I was mostly hoping for Parasite to sweep the top two categories, since I knew Little Women was not probably going to win in any category outside of Costumes and maybe Screenplay.

Parasite in both, but overall a great list

Let's conclude this and keep two more days scratching our heads with the nominations to come. How different was it all. 2019 was a great year for both top categories and I think it will become a very cherished and nostalgic one in years to come. My heart is divided with my love for most of these films, but a year passed and today I feel I have to give my votes to Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and Sam Mendes.