The Official 2015 Oscar Nominations Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Ejanss]

Instead of dropping the number of nominees I think they would have been better off keeping the old system to arrive at 5 nominees and then have a separate vote between the top 10 box office films at the time that nominations are made and have the top 2 or 3 of those ten films by vote. In any given year there has got to be a couple of the top ten hits that are good enough for a nomination.

That way the public has at least a couple of films that they have seen that they can root for.

In other words, Affirmative Action quotas for mainstream films?

("Got them superhero movies coming in across the border and taking jobs away from hardworking Wes Anderson movies!")


The only mainstream-studio film we had in the eight this year was American Sniper (wait, was Selma a "real" studio movie?), and even that one was.......eh.

The Writers Guild Awards tried to do its populist part, and gave Guardians of the Galaxy a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, but let's be honest, could you even see a "real" Best Adapted Screenplay nom, let alone Picture?

 

[Colin Jacobson]

And as for those in '08 saying "Why did Dark Knight not get a Best Picture?"--Dark Knight GOT everything it deserved: Heath Ledger won Best Supporting, everyone on stage had their big moment of "Ah love mah dead Joker son!", and history moved on. Ironically, in a hard-up ten-nomination year, it would likely only get into Best Picture because of that, out of desperation to boost Best Peformances to Pictures to fill up the list.

Seven years later, all the frustrated Knighties became the fans whining about why the Lego Movie was "snubbed", and that had about as much remote chance of immortality as Dark Knight did.

I don't think people complained "Lego" didn't get a Best Picture nod - I don't think anyone expected that.


People were surprised that "Lego" didn't get a nomination for Best ANIMATED PIcture, though - that was a shocker.


And I'm a "frustrated Knightie" who couldn't have cared less about "Lego". I thought it was okay at best - I wasn't disappointed it got no nomination because I didn't think it was anything memorable...

 

[Tino]

I was shocked that it didn't get nominated as I thought it was great but in the end who cares? As has been mentioned ad nauseum the Academy is a fickle bunch and their nominations are indicative of nothing more than how they feel at the moment.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

In the end, who cares, indeed.


Inarritu said it well during his first acceptance speech. The only actual legitimate judge of any and all films is time.


Great films continue to earn audiences year after year. They continue to be worthy of discussion and energy, long after their creators have moved on to other projects.


The Oscars may provide some early momentum, but I feel it is like giving an ultramarathoner a thirty second head start. It just won't matter. I think the Oscar Best Picture aligning with what the general public and/or critics consider is the consensus best film of the year probably is worse than most baseball hitting percentages. And it isn't because Oscar voters are "wrong" or the general public is "right" (or vice versa) The Oscars are about the moment (literally the moment).


The Oscars are what they are. Their only actual value is what you specifically assign to them. It is worthy that they try and celebrate the medium and the year's films. I don't hate the Oscars. I am bored by the show, and I think the awards season has become tiresome, and wears out its welcome weeks before the Oscars finally, mercifully, end it.


But I still love to celebrate movies. I'd just rather do it online or in person with friends.

 

[Ejanss]

I think the Oscar Best Picture aligning with what the general public and/or critics consider is the consensus best film of the year probably is worse than most baseball hitting percentages. And it isn't because Oscar voters are "wrong" or the general public is "right" (or vice versa) The Oscars are about the moment (literally the moment).


The Oscars are what they are. Their only actual value is what you specifically assign to them. It is worthy that they try and celebrate the medium and the year's films. I don't hate the Oscars. I am bored by the show, and I think the awards season has become tiresome, and wears out its welcome weeks before the Oscars finally, mercifully, end it.

I'm an Oscar buff who, frankly, doesn't CARE about the Screen Actors' Guild Awards, Director's Guild Awards, Screenwriter's Guild Awards, or National Board of Review--

Those are the awards given by, for and to their guild members, and should be private affairs among fellow employees; the only reason they've been blown up to mainstream awareness is

A) corporate cable networks at each others' throats, who, like Ted Turner with the Golden Globes in the 90's, will never have a prayer of broadcasting the real Oscars and want their own pretend backyard circus to promote to the same prominence,

B) the Critics' awards still living in the paranoid 90's, when snooty critics thought the Oscars "only paid attention" to big-budget mainstream studio fodder, and forgot poor little artistic Wes Anderson films that needed some understanding intelligencia movie-fan to cuddle and love them and make them feel important, and

C) an increasingly hungry cult of fantasy-baseball Oscar predictors who've started depending on more and more "Draft days" to choose from because the nominees are getting harder, more desperate and more inscrutable to predict.


The Oscars are the cover-all, where the actors, screenwriters, producers and tech folks basically give out the Guild Guild Awards, one award to rule them all. It's become the argument ender, the Super Bowl that resolves all the little college bowl and League division championships at the end of the season. That's why they're important, and why--among many, many, many reasons--the Golden Globes are not.

If we still look at a Best Picture list and believe that Rebecca is a classic seventy years later, or Amadeus is a classic thirty years later, or Return of the King is a classic twelve years later, it's considered a seal-of-approval source to trust.


(Which is why we hate the fact that the shortened voting and ten-nomination stunt has turned the last twelve years' nominations into the same critics-and-Golden-Globes fantasy-baseball games that the rest of the movie-struck junior-high awards-geeks bore us to tears with...)