Up the Academy….

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has, in its infinite wisdom, decided to double the number of Best Picture nominations to 10.  This is presumably their response to their completely moronic snubbing of the sublime Dark Knight for a nom last year, but more accurately a response to the plummeting ratings the Oscar telecasts are experiencing.

Of course, the reason Dark Knight didn’t garner a nomination wasn’t because there were five better movies (in fact, I think there were zero better films last year), it’s the the Academy is a batch of snobs who like to pretend that Hollywood still makes five great and/or important films every year.  They don’t.

Frankly, most of the time the five nominations contain at least a couple of ‘huhs?’ as the Academy diligently works to nominate films sans any tawdy consideration of whether anyone was interested in seeing them or not.  In fact, that understates it: The Dark Knight snubbing indicates that they currently hold it against a film if Joe Public was actually buying tickets to see it.

The studios aren’t happy about the change.  An Oscar already means less than it ever did at the box office, and now they’re diluting it even more, and by some large multiple.  Adding five more Frost/Nixons, The Readers and Milks is hardly going to earn the eventual prizewinner more glory.

It should be noted that back in the ’30s, the Academy regularly nominated a large slate of films, sometimes as many as a dozen.   Of course, Hollywood made a lot more movies back in then.  And oh yeah, a lot more great and iconic ones.  When Gone With the Wind won the 1939 statuette, it beat The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninochka, Of Mice and Men, and Wuthering Heights.

The 11th and last nominee that year was the now largely forgotten Love Affair.  That means that out of 11 nominees, 10 are still considered beloved classics seventy years later.  (And there were several other all-time classics made that year, such as Destry Rides Again, Charles Laughton’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Rules of the Game, The Roaring Twenties, The Women, Young Mr. Lincoln and Gunga Din, that didn’t even get nominated.)  Whether anybody will still be revering even a single film nominated by the Academy in the last four or five years remains to such an extent more than a bit doubtful.

There was a time when Hollywood made great films that also had mass appeal.  Dark Knight was a rare modern example of that, which made the Academy passing over it all the more retarded.  In the entire 2000s so far, only four nominees (of 40 films) were big hits.  Of those, three were the individual chapters of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the other was 2000’s Gladiator, made nearly a decade ago now).

Let’s look back at the ’70s:  Patton, Love Story, Airport, The French Connection, Fiddler on the Roof, The Godfather, Cabaret, The Sting, The Exorcist, Godfather II, Chinatown, The Towering Inferno, Jaws, Rocky, Network, Star Wars.  And those are just the monster hits.

Note I’m not saying that popularity should be enough to earn an Oscar nomination, and yes, Towering Inferno, for instance, looks a bit silly as a Best Picture nomination.  The larger point is, though, that Hollywood once made great films that also appealed to mass audiences.  Now that seems to happen, at best, once or twice a decade.

Nominating five more weak sisters every year certainly isn’t going to change that.

  • Grumpy

    I don’t agree with the mass appeal / Joe Public beef, but I do agree with this:

    …the Academy is a batch of snobs who like to pretend that Hollywood still makes five great and/or important films every year.

    In other words, “A mere five nominees aren’t enough to contain the greatness which is Hollywood!”

  • Let me put it this way; you can make great films without seeking to make something a huge number of people will want to see,* but its nearly impossible to make, by definition, iconic movies like that. I think that’s one reason films are so much less compelling now, and a major reason you really don’t have movie stars (in the traditional sense) anymore.

    *Hollywood also makes far fewer great movies than they used to, so even that first contention is debatable.

  • Ericb

    It’s sort of like in literature. Ouside of certain genres (which by definition appeal to cult audiences) no one really can produce genuine epics any more. They went out with popular government and the steam engine.

  • fish eye no miko

    Just an FYI, from 1931 to 1943, there were ten nominees for Best Picture every year. So while this might be a ratings thing, it’s not as if it’s unprecedented.

  • I allude to the multiple nominees in years’ past in the post, but my point stands. Look at 1939 as references above. Including films nominated and *not* nominated, that’s more great films in one year than the Academy has nominated in the last 20 years put together. If anything, they should be lowering the number of nominees, not raising it.

  • Ericb

    It’s probably just a way for the Academy to include films like Dark Knight and Pixar films in the nomination process so they can be marketed as “Oscar Nominated” while still being able to keep the usual snob films no one watches. Of course the snob films will still win the actual award.

  • fish eye no miko

    Ken Begg said: “I allude to the multiple nominees in years’ past in the post”

    [looks]
    What the…? I… I coulda sworn that the article was shorter. Damn… Sorry about that, Ken.

  • Hollywood still tries to make megabuck epics, as witness Titanic and Gladiator. Yet despite those films’ box-office and critical success. I have to agree that they are probably not going to stand teh test of time.

    Compare either to, say, the Ten Commandments (1956). It had just as many cheesy and/or crowd-pandering moments as any modern “epic”, but it stands up, lo, 50 years later.

  • Ericb

    I don’t know, I watched some of The Ten Commandments recently and it seemed painfully cheesy. For a film with the reputation of an “epic” I was suprised to realise that it was filmed largly on sets like it was an endless old Star Trek episode.

  • I’ve said this on another message board, but … if Hollywood wanted to put crowd-pleasing movies on the slate, couldn’t they just have used up one of its five existing Oscar noms?

    Also, not only did Dark Knight and Wall-E get the snub, but The Wrestler as well. I still contend, though, that those three movies could’ve replaced most of the movies that did end up getting nominated.

  • BeckoningChasm

    You know, they can nominate twenty pictures and I still won’t watch the ceremony. Because they’ll still choose twenty pictures I don’t care about. All it will do is make the awards ceremony even longer, and ratings will continue in a southerly direction.

  • Mr. Rational

    Ericb sez: “It’s probably just a way for the Academy to include films like Dark Knight and Pixar films in the nomination process so they can be marketed as “Oscar Nominated” while still being able to keep the usual snob films no one watches. Of course the snob films will still win the actual award.”

    I think this is EXACTLY the rationale, and EXACTLY the result that we can expect, under this new system. I tuned in to last year’s broadcast, and I admit I may tune into next year’s, but I have a lot of friends who would actually have watched — eagerly — if films like The Dark Knight and Wall-E had been nominated for Best Picture. But they would have been disappointed, and will continue to be in the future, which is a crying shame. Not that Slumdog was a bad choice from the field…in fact, I think it was the only defensible choice…but it’s not as good a movie as Dark Knight, and it’s sad that I find utterly defensible the proposition that the Academy still would have given Slumdog the award even had Dark Knight been in the running.

    Speaking of last year’s Oscars, I could not believe that The Wrestler and Gran Torino, two good films that were made very well, had so little impact on the Academy. I mean, Gran Torino didn’t even get nominated! And the only person who MIGHT have deserved the Best Actor statuette more than Mickey Rourke last year was Clint Eastwood. Instead, we get to tepidly cheer for Sean “I went to Iraq, you know” Penn. A sad day for a town that used to be one of America’s brightest lights.

  • Aussiesmurf

    There are three things that bug me about the Academy Awards :

    (1) The idea that it is some sort of travesty if the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars are given to 2 different people. Why is there an assumption that the Best Picture must, by definition, have the best Director. Doesn’t that implicitly mean that every single other aspect of the film’s production has no impact on its quality? Let me put it this way : I am very comfortable with the idea that Picture A was the best Directed picture, but that the acting, cinematography, music and art direction in picture B were sufficiently superior to make it, overall, the best picture of the year.

    (2) The ‘make-up’ Oscars. We all know about these. The Academy awards given to someone as acknowledgement that a previous, superior effort was not recognised. The worst part is when a ‘make-up’ oscar denies another, more deserving (in that year) receipient, who then must get their own ‘make-up’ oscar in another year. The three famous examples for me are :

    Does anyone really think the following were the artist’s greatest work, because these are the works that won them their only oscar :

    Al Pacino in…….Scent of a Woman
    Martin Scorsese for……..The Departed
    Paul Newman for…….The Color of Money

    (3) The assumption, touched on by Ken, that great art can’t be a popular work, and vice versa. What about Shakespeare? His plays were wildly popular, and he bought three houses and a coat of arms, dying a wealthy man.

    My favourite quote, and I think this follows up Ken’s point is “The only true critic is time”. Boasting academy awards is one thing, but time is the true challenge. The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for something like 8 academy awards, winning none. Do you think its more fondly remembered than Forest Gump?

    Similiarly for Citizen Kane and How Green Was My Valley.

    Anyway, the Academy Awards can direct themselves in any direction they want. I don’t understand why the TV ratings for the telecast are seen as being so all-important. Just present the awards, and their importance can be judged by the public as they see fit.

    Sorry about the ramble…

  • The Rev. D.D.

    “(1) The idea that it is some sort of travesty if the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars are given to 2 different people. Why is there an assumption that the Best Picture must, by definition, have the best Director.”

    To be fair, this happened in 2005. Ang Lee got Best Director for Brokeback Mountain but Best Picture went to Crash. Also in 2002 and 2000 (Roman Polanski for The Pianist / Chicago and Steven Soderbergh for Traffic / Gladiator, respectively.) It’s not unprecedented, although the other years of this millennium they did match up.

    “My favourite quote, and I think this follows up Ken’s point is “The only true critic is time”. Boasting academy awards is one thing, but time is the true challenge. The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for something like 8 academy awards, winning none. Do you think its more fondly remembered than Forest Gump?”

    Frankly, I think it is. I thought it should’ve beaten Forrest Gump, which was perhaps the most overrated movie I’d seen until Titanic pretty much took that title for all time.

  • Aussiesmurf

    Rev.

    I think we’re actually in agreement – i just maybe badly phrased my points :

    (1) It certainly happens sometimes that Best Director / Picture go to two different films. I was complaining about the attitude of some critics that this division (when it happens) is ‘wrong’ because the Director is the “auteur” / author of the picture.

    (2) And my rhetorical question meant that Shawshank WOULD be more fondly remember than Forrest Gump.

    I remember that, in that year, of the five nominees for Best Pic (Gump, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show and Four Wedding & a Funeral) i have continually maintained that the LEAST deserving of the bunch won the award..

  • bt

    I was always under the impression that the director of the best picture not also winning best director was OK, but it was controversial when the Best Picture winner wasn’t even nominated.

  • Plissken79

    We have to keep in mind film is the director’s medium, much as the theatre is for actors and television is for writers. While the actors, cinematographers, editors, art directors, etc, all play an important, the director is more responsible for the success or failure of a film than anyone else involved.

    So it does make sense that the Best Picture and Director Oscars are usually closely linked, and other times when they should have been (1998-Saving Private Ryan should have won BP as well, 2000-Ridley Scott should have won Best Director).

    I think the extra nominations is a good idea, only 2 of the 5 BP nominees for last year deserved the nomination (Benjamin Button and Slumdog) and neither were better than the Dark Knight or Wall-E. Milk was just leftist preaching, Frost/Nixon a filmed play, and The Reader was an awful film. The previously mentioned Dark Knight and Wall-E as well as The Wrestler and Gran Torino were far better films

    As for standing the test of time, I think Gladiator has a good shot, but not Titanic. That film was not even the second best of 1997 (Boogie Nights and especially LA Confidential are much better)

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Aussiesmurf–

    Ah, I see. My apologies.

    To be fair, I did wonder if perhaps I was misinterpreting the 2nd point; I apparently did.

    I haven’t seen Quiz Show but I’m with you on the rest of it. Never underestimate the power of the schmaltz, I guess.

  • Triviachamp

    I’m amused at the complaining about the wins for Forrest Gump and Titanic in a post that attacks the Academy for being “snobs.” Also the mention of Citizen Kane losing is ironic as it was a flop in its initial release. Also does anyone remember that The Greatest Show on Earth and Around the World in Eighty Days were big hits in their day? It seems that people used to complain about them being populist and ignoring arty flops like Citizen Kane and now they complain of the opposite.

    Oh and Ken I presume you mean ten nominees in 1939 not eleven.

  • andy80

    http://www.viruscomix.com/page482.html

    That comic sums up why i never watch shows.

  • Mr. Rational

    Gotta say, I quite like Forrest Gump, and can even give a pass to (most of) Titanic. (I’d like it a lot more if Kate Winslet didn’t spend ten straight minutes doing riffs on the line, “Jack, there’s a boat!” Oh well. At least Kate and I will always have The Holiday.) Neither of them is exactly All About Eve or The Searchers, but they’re both quite good for what they are and what they tried to do, as well as being just good films, period. Both of them (I think) deserved their Oscars.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    “I’m amused at the complaining about the wins for Forrest Gump and Titanic in a post that attacks the Academy for being “snobs.””

    I’m amused that you seem to think this is a clever little retort.

    I mean, I love movies that were blockbusters, and movies almost no one’s heard of; from Jaws and The Dark Knight to Attack of the Supermonsters and Catman: Lethal Track. What exactly am I a snob against?

  • Aussiesmurf

    Re the comments concerning artistic merit and commercial success.

    The two aren’t always linked (have you SEEN the box-office receipts for Transformer 2) but they aren’t always opposed either.

    There are really two criteria for ‘popular success’ :

    (1) Persuading people to spend money (either at the cinema or DVD) to see a film
    (2) Having people who watch the film enjoy it.

    It used to be (not to sound nostalgic) that if you could achieve (2), then (1) would follow pretty much as a matter of course, through word of mouth and so on. However, due to the importance of opening weekends and marketing, studios have focussed on achieving (1), and if it comes at the expnese of (2), so bad.

    My comments regarding Shawshank Redemption are relevant to this point. It is, in retrospect, a tremendous popular success. Many, many people have seen it, and a vast majority of those who saw it, enjoyed it. But it was not a financial success in the sense of FOrrest Gump and TRansformers 2. This is completely independent of any artistic merit arguments.

  • Toby C

    “Does anyone really think the following were the artist’s greatest work, because these are the works that won them their only oscar :

    Al Pacino in…….Scent of a Woman
    Martin Scorsese for……..The Departed
    Paul Newman for…….The Color of Money”

    I agree entirely about Newman and Pacino, but I don’t think The Departed is a great example, or not as much as it would have been if he’d won it for The Aviator or Gangs of New York. For me, the Departed is his best film.