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Topic: Oscar expands Best Picture noms to 10

David Favel
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 764
From: Ashburton, New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 06-25-2009 01:05 AM

Wow, a pirates wet dream. Look at the amount and quality of the screener DVDs that will be available for download in December.

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John Lasher
Master Film Handler

Posts: 493
From: Newark, DE
Registered: Aug 2001

posted 06-25-2009 09:16 AM

quote: Joe Redifer
They should just get rid of the awards nobody gives a shit about, like Best Foreign Film, Best Documentary and Best Animated Film.

Or they could do what they did the last time I watched the Grammys and begin presenting awards like these off the air (in the case of the Grammys, the "spoken word" category had been presented before the broadcast aired).

Lately the Oscars have really been just another soap box for Hollywood folk to stand on and beat us over the head with their skewed, Utopian political agendas.

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Chad Souder
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 962
From: Waterloo, IA, USA
Registered: Feb 2000

posted 06-25-2009 09:42 AM

They already do present a lot of Academy Awards off air. Keeping more off air is what is likely. They could just do the big 6 categories on air, make it a one hour program, everybody's happy.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-25-2009 11:42 AM

Except all the thousands of people who would make much less money from a shorter program. And the millions of "buffs" who like the long overblown show.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 06-25-2009 12:55 PM

With 10 Best Picture nominees the bulk of the show will be taken up by fluff pieces about all ten movies, perhaps even with 10 musical performances.

In an attempt to balance the ego massaging taking place, the show's producers will likely throw in even more overly drawn out crap involving actors awards -like the new crap with 5 different presenters talking to 5 nominees and taking forever and a day to get the crap done.

There's a good chance all the artistic and technical awards categories will get shoved off into another awards show like what takes place with AMPAS' Science and Technical Merit Oscars. No more Visual Effects Oscar presentation or Film Editing, Sound, Production Design, etc.

Whatever takes place, the show will still run upwards of 4 hours in length.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-25-2009 04:25 PM

The news media is saying that this will give more of those blockbuster pictures that were "snubbed" last year more chances to make the cut. So why don't they just run with that and have two nomination categories -- Best Picture (under $100 million gross) and Best Picture ($100 million and over), pick a winner from each group, and then give the award to one of them via a live drawing on the air. That way all these stupid "prediction" people would have less to crow about, but that would be no loss, and you would truly have some suspense.

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Jeremy Jorgenson
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1002
From: Chicago, IL, USA
Registered: Feb 2005

posted 06-25-2009 10:19 PM

That won't work Mike, nobody wants to win with an asterisk after the title ... to be best picture, you have win against all the competition ... I mean, Sunrise won best picture in 1929, but it's not among the list of films to win "best picture" (in '29 it is Wings) because Sunrise has the "unique and artistic production" junk after "best picture". Also, what if a film grosses over $100m AFTER it wins best picture (but "qualified" in the under $100m group) - would its Oscar become null & void?

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quote: Greg Anderson
But, in the end, the art films that nobody watches will still take home the awards.

Of the past ten films to win best picture, only two have grossed less than $100m, and those weren't little no-namer films by any means ( Crash & No Country For Old Men) so, I don't quite get what you mean...

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 06-25-2009 10:46 PM

quote:
-like the new crap with 5 different presenters talking to 5 nominees

I thought the way they presented the acting awards this year was fantastic - and most people I've talked to seem to agree. I felt it gave the award a much more personal feeling.

If they are going to move any awards to a pre/post telecast presentation, it should be the technical awards like cinematography, sound editing, sound mixing, and maybe even costumes and art direction. For one thing, the average Oscar viewer doesn't know enough to understand what is award worthy in these categories.

I know it's not the popular opinion around here, but I actually enjoy watching the Oscars and I thought this year's show was the best in recent memory.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 06-26-2009 09:14 AM

quote: Justin Hamaker
I thought the way they presented the acting awards this year was fantastic - and most people I've talked to seem to agree. I felt it gave the award a much more personal feeling.

The problem is that format took way the hell too long to present. One category dragged out to an extreme.

This is one of the main reasons I really HATE "unscripted" so-called reality TV shows, prime time game shows and shows like American Idol. Those producers stretch 30 minutes of actual content into 1 or 2 hours of running time. The pacing is utter crap. Not only do viewers need a DVR to skip the commercials, they need it to skip over all the fake dramatic pauses, over-bearing stupid fake suspenseful music and all the other foot dragging nonsense that makes watching shows like that about as pleasant as slamming one's fingers in a door. The Oscars are adopting the same bullshit style. The Oscars telecast is already excruciating enough to watch as it was. Now it looks like the show will have even less substance yet stretch out to 4 hours anyway.
[Roll Eyes]

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Greg Anderson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 766
From: Ogden Valley, Utah
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 06-26-2009 11:08 AM

quote:
Of the past ten films to win best picture, only two have grossed less than $100m,

I think it's time to admit that grossing $100 million these days isn't much of an achievement. How much did a ticket cost when Star Wars was new?

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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 06-26-2009 11:17 AM

quote: Greg Anderson
I think it's time to admit that grossing $100 million these days isn't much of an achievement. How much did a ticket cost when Star Wars was new?

Which serves to show the point of how commercially unsuccessful the "Best Picture" winners have been. $100M gross takes maybe 14 or 15 million tickets sold. So these "works of art" grossing $50M or less getting nominated have sold less than 7 million tickets.

I think what really kills the Oscars is that Hollywood forgets that they are in the entertainment business not the art business. By nominating all the art films you turn off most of America. I'm not saying that Transformers 2 should win Best Picture but Dark Knight should have last year.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 06-26-2009 11:28 AM

Back in 1977 I remember our family visiting the Crest Drive-In in Yuma, AZ. We paid $2 per car load. Not sure what movie ticket prices for indoor theaters were averaging at the time. I do remember paying in the $3 to $3.50 range in the early 1980s.

Near the end of the 1980s there was a fair amount of public outcry in New York City when some theaters in Manhattan hit the $7 price level.

Today it is possible for a movie to gross $100 million with fewer than 10 million tickets sold (based on the growing number of theaters whose regular admission price is over $10 and the surcharges for 3D, IMAX, etc. being added in many other places). This is essentially why I have long thought measuring movies by their grosses is just utter bullshit.

The marketing people love measuring movies in terms of dollar grosses because it sounds a lot more impressive to say a new movie had an opening weekend gross of $80 million than say 8.3 million people visited theaters over the weekend to see the show.

Actual tickets sold should be the only legitimate measuring tool. Sure, that would upend the status of a lot of recent hit movies on all time box office champ lists and not make them compare very well with much older blockbusters like Gone With the Wind. But I think that's just tough toogies for the marketing people. If the studios actually measured by tickets sold then it might actually make them work harder on making better movies -that is if they actually care at all about having a new release truly rank high on an all time success list.

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Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Master Film Handler

Posts: 405
From: Canton, MI, USA
Registered: Oct 2007

posted 06-26-2009 01:21 PM

I think there is a basic difference in the philosophy of what constitutes a "best" picture. I loved Dark Knight as much as the next guy, but realistically, in ten years, it will be mostly forgotten. Compare that to Casablanca (Best Picture, 1943), for example, which came out when my grandparents were younger than I am now. Casablanca is still a vitally important film, and you will be roundly mocked if you haven't seen it. Now, I'm not saying that this is a standard that can even be accomplished these days, but this is an ideal that I think should at least be striven for. Does Dark Knight have that kind of staying power? No. Neither does Slumdog Craptaculaire, but my grandchildren may very well see Milk, at least.

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 06-26-2009 01:32 PM

quote: Greg Anderson
I think it's time to admit that grossing $100 million these days isn't much of an achievement.

$100 million doesn't mean what it did 5-10. But given that a majority of films don't reach $100 million, I think it's a decent benchmark.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-26-2009 02:01 PM

Given inflation, I think the "blockbuster benchmark" should be $150 million. But they really ought to measure by ticket sales numbers, not money.

Comparisons to really old movies like Gone With The Wind are very irrelevant and I get irritated with media that trumpets those statistics in the middle of a "people don't go to as many movies anymore" story. Well OF COURSE they don't, because there are about a dozen or more OTHER ways for them to be entertained now that didn't exist in 1939, or 1969 for that matter. Comparisons within the last 10 years or so are the only valid ones.

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