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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: 88th Academy Awards Results (2016)
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 03-01-2016 07:07 PM
The danger today is not so much in the technology, but the safety culture.
When nitrate was in mainstream use, the precautions needed to keep the risk of a fire to within acceptable limits was second nature. Projectionists, lab technicians and everyone else who routinely handled it were trained to handle it properly, knew the risks, did what was needed, and as a result, nitrate fires in the '30s and '40s only happened very, very rarely.
That knowledge and culture isn't there now, and so if you started making new nitrate prints and they got into circulation, the danger is that they'd eventually get into the hands of someone who didn't know what they were dealing with, or even worse, thought it would be cool to live dangerously.
As things are, there are only a tiny handful of showable nitrate prints remaining, and the archives that have them set very high barriers and due diligence checks before allowing them to be projected. I'll probably be flamed and accused of elitism for this, but that's how I'd like it to stay.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-02-2016 12:08 AM
I understand what you are saying and there is probably some truth to that but I don't perceive him as being one of those "back in my day" types. He gets screeners because he's pretty much of a home body. He just doesn't have the stamina to go out for very long. He watches a lot of movies from Netflix. He may be a little bit old fashioned but he is by no means provincial.
I spent a couple of days, hanging out and talking with him. His main complaints are pretty much in line with what I hear a lot of people here saying. In one sentence, the main problems with movies, today, is that they are too superficial and emphasize looks and special effects over plot, story and characters.
I agree that there are many old timers in the movie industry who have provincial attitudes. I wish that people weren't like that, so much. I'd like to see people looked upon as elders and mentors but I'd also like to see them act more like mentors, as well.
quote: Leo Enticknap
As things are, there are only a tiny handful of showable nitrate prints remaining, and the archives that have them set very high barriers and due diligence checks before allowing them to be projected. I'll probably be flamed and accused of elitism for this, but that's how I'd like it to stay.
It's probably going to be like that for ALL film, pretty soon.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 03-02-2016 12:36 AM
quote: Leo Enticknap
As things are, there are only a tiny handful of showable nitrate prints remaining, and the archives that have them set very high barriers and due diligence checks before allowing them to be projected. I'll probably be flamed and accused of elitism for this, but that's how I'd like it to stay.
Besides some nostalgia, is there any real reason left to use nitrate films for projection at all? Nitrocellulose might be somewhat more transparent than polyester and cellulose acetate, but nowadays we have more powerful light sources to compensate.
quote: Mike Blakesley
This underlines why people who are no longer active in the industry shouldn't be allowed to vote. The majority of "old people" (not just people in the business) tend to think that most "modern" entertainment is crap, compared to what they enjoyed in the good old days. So why bother having them participate when they may have an automatic negative view of the proceedings and the stuff they're voting on?
I guess ideally, the voters should be composed of a sound mix between "young-" and "old-minded" folks, since the focus group is the whole industry. But people no longer active in the industry just shouldn't be allowed to vote at all. The question is how you monitor the latter. Still, how can somebody who has lost the affection with the industry make an educated judgement?
quote: Mike Blakesley
I also hate screeners and wish they would require the voters to see all the movies in real theaters but I guess THAT genie is totally out of the bottle now.
They should at least see it in a correctly setup and well maintained screening room. How else could you otherwise judge stuff like the sound mix or special effects?
Also, as a bonus, if they would require voters to see movies at those kind of venues, it would probably also stop those screeners leaking out to pirate sites...
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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 03-02-2016 10:01 AM
As far as nitrate goes, I tend to agree with both Leo and Marcel. I don't think younger projectionists are reckless, but they were never trained with that kind of mind set, and most of the equipment and booths are not equipped to contain a fire.
Back in the 1980's I was at a private screening of a collector's nitrate print of Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent at a local theatre. Against my advice, they ran the print on a platter. I remember sitting next to an auditorium emergency exit as a result. Fortunately, nothing went wrong.
About 12 years ago, I ran Edison's 1910 version of Frankenstein at the Landmark Loews Jersey. The collector who owned it has a safety print struck from his nitrate original, and did a tour of the country with it. He brought along the original nitrate print which he has on display in the lobby. He also brought along a "trip to the moon" (not Melies) short to run before Frankenstein. I took it up to the booth and wound thru it. It was hand tinted and looked really interesting, but it was nitrate and I was not willing to run it on a open Kinoton FP20. Back down to the lobby it went.
As to the Academy Awards, I have mixed feelings about excluding non currently active members from voting. A work of art may say something different to different generations, but a good film is a good film, regardless of when it was made. Other than maybe a few technical categories, the skill that went into a given craft is timeless. Should someone who spent their entire life working in the industry be considered incompetent to vote just because they are retired. Are they saying that an actor who retired in 1990 can not judge good acting? I don't think so. On the other hand, I do think that in order to vote, a person should be required to actually see the film, and see it in a properly setup theatre or screening room. In fact, I really think they should be required to see the film in a commercial theatre with the public. Far too many in the industry are out of touch with the general public. Their friends are in the industry, they watch films with people in the industry, and have no idea what public want. Reading marketing surveys is no substitute for experiencing it yourself.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 03-02-2016 12:38 PM
It's going to be hard to make the following point without getting overly political, but here goes for an attempt.
As I understand it, the CEO of AMPAS wants to kick retirees out of the voting pool in order to encourage "diversity," i.e. bring more members of ethnic and other minorities into it.
The issue for her is going to be that if the Oscars are going to remain a prestigious event, that generates huge TV ratings and pulls in the money needed for AMPAS to do all its other stuff (Herrick Library, Academy Film Archive, etc.), the movies that win the high profile categories have to reflect popular taste. If they stop doing so, then those ratings will plummet and the Oscars will become just another one of many awards shows.
However worthy a four-hour long, micro budget movie, shot on a D-SLR and mostly in someone's kitchen, in which a Latino lesbian disabled, drug-addicted single mother complains about how life has been so awful to her and then takes an overdose in the final scene (this movie does exist, and I've shown it!), it's never going to pack out the Imax screen in a megamall AMC. If films like this start to win best picture, best director, etc., with Star Wars and Mad Max being totally passed over, that will be the beginning of the end of the Oscars as the premiere awards show, against which all others are judged.
Throughout its history, the Oscars has done a pretty good job of balancing the celebration of commercially successful films with artistically worthy ones, as demonstrated by both Star Wars and Son of Saul being recognized this time around. If the Academy is serious about trying to change that balance fundamentally, it'll be a potentially risky experiment.
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John Eickhof
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 588
From: Wendell, ID USA
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 03-02-2016 01:30 PM
Leo's comments are very relevant, Mike too, I still feel that if the academy wants diversity, they need to find a quality of artist that will earn the nomination, not just nominated by race, creed, or color! It's bad enough that the Hollywood community still operates on a 'who you know' mentality and not 'what you know'! I also think they need to segregate the features with more than 50% EFX (as now it seems difficult to discern what's real or not in the newer features)and ones with predominantly real live acting as it is acting that makes a feature successful. (note, I don't use the term film anymore, its kinda like 'dial this phone number'!) AS for nitrate prints, I agree with the richness of color and sharpness of the stock ( I possess and have run quite a bit in my early years) however one must not forget that outfitting a booth and theatre to meet the fire regulations and shipping of such "hazardous" materials would not only be expensive, but probably very impractical. Of course the shipping cost would be the exhibitor's responsibility and expense too! The last pair of projectors I equipped for nitrate went into the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, CA where they still operate with carbon arc lamps. (And, If I remember they had one fire in the booth years ago Sam, don't you have some pix after the fire??)
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-02-2016 01:58 PM
I agree with the idea anyone voting in the Oscars should be actively working in the specific field the Oscar category is covering (with the exception of Best Picture, whose vote is open to all Academy members). I don't have a problem with previous Oscar winners voting, no matter how long since they've last worked, since such people, particularly those in technical categories, have achieved a widely respected level of expertise.
One of the problems with getting older is newer forms of entertainment (movies, music, books, etc.) don't seem as good as the stuff from decades ago. All those things were experienced with young eyes/ears that hadn't seen/heard anything like it before -even if the "new" piece of entertainment being experienced is actually recycled garbage. Popular culture is always slanted toward youth, leaving new movies and music not so relatable to middle aged and older people.
Then there's the "been there, seen that" factor. That definitely can throw in a bit of bias in Oscar voting. There's not as much of the magic or wonder in experiencing the product. When you get old enough and/or have seen enough movies you'll really start to see the artifice and mechanics of it. This factor is compounded greatly for anyone working in the movie industry. Hence the attitude that there's only a couple worthwhile movies made per year and the rest are crap.
This doesn't mean the Academy needs an age cut-off for Oscar voters. They do need a broad mix of ages voting on these categories. The older, more experienced voters do have an advantage of knowing quite a bit more history. Good movie critics really have to know their stuff regarding film history. They need to be able to know the difference between a movie that is indeed brand new, ground-breaking, etc. versus something that is really a regurgitation of some old idea.
If anything needs to be done to "clean up" Oscar voting, it's by making sure the actual Academy members are the ones voting rather than some douche's secretary.
quote: Mike Blakesley
I also hate screeners and wish they would require the voters to see all the movies in real theaters but I guess THAT genie is totally out of the bottle now.
I think the movie studios should require voters to see the movies in a real movie theater or screening room. They need to get rid of the damned screener discs, downloads, etc. The movie industry will continue to have no credibility at all when whining about piracy, not as long as they keep distributing those damned screeners. Movies like The Revenant get leaked online to torrent sites as much as a month before hitting theaters. Yet the movie theaters continue to shoulder all the blame for piracy.
quote:
Chris Rock telling racial jokes was a total turn-off!
Yeah, not much of that stuff was funny at all. I wasn't very impressed with the Oscars telecast basically embracing the "Oscars So White" thing either, as if "owning" it would make the situation any better. It would have been worse if they had said nothing about the controversy, but going in the other extreme reeked of hypocrisy.
quote: Leo Enticknap
As I understand it, the CEO of AMPAS wants to kick retirees out of the voting pool in order to encourage "diversity," i.e. bring more members of ethnic and other minorities into it.
That's kind of a chicken vs. egg scenario. In order to get more non-whites into the Oscar voting pool a greater mix of non-white actors and crew members have to already be getting hired in the first place. Nationwide, non-Hispanic Whites make up 60% of the United States' population. I think anyone would have a very difficult time finding many big studio movies where at least 40% of the cast and crew were non-white.
Our world, overall, is still a very prejudiced, bigoted place. Global media giants definitely consider this fact when casting movies. When producing a movie they want to appeal to particular demographics here in the United States and across the rest of the world. I don't think it's any accident White actors had all the acting Oscar nominations this year and last year.
If Hollywood wants more diversity in Oscar nominations it has do one simple thing: cast more non-White actors in serious, high-brow movie roles. They're not doing that now. When a Black actor is cast in a serious movie, or even an Oscar-winning movie, it almost always has something to do with race, such as 12 Years A Slave, Training Day, etc.
If the acting part is ambiguous on who could play it the studio will almost always stick a White actor in that role. It's the safe choice. Look at all the bitching that flared online when a Black storm trooper showed up in Star Wars. Studios usually only cast a minority actor in a role specifically written as a non-White part. In some cases the studio may still stick White actors in those roles. A couple weeks ago John Oliver's Last Week Tonight show aired a hilarious segment on Hollywood Whitewashing in its "Why Is This Still A Thing" series that highlights that tradition.
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Justin Hamaker
Film God
Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted 03-02-2016 04:37 PM
When the OscarSoWhite thing first started after the nominations, I went through the nominations for the past 15 years and found the number of black actors nominated for Best Actor was about 11%. Meaning it was more or less in line with their share of the general population.
If you take each category on it's own, a population group which makes up less than 20% of the whole should not actually expect to be represented every year in a category which has only 5 nominations. If you take all 20 of the acting nominations as a whole, then the expectation would be 2-3 nominations per year.
The thing that was left unsaid during the telecast is that lack of opportunity is probably the biggest reason there are not more minority nominees. While Chris Rock did talk about wanting more opportunity, he failed to make the connection.
When you think about it, opportunity really is the key for minorities, as well as women, and other groups. Most years when I'm thinking about the nominations I can easily come up with a list of 10-15 actors who might be nominated for the Best Actor and Supporting Actor categories. But it is often difficult to find 10 actresses to fill the 2 categories.
This lack of opportunity was pretty obvious when you look at 2015 movies. I only counted 3 performances which I would consider worthy of consideration for nominations: Will Smith in Concussion, Michael B Jordan in Creed, and Jason Mitchell in Straight Outta Compton. After his SAG win, I realize Idris Elba should have been considered for Beasts of No Nation. However that film only made $90,000 in theatres and did not seem to be widely known.
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