Comments on: How The Oscars Fail Movies

By: scarlet7

scarlet7 — Sun, 29 Jan 2017 23:08:00 +0000

“Interestingly, in the lore of Oscar commentary, the outstanding Negga is widely felt to have usurped the fifth Best Actress slot either from Amy Adams for “Arrival, or from Annette Bening for her turn in “20th Century Women.” But even that debate, which pits equally deserving performances against each other and scarcely issues a murmur of complaint at the obvious legacy nod for Meryl Streep who “needs” a 2017 Oscar nomination less than any other living person, is not the most irksome thing.”

Funny, maybe I’m just perpetuating confirmation bias based on my film lovers/critics/makers circle of friends on FB, but there seemed to be a lot of eye-rolling over Meryl Streep’s latest nomination (seriously, if TMZ recorded Streep shopping at a farmer’s market, she’d probably get a nomination) and nary a peep about Ruth Negga, let alone that she “stole” a spot from Amy Adams; most people were happy she was able to secure a nomination after LOVING came and went. Because it really is a legacy nomination for Streep, who I find ridiculously overrated at this point.

By: Beam Yompool

Beam Yompool — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 21:59:00 +0000

Thanks for writing this piece – you raised a very interesting point. It seems to boil down to the idea of “how to market a good film?”, which is important because if a good film is marketed properly and becomes successful (commercially or Oscar-wise), hopefully more good films will get made. Like you said, it sure seems like there are mainly two ways to market a movie: push it for box office success or push it into the Oscar conversation (and presumably get more cash if nominated). For me, genre movies suffer from the dilemma the most. I’m religiously following critics’ best-of lists, so I paid to see “The Babadook”, “The Gift”, and “Ex Machina” (wait, this one actually won… but still), but for casual moviegoers, they wouldn’t go out of their way to see them. They’re phenomenal films but the way these films were marketed was definitely neither the Oscar route nor the Blockbuster route and eventually they’re not rightfully recognized for their merits, which was a shame. I love the Oscars because more often than not, nominated films are very good, but I hope there’s the third option for movies to be marketed that keeps good movies from being forgetten.

By: John W

John W — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 21:55:00 +0000

“We can’t know (and maybe that’s really what I dislike most about the
Oscars, they’re such an irreducible part of movie culture that we simply
can’t imagine what the landscape would look like without them). ”

Unless your a fan of genre movies, where you know up front that the Oscar chances of a movie like Deadpool for any non-technical award are very slim if not downright non existent.

By: Quiet Wyatt

Quiet Wyatt — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 21:09:00 +0000

It’s why I put a little more stock in the Critics Choice Awards since we’re dealing with a panel of voters who are actually, ya know, required to see the movie they’re voting on. I would say the Independent Spirit Awards were even a little more true to the spirit of “film” until recently. Now that ceremony seems to have gone more for the campaigning side of things.