aka the Wakanda Award...isn't Oscar basically doing the Wakanda Forever pose anyways?

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/most-popular-movie-oscar-wtf-708005/

For 90 years, Hollywood has been celebrating itself by handing out Academy Awards — and for almost as long, people have been debating what, if anything, constitutes a “Best” Picture. The Oscars are a hopelessly biased and flawed system — the voters skew older, most aren’t nearly adventurous enough in seeking out riskier fare, the kerfuffles around eligibility, that whole #OscarsSoWhite fiasco. But what has remained consistent over almost a century is the notion that, no matter how idiotic or shortsighted the choices were from year to year, there remained a belief that Academy members were picking what they considered to be the highest achievements in the cinematic arts. If the Best Picture winner wasn’t some commercial blockbuster, well, that was perfectly fine: Great films don’t always set the box office on fire. If anything, that was not a bug but a feature — the ability to shine a gold-tinted spotlight on movies that the marketplace otherwise might have overlooked.

That used to be the idea, anyway. Last night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ board of governors — the folks who oversee the Oscars — decided to significantly tamper with the integrity of its awards show. In a letter to its members, the governors announced several major changes to the program, including revealing winners in some smaller categories during commercial breaks so that the victors’ speeches can be edited down and run later in the broadcast. But the change that’s most galling is the one that seeks to add a new category, which they’re calling “outstanding achievement in popular film.” The governors were mum on the specifics — “Eligibility requirements and other key details will be forthcoming,” they wrote — but what they need to decide first is how they can possibly justify this change. While they’re at it, they also might want to think long and hard about how they’re diminishing the very glamour and prestige of an award that has been the most coveted in all of entertainment for decades...

Hit the link for the rest.

Let's pretend for a second that the Oscars don't already have a history of both nominating and rewarding block-busters (Just off the top, Titanic, Return of the King, Gladitor all won best picture Oscars. Shoot Rain Man was the highest grossing flick of 1988): What exactly is creating a category to reward superhero flicks, Star Wars films, and other action movies really accomplishing, besides being a blatant ploy to grab ratings? The fact that a film made a lot of money doesn't mean it ***deserves*** an Oscar.

Plus, what if Black Panther is legit one of the Best Picture of the year? Does that mean because it made a shit-ton of money, it's excluded from being nominated for Best Picture?

This is so half-baked and stupid.

>Plus, what if Black Panther is legit one of the Best Picture
>of the year? Does that mean because it made a shit-ton of
>money, it's excluded from being nominated for Best Picture?


The Academy has already said that a film can be nominated in both *Best Picture* and *Popular* category.

It's a complete consensus everywhere that this is stupid, even by Oscar standards.

...and decided to make it so.

I think the rollout of this has been really bad. The Oscars haven't made many deft movements lately and this announcement is certainly one of them.

I take mrHood's point. But the Oscars over the the last decade have skewed very arthouse. If you look at the list of Oscar winners since Titanic in '97, only three movies since could be recognized as blockbusters and they all came before '04. (The Return of the King in '03)

Granted many of those films are great quality but it's hard for the Oscars to gin up people to watch the ceremony when movies like Moonlight win (which for the record was a movie that is one of my favorites) that make less than $30M. As much as the Oscars are intended to be about art and craft (a notion that they are lax to hold onto) they are a means to attract people's eyeballs on the TV show. Ratings have been down (correct me if I'm wrong) and it's at least a good thing that they're trying something to not only make the awards show more palatable but also correct some of the institutional bias baked into the voting process.

This award allows more *cough* a *cough* comedy to get recognized and you will start to see movies get merit for more technical excellence than traditional forms of storytelling.

Plus it'll still allow arthouse movies to get recognized solely on pure artistry.

...box office successes by any measure. Most have crossed $100 million domestic, and often make a lot more worldwide. And during the years where the Best Picture winner hasn't been a huge hit, other indisputable block-busters have been nominated: Hurt Locker beat out Avatar, 12 Years a Slave beat out American Hustle and Wolf Of Wall Street, Spotlight beat out Fury Road and The Martian, Moonlight beat La La Land and Hidden Figures, etc. The only year I see that didn't have any mega hits nominated was 2005, when Crash won in a field with Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Capote, and Good Night & Good Luck.

I think increasing the field of nominees to 10 max does a decent job of letting well-made "art-house" films and blockbusters. Black Panther was going to get a some sort of Best Picture nomination this year no matter what. It might even win it this year anyway. But I don't there's a need or a demand for the Academy to do something to make sure a film with at least a $400 million worldwide box office gets to walk on stage to accept an award.

The movies on that page skewed more arthouse than box office smash since Titanic. The term arthouse being relative. I personally don't count $100M as a blockbuster anymore. But your point having a history of awarding box office successes is valid.

It doesn't bother me that the Oscars go to smaller films. But I could see that casual movie goers might feel that the Oscars are voted on by a bunch of snobby, older, White men who don't have a sense of 'real' entertainment.

People who are on the outside want to be included. I guess the question is if the Oscars want to continue it's traditional voting patterns or maybe open the notion of the definition of an Oscar winner. By carving out a category specifically for box office successes, the Oscars may have a chance to attract casual fans that normally wouldn't follow the ceremony. Doing so would significantly change the culture of the show, hence the blowback.

Maybe this is the wrong direction, but at least the Oscars are doing something to make institutional changes. I at least give them credit for opening up the show to viewers who have typical tastes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPD0srSiOFE

They've never existed as an objective measure of quality; they're industry awards given by the industry itself, with at least the goal of promoting themselves to the public. The voting process is heavily subjected to politics, expensive and extensive campaigning, and an inherent conflict of interest. They're more marking ploy than meritocracy.

So, I agree that this is stupid as fuck, but I also can't say that it really "bothers" me. I've had friends saying shit like "this is an outrage!" or "this is an insult!" etc. etc. I can't see it.

Also, the very first Oscars had a very similar dual Best Picture format; one for Outstanding Picture and another for Best Unique and Artistic Picture.

Sounds like pretty much the same shit they're trying to do this year...

so of course everyone runs with the worst interpretation (which to be fair, is completely possible) and now they just look ridiculous.

wtf

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

Got it.

Maybe next year they'll take it to the next level and add "Best On Screen Kiss" and "Best Comedic Duo."

I remember reading an article where an anonymous Academy member said this about Get Out: "We don't give awards to movies like this. Didn't we just do this last year (Referring to Moonlight)?

I hope Black Panther, Blindspotting, Sorry to Bother You, and BlacKkKlansman all make it to Best Picture this year.

And this also highlights why the Academy needs term limits. If you haven't made a movie in ten years, you're gone. I remember reading about a nun who got into the Academy long before she entered the sisterhood. Shit like that is insane.

Like that way something like The Matrix or Get Out or Avatar could win, the excellence of the movie would be rewarded, and the Academy could be expanding its notion of great cinema rather than seeming to placate (and badly) its fans.

If you're in Best Picture, can you then be billed as Academy Award Winner?

Is this award going to Black Panther or Infinity War?

Given the cultural influence I think they would pick that one.

But I'm just looking at it as if we were talking about the MTV movie awards. Which is pretty much my opinion of the Oscars after this.

I didn't see how old this was. I guess they're postponing the category.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/academy-postponing-new-popular-oscar-category-1140423

Academy Postponing New Popular Oscar Category
11:11 AM PDT 9/6/2018 by Gregg Kilday

The award was to have been introduced at the 91st Oscars.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is postponing the introduction of the new “popular” Oscar category it had intended to introduce at its upcoming 91st Academy Awards on Feb. 24.

The Academy announced today, following a meeting of the board of governors on Tuesday, that it is shelving the idea for the moment and will not launch the proposed new award at the next Oscar show, but it said it will continue to discuss the idea for the new award and "will examine and seek additional input regarding the new category." The announcement explained that implementing the new award nine months into the year "created challenges for films that have already been released. The Academy did not provide any timeline for when further details about the new award might be decided.

“There has been a wide range of reactions to the introduction of a new award, and we recognize the need for further discussion with our members,” said Academy CEO Dawn Hudson on Thursday. “We have made changes to the Oscars over the years — including this year — and we will continue to evolve while also respecting the incredible legacy of the last 90 years.”

Last month, the Academy’s board of governors voted to create the new award, which it said would recognize “outstanding achievement in popular film.” But it did not lay out the criteria or voting process that would be used to determine which films would be eligible and how they would be selected. With awards season currently taking shape as dozens of Oscar hopefuls are introduced at festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto, which kicks off its fest today, numerous questions were raised about the proposed award. With studios and distributors drawing up plans for the coming awards season, the Academy was under pressure to set up rules regarding the new category.

Hoping to stem falling ratings for the Oscar broadcast, the Academy is looking for ways to attract the attention of mainstream moviegoers. The new award was seen as a way to guarantee that blockbusters movies, like the Marvel, Star Wars and DC Universe movies, as well as surprise hits like A Quiet Place and Crazy Rich Asians would be assured of air time on the broadcast.

But the announcement of the new award met with an immediate wave of criticism. Rob Lowe tweeted, "The film business passed away today with the announcement of the 'popular' film Oscar. It had been in poor health for a number of years. It is survived by sequels, tent-poles, and vertical integration." Critics of the idea variously complained that creating a new Oscar was akin to asking popular films to sit at the kid's table, while others argued it would devalue the eventual winner of the best picture Oscar.

Even those, including those inside the Academy who supported the idea, of the new Oscar, were hard-pressed to describe the rules and voting process that should be used to decide the winner of the category.

In announcing that it was setting the award aside for the moment, the Academy said that it would continue with other changes intended to keep the upcoming Oscar show from running over three hours. As previously announced, it said that not all of the 24 Oscar categories will be presented live — instead, six to eight categories will be presented at the Dolby Theatre during commercial breaks and then edited versions of the presentations will air later in the broadcast. It's expected that it's the crafts categories as well as the three short-film categories that will be relegated to the non-live presentations, but the Academy said today that the affected categories would rotate from year to year, presumably so that none of the crafts branches feel they are being permanently moved to the commercial-break status.

over with

If Musicals, comedy, dramas get their own category then, why not make a distinction between the 5M independent art film and the 200M popcorn film?

Black Panther shouldn't be competing against 8th grade (haven't seen but I guess folks say it good) or rather their should be ways to recognize the excellence of both movies even though they are excellent for different reasons.


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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>If Musicals, comedy, dramas get their own category

The Oscars don't separate for genre.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"