Jun 25th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Ten Best Pictures
This business of having ten Best Picture nominees at the Oscars seems like a terrible idea. It means that the winning film from among the nominees could sneak through with extremely little support, and that tactical voting is going to become a paramount consideration. Clearly the goal here is to increase the quantity of films able to juice attendance by saying they were nominated, but if they want to make this switch they also need to reform the voting procedure to something with ordered preferences or something.
75 Responses to “Ten Best Pictures”
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June 25th, 2009 at 8:36 am
I’d suggest automatic runoff voting. Or perhaps a parliamentary system, although that does seem to increase the chances of Nazi movies winning.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:55 am
godoggo wins the thread!
June 25th, 2009 at 8:55 am
For the academy its more likely to be some shitty Holocaust documentary.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:58 am
I won’t tune in until they add “Best Costume Design-FM Pumps or Heels”.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:01 am
godoggo, how about “Best Nazi Llama Sex”? In FM pumps or heels, of course.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:05 am
If the Academy wanted to split up the Best Picture award into two, either by genre or something else, that would be one thing. (like the Golden Globes, the writing award, or several of the other awards at various points in Oscar history) But to simply increase the field from 5 to 10, as Matt suggests, is very silly.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Ordered voting increases the opportunity for tactical voting. If there is a movie that I think has a good chance of winning, but have a personal dislike for (American Beauty, for instance), then I could put it dead last in ordered voting even though on substance I didn’t think it was the worst movie.
Not saying tactical voting of this sort is necessarily a bad thing.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:12 am
If this helps UP get nominated, and therefore have a better chance of winning, then so be it.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Has there ever been a year when there were ten movies worthy of a Best Picture nomination? Buffs?
June 25th, 2009 at 9:14 am
If the Academy wanted to split up the Best Picture award into two, either by genre or something else, that would be one thing.
From reading the linked article, it seems they’ve sort of done that–integrated the previously unrewarded “Most Popular Crowd-Pleasing Blockbuster” category into the “Best Picture” list.
(OT: “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Reader, and “Slumdog Millionaire?” God damn, but 2008 was a crappy year for movies.)
June 25th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Clearly the goal here is to increase the quantity of films able to juice attendance by saying they were nominated
I don’t think that’s right. I think the goal here is to increase Oscar viewership and interest by making it more possible for a big hit (such as The Dark Knight or Wall-E, last year) to score a nomination.
It used to be extremely typical for major smash hits to win Best Picture nominations, from Ben-Hur and The Sound of Music to E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark (!), even to the ’90s with The Fugitive and The Sixth Sense. But in the five Oscar years since the Lord of the Rings trilogy ended, this has basically vanished.
In those five years the Academy has nominated exactly two films for Best Picture that had grossed $100M pre-nominations: The Departed and Benjamin Button, neither exactly a runaway smash. A third, Juno, crossed the mark before the awards ceremony.
Compare this to the previous decade’s highest grossers pre-awards by each year:
2003: Return of the King – $365M (and Seabiscuit – $120M)
2002: The Two Towers – $335M (and Chicago – $134M)
2001: Fellowship of the Ring – $298M (and A Beautiful Mind – $154M)
2000: Gladiator – $187M (and Erin Brockovich – $125M AND two others over $100M)
1999: The Sixth Sense – $290M (and The Green Mile – $135M and American Beauty over $100M)
1998: Saving Private Ryan – $210M
1997: Titanic – $495M (and Good Will Hunting and As Good As It Gets over $100M as well)
1996: Jerry Maguire – $143M
1995: Apollo 13 – $172M
1994: Forrest Gump – $317M
1993: The Fugitive – $183M
Prior to 2004, you have to go back to 1989 to find a year where none of the nominees broke $100M before the ceremony, yet it’s happening with increasing frequency, and the three “big hits” from recent years — Departed, Juno, and Benjamin Button — all had lower grosses than ANY of the top grossing films listed above. The Academy thinks this is a key driver of declining interest in the Oscars, and I’m not sure they’re wrong. Whether this plan is going to fix it… I have no idea. I have my doubts.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Yglesias’ speculation about the reasons for increasing the number of nominated films sounds like it could be right. It really seems like there is a certain kind of film which gets made to get involved in the award-show scene.
As far as voting goes, tf they use a plurality “first past the post” system, that maybe will increase the odds of winning for heavy-handed agenda-films. film about how Jesse Helms (I invite anyone with enough time to read blog comments to substitute to yourself another figure for your amusement) was an underappreciated and sensitive genius would appeal very strongly to the minority that thinks strongly the same way. Everyone who did not think that way would be divided between the movies based on other criteria, and imagining an even enough division on that score, the Jesse Helms hagiography would get the Oscar.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:27 am
More seriously, I agree with doofman. If the goal is to get a wider variety of movies in the mix, coming out with more genre categories would make sense. (And there’s recent precedent for it at the Oscars themselves — the “Best Animated Picture” category.)
June 25th, 2009 at 9:30 am
I don’t want to go into the details about Borda counts or other ways of choosing winners, just that a single-vote plurality with a large number of nominees would make it easy for films that many people would not really consider good to win.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:49 am
I think combining Best Picture Oscars with Box Office take is a very poor way of looking at it.
The year No Country won I believe Spiderman 3 was the highest grossing picture of the year. Not even Spiderman fans considered that film to be any good.
Obviously, this is all about the perceived “snub” of Dark Knight. If people had been able to set aside their after the fact grief about Heath Ledger’s avoidable passing, they might have been able to objectively view Dark Knight for the flaws it had. Mainly, Christian Bale’s subpar performance, and a script that utterly fell off the rails in the last twenty minutes. To call the conclusion of the Joker subplot an anticlimax would be an insult to anticlimaxes. Watching the freakout from Dark Knight geeks was embarassing to watch leading up to the ceremonies. It probably didn’t help that for some reason Andrew Breitbart and his ilk deemed Dark Knight to be a love ode to W.
The ten nominee system will fall apart either when a movie like Paul Blart sneaks in with a nomination or when the expanded field yields even more art films that real movie fans adore but drooling Breitbart types despise.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:58 am
The Oscar decisions are always so bad, I stopped paying attention long ago (somewhere around Best Actress – Cher).
June 25th, 2009 at 9:59 am
The Academy is still pretending that its award nominees aren’t predictably determined by expensive campaigns (whose actual cost rivals a lot of political elections) and release-date strategies.
Why are the year’s biggest blockbusters often ignored? Because they tend to be either midsummer releases, which don’t stand to return much on an award-campaign investment because they’re already out of theatrical release by the year’s end, or children’s movies, whose target audience doesn’t vote. There are many exceptions to this rule – i.e. Titanic, the LOTR trilogy, Gladiator, etc. – and those exceptions almost always wind up getting a shitload of nominations.
On the other hand, the Oscars provide a useful marketing angle for “specialty” films, many of which actually turn out to be good (or at least suitable for viewers over 12). A nomination almost invariably gives a big box-office bump to films in limited release at the year’s end, so higher odds of getting the nomination means an even greater share of “quality” films (and Holocaust melodramas) get shoehorned into cinemas in December. Aside from that, I don’t think the audience will be affected in any way.
The whole process would be a good exercise in popularizing ranked-choice voting (which, IMO, is a great idea for primaries and local elections). But the fact is, the Oscar nomination procedure has already been using this system for years, and nobody outside of the industry really gives a rat’s ass.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Yeah. They really need to preserve the nominations and voting processes that resulted in the Best Picture being awarded to Crash. Or left The Dark Knight unnominated.
With slightly less snark, while I’m usually amenable to the notion that we need to preserve the integrity of institutional procedures, we’re talking about the motion picture academy, here. What reason do you have to believe that they would do anything with a five-picture pool better than what they’d do with a ten-picture one? Unless you suppose they’d do better in the future with five than they’ve done in the past, it seems merely speculative.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:08 am
As you say, due to the arcane procedures used, increasing the number of nominees also increases the chaos in the outcome.
But rather than ordered preferences, as you suggest, the academy should look at score voting. (scorevoting.net)
It’s a very simple method. Every voter gives each nominee a score anywhere in some range (such as 0-99, or 1-5), and whichever nominee has the highest average score, wins. It’s sounds almost too simple, but mathematical studies have found that score voting is more likely to pick the correct winner (especially with a large number of nominees) than any other practical voting system. And since each score is independent (unlike with any ranked preference method) there is no opportunity for “spoilers”.
Check it out. (Oh, and it’d be great for government elections too.) scorevoting.net
June 25th, 2009 at 10:19 am
When did this talking point Nazi movies = Oscar nominations become so ingrained? If my memory isn’t betraying me the only Nazi or Holocaust themed movies nominated for Best Picture since 1984 is a whopping two: Schindler’s List and the Reader. That’s only one more Nazi movie nominated for BP than kung fu movies where people fly.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:19 am
This business of having ten Best Picture nominees at the Oscars seems like a terrible idea.
Who gives a fuck? The Oscars are and forever have been for shit. Buncha jagoffs patting themselves on the back and ginning up business. Jeezus, what’s wrong with you?
June 25th, 2009 at 10:20 am
“If this helps UP get nominated, and therefore have a better chance of winning, then so be it.”
You can’t be serious. It was a fine children’s movie, but there’s no way it’s one of the fifteen best movies that will be released this year. I’d call it the second-worst Pixar movie (though that’s not so bad, since only Cars was a genuinely bad film).
June 25th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Has there ever been a year when there were ten movies worthy of a Best Picture nomination? Buffs?
Sure, lots of them, especially in the ’30s and ’40s when ten movies (without any genre distinctions) were nominated. Take a quick glance at the list of nominees for those years at IMDB at you will see a list of classics (albeit sprinkled with a few movies less remembered today, even to Goldn Age fans). Of course many more movies were produced in that era and (although obviously subjective) there was also a higher percentage of good ones; unless you are a fanboy of mindless action and CGI, the current era is the nadir of American filmaking since, well, ever. This post represents one of the rare times that Matt and I are in synch on cultural matters–this is a transparent attempt to goose both box office gross as well as dwindling ratings for the Oscar telecast (one of the Academy officials freely admitted that the absence of The Dark Knight from this year’s nominees was a major factor in this decision).
June 25th, 2009 at 10:31 am
23. What I don’t like about the TV ratings metric for the worth of a BP winner is such a sensibility could very well turn the Oscars into the People’s Choice Awards.
As for the Box Office gross, Slumdog Millionaire made nearly half of its 140 million domestic take AFTER its BP nomination.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:45 am
You can’t be serious. It was a fine children’s movie, but there’s no way it’s one of the fifteen best movies that will be released this year. I’d call it the second-worst Pixar movie (though that’s not so bad, since only Cars was a genuinely bad film).
NO! NO! PIXAR IS ALWAYS TEH GENIUS AND BLENDS SUPERB TECHNCIAL ARTISTY WITH STRONG HUMANISTIC “CHARACTAR DEVELOPPMENT” AND YOU SUCK AND ARE STUIPD DOOD AND KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CINEMA.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I’m trying to wrap my head around what sort of films will be getting the 8th, 9th and 10th spots on the Best Picture list.
Mike
June 25th, 2009 at 10:50 am
“When did this talking point Nazi movies = Oscar nominations become so ingrained?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I must second the thought Nazi themed movies are not destined for Oscar nods. As you’ll note “W” failed to get any nominations.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:53 am
“When did this talking point Nazi movies = Oscar nominations become so ingrained?”
Didn’t The Pianist and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas both get a bunch of nominations?
June 25th, 2009 at 10:56 am
“When did this talking point Nazi movies = Oscar nominations become so ingrained?”
I think it has to do with the large number of Nazi films that have come out at the end of the year with an obvious eye toward awards. And you’re forgetting about LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL winning the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
Mike
June 25th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Life is Beautiful, also. I think that was probably the point at which the CW became holocaust movies were almost as much oscar gold as movies about the disabled.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:58 am
When did this talking point Nazi movies = Oscar nominations become so ingrained? If my memory isn’t betraying me the only Nazi or Holocaust themed movies nominated for Best Picture since 1984 is a whopping two: Schindler’s List and the Reader.
Other Holocaust-related BP nominees since 1984:
Life Is Beautiful – 1998
The Pianist – 2002
June 25th, 2009 at 11:00 am
So, in other words:
25 years – 5 nominees for Best picture a year = 125 movies
4 Best Picture nominees with Nazi themes out of 125 films = 3%
Yep…that sure is a staggering trend
Boy in the Striped Pajamas received NO Oscar nominations, btw
June 25th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Has there ever been a year when there were ten movies worthy of a Best Picture nomination? Buffs?
1999 easily produced ten movies worthy of BP nominations.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:04 am
The Academy Awards have been an artistic sham from the word jump; it’s hard for me to get worked up about them getting even shammier. Back when we used to have Oscar parties (it’s funny to think we used to need an excuse to have a cocktail party), the recurring joke was that you didn’t have to study the Documnetary entries at all–you just waited for the clips and voted for the one about the Holocaust. (Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, anyone?)
To say nothing of the kind of marketing to the jury that resulted in the Best Picture nomination of Chocolat. Or the generational phenonemon of the big, beautiful, expensive movie that wins awards by the wheelbarrow load, but just isn’t very good in the cold light of morning: Ben Hur for our parents, Titanic for us. Who remembers James Cameron’s moment of supreme assininity, when he asked us all to feel our pulses and made like he was sharing the most profound truths about life? Because of Titanic?!?!
The show itself is scentifically designed to inflict the greatest possible pain on an audience without driving them to change the channel, and the best Oscar moment I can remember is the bitter, classless, sour grapes editorial Annie Proulx wrote after Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash. That one is well worth Googling. Oh, and there was that American Indian woman who refused Marlon Brando’s award, for reasons that are still a bit unclear, and went on to pose naked in Playboy. Only in America.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:06 am
A better thing to look at when it comes to Best Picture nominations are adaptations of books, remakes of musicals, or biopics.
Look at this decades’ BP winners – I’m sure this trend extends out to the nominees
2008 – Slumdog Millionaire – adaptation of novel
2007 – No Country for Old Men – adaptation of novel
2006 – Departed – remake of Hong Kong film
2005 – Crash – original script
2004 – Million Dollar Baby – adaptation of short story
2003 – Return of the King – adaptation of novel
2002 – Chicago – remake of musical
2001 – Beautiful Mind – biopic
2000 – Gladiator – origiginal script
June 25th, 2009 at 11:10 am
34. For someone who claims to despise the Oscars, you sure know an awful lot about them.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Because of Titanic?!?!
Xactly. Titanic is Exhibit A in the case against the shitty Oscars. Braveheart, bitches.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:14 am
To be fair, there are far more “Nazi” movies than “Holocaust” movies–Casablanca, Battleground, The Longest Day, the Guns of Navaronne, Patton, and so forth. Even The Sound of Music and Raiders of the Lost Ark! So we should be clear what we’re arguing about. The Best Years of Our Lives doesn’t have any actual Nazis in it, as I recall, and A Farewell to Arms is Germans, but the wrong war.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Pete,
I “cordially despise” the Oscars. Critical distinction. It’s like tuning in to watch J.R. Ewing on Dallas or Ben Linus on Lost.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:17 am
38. Agreed. In 25 years, only 4 Holocaust themed movies have been nominated for Best Picture.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:20 am
There’s always going to be some element of tactical voting, unless we allow a dictatorship or there is at least one candidate who cannot win. See the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem. As for how you minimize the amount of strategic voting, I have no idea.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:22 am
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
June 25th, 2009 at 11:23 am
41. The way to minimize strategic voting will happen if one studio has multiple nominations for BP (almost never happens with BP but is guaranteed under this new system). The studio will simply pick one film and put all of its weight behind it.
BTW, I think Hurt Locker is going to be the early favorite to win in this system.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:33 am
[...] Matt Y Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Coming Soon in 2009!This is too scaryFirst Reviews [...]
June 25th, 2009 at 11:37 am
38. Agreed. In 25 years, only 4 Holocaust themed movies have been nominated for Best Picture.
The general claim is that WW II pictures are over-represented, a category that includes Nazi- and Holocaust-related movies as a subset. By my count there are 10 to 12 (depending how you count) in the last 16 years:
Schindler’s List (Holocaust)
Remains of the Day (Nazi)
The English Patient (WW II in Africa)
Saving Private Ryan (WW II in Europe)
Thin Red Line (WW II in Pacific)
Life is Beautiful (Holocaust)
The Pianist (Holocaust)
Letters From Iwo Jima (WW II in Pacific)
Atonement (WW II in Europe)
The Reader (Holocaust)
Plus both The Aviator and Benjamin Button had significant parts about WW II. So we’re up around 15% of nominees, which is pretty darn high.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:39 am
@41: That’s why I suggest score voting. The G-S Theorem (like Arrow’s Theorem) applies only to methods that use ranked-order ballots (1st, 2nd, etc.); score voting doesn’t.
As a practical matter, it means that tactical voting becomes an issue, rather than at 3 contenders, at 4; and that it is much less likely that it will be an issue with any number of contenders when compared to ANY ranked-order-ballot-using method.
http://scorevoting.net/GibbSat.html
June 25th, 2009 at 11:41 am
In 25 years, only 4 Holocaust themed movies have been nominated for Best Picture.
How many highbrow Holocaust films have NOT been nominated?
June 25th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I had asked: Has there ever been a year when there were ten movies worthy of a Best Picture nomination? Buffs?
@23: Sure, lots of them, especially in the ’30s and ’40s when ten movies (without any genre distinctions) were nominated.
I should have said something like “since 1970,” but point taken.
@33: 1999 easily produced ten movies worthy of BP nominations.
If you’re thinking of something like this guy’s list, I can only say I heartily disagree that you get to ten that way. But that leads in the direction of a tedious argument.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
45. How exactly do you count Letters from Iwo Jima, with a virtually all-Japanese cast as somehow being a film either about the Nazis OR the Holocaust?
Btw, Atonement was about WWI, no?
June 25th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
45. How exactly do you count Letters from Iwo Jima, with a virtually all-Japanese cast as somehow being a film either about the Nazis OR the Holocaust?
He doesn’t. He lists it as a WWII movie in general, as in “The general claim is that WW II pictures are over-represented, a category that includes Nazi- and Holocaust-related movies as a subset.”
I’d quibble about the inclusion of The Remains of the Day as a Nazi-themed movie, though — it’s really only a minor plot point.
Btw, Atonement was about WWI, no?
No, WWII. It begins in 1938 and then continues to the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Btw, Atonement was about WWI, no?
I hope this poster had this impression from general, if faulty, knowledge about the film and not from actually seeing it. If the latter, WTF!! I’d hate to think of the level of basic historical education, or just plain socio-cultural knowledge picked up from movies and Masterpiece Theater, of anyone who saw Atonement and could think that the movie was set in the WWI era and not WWII. This reaction comes from an old history major whose father (a non-Brit who was working in England in 1939 and enlisted in the British Army) was at Dunkirk.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
But rather than ordered preferences, as you suggest, the academy should look at score voting. (scorevoting.net)
The Academy already uses this system to arrive at the Foreign Film nominees from the submissions (which are one from each country). I have a friend in the Academy’s foreign film committee and have been to several screenings with him. The bizarre thing is that to avoid too many strategic low votes, the range of responses is actually 6 to 10, not 1 to 10.
Nevertheless, under this system, they produce some horrible sets of nominees, especially considering what they’re choosing from. Numerous Cannes winners have been snubbed, along with many other worthy films by great directors.
The fact of the matter is that the Academy Awards represent the tastes of longtime movie industry insiders, which is not the tastes of critics.
Btw, Atonement was about WWI, no?
No, it was WWII.
Anyway, I actually don’t think this is that bad of a plan. There’s no way you’re going to just give the voters better taste so they don’t vote for things like CRASH. But while everybody is talking about the expanded field allowing for more blockbusters, it’s also going to give more of a chance to some challenging or artier fare, too. And no, PAUL BLART or even TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN aren’t going to get anywhere within sight of a nomination. UP, probably. STAR TREK, maybe. It’s still the Academy.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
5 vintage years for the movies: 1938, 1939, 1941, 1993 1999
We’ve been in an horrific dry spell since then. As the span from 1941 to 1993 shows, a dry spell easily becomes the norm.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
51. Marlowe, I didn’t see Atonement, mostly because it looked like the obvious Oscar bait that gets foisted on the public in December. Sorry, but I do know the difference between the two wars, dude. I guess you wasted your “I’m so much more educated than thee” rant on the wrong guy, asshole.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
@52
Are you sure? Reliable details for how the Academy conducts it different votes are kind of difficult to find on the internet; the wikipedia page for how Foreign Language Film is decided seems to *completely* contradict your description, for instance.
If you have a reliable source for the actual method used, I’d love to know what it is (I’m a bit of a voting methods geek; check out my blog). But it doesn’t sound to me like they’re using a score voting method.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
50. I think my objection which touched off this little mini-discussion was that the statistics don’t show that Holocaust themed films dominate BP nominations. The attempt by the other poster to include a WWII film that was entirely about the Japanese at Iwo Jima to inflate the Holocaust stats was simply false on its face.
The fact that Clint’s film was even nominated for BP was remarkable considering that it had a no name cast and virtually no box office on top of the Academy’s recent trend of eschewing war films from BP consideration (Private Ryan being a big exception, but that was 11 years ago)
IF, and it’s a big if, Hurt Locker makes the BP cut this year, it will be the first Iraq or War on Terror film to get a nomination.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Marlowe, I didn’t see Atonement, mostly because it looked like the obvious Oscar bait that gets foisted on the public in December.
Atonement was a pretty good movie, but a far better book. HIGHLY recommended.
I’d quibble about the inclusion of The Remains of the Day as a Nazi-themed movie, though — it’s really only a minor plot point.
I guess that’s fair. I haven’t actually seen the movie, only read the book.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
55. The Foreign Language category is a whole other monster. A country can only submit ONE film to be put into the pool that the five nominees come out of. Many times, highly artistic films aren’t even submitted because the director has bad relations with his country’s film board that submits the nominee.
Kurosawa’s Ran is one of the most glaring examples of this. Japan didn’t even submit it as their official entry that year.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Dale Sheldon — Most of the screenings I attended were earlier this decade, before they instituted the two-stage process that involves a 9-film “first cut” before they finalize the 5 nominees. So I’m not sure how they incorporate that, but I assume that the 9-film cut is achieved through the score voting method (which was still in place in 2007, the last time I attended a screening) and then some other voting method is used to reduce the 9 films to 5.
What I wrote does not contradict the Wikipedia page on the award; the score voting system is what constitutes the method by which the “members select by secret ballot the five official nominations.” So, to be a bit more clear, countries submit at most one film; these are screened by the Committee*; the Committee uses score voting; the highest-ranked films advance; some method unknown to me takes things from a 9-film shortlist to 5 nominees; then the winners are selected from the nominees by voting by the Academy as a whole, just like any other category. As far as I know, the addition of the 9-film shortlist is the only noteworthy change in the process they’ve made in recent years.
*Actually, the entire committee doesn’t screen every film. They split things up randomly into what is, I think, 4 groups now, although it used to be 3. I’m not sure if your attendance within the groups has to be perfect, but in order for your votes to count they do, in fact, keep track of whether you’ve seen the films in your group or not. My friend is a major film buff and was a member of all 4 groups the last time I checked.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
It’s ridiculous that instant-runoff voting isn’t already used. The fact that anyone finds the plurality system “democratic” is laughable, whether it’s the Oscars or the presidential election.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Also — the typical age of a foreign film committee member is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70. Their taste doesn’t exactly tend toward the cutting edge.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Oh, and i’m aware that a run-off system isn’t really optimal either, since it doesn’t always lead to the Condorcet optimal selection. Still, it’s way better than plurality and is easy to understand.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
While Titanic was bad, the worst Oscar win (at least in my lifetime) has to be Forrest Gump. Over both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
@62
Mathematical studies have suggested that score voting is more likely to pick the honest Condorcet winner than either instant runoff or any “actual” Condorcet method, with tactical voters.
http://www.scorevoting.net/AppCW.html
And personal, I think score is much easier to understand than instant runoff. (And it’s certainly easier from an algorithmic complexity standpoint, i.e., a computer program to do score voting would be much smaller than one to do instant runoff.)
(I think I’m starting to be “that guy” in this thread, with the advocacy. Sorry
June 25th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
The two worst wins in recent history were the truly awful ‘Crash’ and ‘Chicago’, made even worse by the fact that ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and ‘The Pianist’ were particularly strong.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
The two worst wins in recent history were the truly awful ‘Crash’ and ‘Chicago’, made even worse by the fact that ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and ‘The Pianist’ were particularly strong.
Chicago was a fine winner, although I agree The Pianist was much better. Crash’s win was an abomination to all that is holy.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
63. Oh, I don’t know if Pulp Fiction losing in 1994 was really that big of a travesty. Personally, I thought Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures was a superior film to both Pulp and Gump that year.
65. Brokeback was done in by good old fashionable homophobia (Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis both said that they wouldn’t even WATCH the film), and it wasn’t helped by Ledger and Ghyllenhal (sic) both expressing defensive ambivalence about their roles in interviews and pressers during the crucial campaign season.
I think that if one were to look at the vote totals, Chicago probably almost lost to Pianist. That year, Miramax caught a lot of crap for campaigning AGAINST their own film (Chicago) to try and shoehorn Marty Scorcese for Best Director. Those hardball campaign antics prompted the shortening of the Oscar nominating calendar, a move that appeared to negatively affect the box office take of nominated films (who didn’t have enough time to take advantage of the nomination)
June 25th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
When did this talking point Nazi movies = Oscar nominations become so ingrained?
When it became a joke on Extras with Kate Winslet. In short, it *hasn’t* been a long standing truism; but once it was referenced as a joke, it was assumed to be a long standing truism.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
“Has there ever been a year when there were ten movies worthy of a Best Picture nomination? Buffs?”
There’s almost always enough “worthy” films. However, the films that are worthy seldom get nominated. Even with five slots, we see mediocre big-studio films like ‘Munich’, ‘Atonement’, ‘Michael Clayton’, ‘Seabiscuit’, ‘Master and Commander’…
June 25th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Pete at @54. Nah, I wasted it on the right asshole, asshole. I generally don’t generally sink to such a pejorative level but (a) you deserve it and (b) it seems to be a means of communicatioon (unlike others) that you will likely comprehend. As I explicitly stated, if you didn’t actually see the film (and you claim you did not), the rest of my comment did not apply to you. A bit thin skinned, dude?
June 25th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
67. It’s not just Pulp Fiction’s loss that was a travesty, though; it was the victory for Gump, a horrible, right-wing, misogynist, gimmicky paean to stupidity that got tons of undeserved praise from Baby Boomer critics because it presented a greatest hits album for their generation.
At least Titanic had some good scenes (mostly those not involving the leads) and Chicago was enjoyable. Gump was just bad. I haven’t seen Crash and can’t comment on it; maybe it was worse.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
70. Aww..Marlowe…nothing better than a self-righteous prick who has nothing better to do than talk down to people. What’s the matter, dickhead. When Fr. O’Malley sodomized you in grade school, did he not give you a towel afterwards?
June 25th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
@53 jeffrey Davis:
> 5 vintage years for the movies: 1938, 1939, 1941, 1993 1999
While 1939 was undoubtably the best year ever for film, I think 1942 can probably also join that list (Bambi, Casablanca, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Pride of the Yankees, Woman of the Year, Yankee Doodle Dandy, etc.) and 1944 was not too bad either..
June 25th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
The academy could use instant run-off voting.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:34 am
Wow, the Gumper taking lots of hits. Love Gump. Never realized “Freebird” was a powerful tune until I saw the movie, even though I’d heard that interminable song 40,000 fucking times prior.
Plus, John Williams sickly-sweet score make me weep like a little bambini. Every time. I only have to hear a couple of notes, or see the floating feather, and I begin to sob uncontrollably.