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Oscar News: Popular Film Category


Mladen

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It's actually basically a way to give Disney/Marvel/Pixar (well, mostly Marvel, somewhat Disney, Pixar does fine in the animated category) an additional shot at primetime award glory on Disney-owned ABC's telecast of the Oscars. 5 of the 10 top grossing films of this year are from Disney and its subsidaries. 4 of 10 last year.

 

 

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Why not have an award for a group of movies that 75% of the people who actually go to the movies want to see? It's not like the movie industry is doing great. Take away these "pop" movies and hollywood damn near dies. The "Academy" takes itself too seriously anyway, it's a made up trophy to congratulate themselves for doing their work, why not be inclusive? Should add a best comedy while they are at it. 

They can still have their minimally watched movies winning the real award.  I think we all know this is a ratings thing to try to get more viewers anyway. Anyone who has common sense knows this and can view it as such and not let it bother them.

My only thing is how do they judge it?

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11 minutes ago, dbunting said:

Why not have an award for a group of movies that 75% of the people who actually go to the movies want to see?

They have those awards. The Golden Globes run more popular, the MTV Movie Awards sure do, the People's Choice Awards definitely do.

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It's not like the movie industry is doing great.

Financially, it's doing pretty well. 

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Take away these "pop" movies and hollywood damn near dies.

Last year 2 of the nominees were in the top 15 grossing films. 4 of them were in the top 50 grossing films. Popular movies are not, and never have been, excluded from the awards, as Wings, Titanic, LotR, etc. show. But giving "popular" movies a separate category lowers the artistic bar substantially. Culture has coarsened enough, one hardly needs to bow to it.

I mean, by way of comparison, here's last year's top 10 grossing films:

1 Star Wars: The Last Jedi BV $620,181,382 4,232 $220,009,584 4,232 12/15 4/19
2 Beauty and the Beast (2017) BV $504,014,165 4,210 $174,750,616 4,210 3/17 7/13
3 Wonder Woman WB $412,563,408 4,165 $103,251,471 4,165 6/2 11/9
4 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Sony $404,515,480 3,849 $36,169,328 3,765 12/20 5/31
5 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 BV $389,813,101 4,347 $146,510,104 4,347 5/5 9/21
6 Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony $334,201,140 4,348 $117,027,503 4,348 7/7 11/30
7 It WB (NL) $327,481,748 4,148 $123,403,419 4,103 9/8 12/14
8 Thor: Ragnarok BV $315,058,289 4,080 $122,744,989 4,080 11/3 3/15
9 Despicable Me 3 Uni. $264,624,300 4,535 $72,434,025 4,529 6/30 12/21
10 Justice League WB $229,024,295 4,051 $93,842,239 4,051 11/17 3/15

 and then the top 10 grossing films 50 years earlier, in 1967:

1. The Graduate AVCO Embassy / United Artists $104,642,560[2]
2. The Jungle Book nb1 Walt Disney Productions / Walt Disney Feature Animation $73,741,048[3]
3. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Columbia Pictures $56,666,667[4]
4. Bonnie and Clyde Warner Bros.-Seven Arts $50,700,000[5]
5. The Dirty Dozen Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $45,300,000[6]
6. Valley of the Dolls 20th Century Fox $44,432,255[7]
7. You Only Live Twice United Artists $43,084,787[8]
8. To Sir, with Love Columbia Pictures $42,432,803[9]
9. Thoroughly Modern Millie Universal Pictures $34,335,025[10]
10. Camelot Warner Bros.-Seven Arts $31,102,578[11]

Three of the five were nominees for the Academy Award in 1968 (if you add the 11th film on the gross list, In the Heat of the Night, it was four of five.)

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The "Academy" takes itself too seriously anyway, it's a made up trophy to congratulate themselves for doing their work, why not be inclusive? Should add a best comedy while they are at it. 

It has been inclusive. Treating popularity as a thing worth giving a special reward to, when they already have oodles of money, is just going for the lowest common denominator.

 

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Simply, this is the worst cry for attention. No matter how Academy wants to spin this, it is pathetic. Either you award these movies, or you don't, FFS, have some integrity. This is "White Oscars" all over again.

The real issue is that, and most of us know it, that popular movies suck. Oh yeah, they are entertaining enough, but when you scratch the surface, there is nothing. Whether it is Star Wars which made an art of repeating its own storylines or Marvel which creates movies on the same formula or even DC where you have people thinking darkness is equal with depth, popular movies simply fade in comparison with many independent movies that get released every year.

It is not like Academy doesn't award popular movies when it's due. Titanic, The Lord of The Rings, Avatar, Gravity, Toy Story 3, Mad Max, The Martian, Dunkirk are just some of the Best Picture nominees. There is no reasonable argument behind this decision save for, well, Disney and Marvel pushing this. 

Academy is getting younger and more diverse, that's for sure. We can expect more and more movies that were noticed by wider public getting nominations and even winning. But, blatantly pushing yourself into awards where you have no place is simply wrong. Not to mention that we will now have entire debate about what is "a popular movie" and whether it can be nominated in main category? 

Madness... Stupidity and madness! And a great deal of ambition.

 

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11 minutes ago, Ran said:

Last year 2 of the nominees were in the top 15 grossing films. 4 of them were in the top 50 grossing films. Popular movies are not, and never have been, excluded from the awards, as Wings, Titanic, LotR, etc. show. But giving "popular" movies a separate category lowers the artistic bar substantially. Culture has coarsened enough, one hardly needs to bow to it.

Exactly. And also creates a lot of problems for entire industry and even us as consumers. Do movies even need to be good? Do Marvel, DC or Disney need to put up a good movie? Shall we see the likes of "Twilight" or "50 shades" in this category? Instead of aiming for the Oscars with movies that can't be ignored by awarding bodies, we get this. 

Academy does embrace popular movies. Two blockbusters hold record for most Oscar wins and when someone does a great job, they do tend to nominate them. And not just in peripheral awards. Last year, "Logan" was nominated for its script. Matt Damon was nominated for "The Martian". I am sorry, but whoever claims that Academy is not recognizing popular movies already, is really not paying attention.

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2 hours ago, Ran said:

It's actually basically a way to give Disney/Marvel/Pixar (well, mostly Marvel, somewhat Disney, Pixar does fine in the animated category) an additional shot at primetime award glory on Disney-owned ABC's telecast of the Oscars. 5 of the 10 top grossing films of this year are from Disney and its subsidaries. 4 of 10 last year.

 

 

It would be hilarious if Aquaman turns out to be a better movie than BP, and is the first movie to win this category. Not that I expect it to be, and the trailer was fun but doesn't make me hopeful in any way, but it just be funny if it happened.

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14 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

This is dumb; it's basically a move in anticipation so Black Panther gets nominated for something (despite the fact it's not best picture material by any stretch).

<_<

Not a classy look.

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You guys are making much to do about nothing. A recently deceased family member of mine was a voting member, and he described the process as an absolute joke. It’s just a combination of a popularity contest, trading favors and future networking. Many of the members don’t even bother watching a lot of the nominated films. I know this because I would get my great uncles copies, unopened. This new category is just a way to highlight the films that make the studios money while trying to draw in a younger audience.

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6 minutes ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

You guys are making much to do about nothing. A recently deceased family member of mine was a voting member, and he described the process as an absolute joke. It’s just a combination of a popularity contest, trading favors and future networking. Many of the members don’t even bother watching a lot of the nominated films. I know this because I would get my great uncles copies, unopened. This new category is just a way to highlight the films that make the studios money while trying to draw in a younger audience.

Yep, exactly. My opinion of the Academy changed a lot when I found that a friend of mine's father, who was a member, didn't even bother voting and instead let my friend fill out and submit the ballot. He was 17 at the time.

Though, as I mentioned in the Marvel thread, I still think this is a stupid change.

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15 hours ago, Ran said:

They have those awards. The Golden Globes run more popular, the MTV Movie Awards sure do, the People's Choice Awards definitely do.

Financially, it's doing pretty well. 

Last year 2 of the nominees were in the top 15 grossing films. 4 of them were in the top 50 grossing films. Popular movies are not, and never have been, excluded from the awards, as Wings, Titanic, LotR, etc. show. But giving "popular" movies a separate category lowers the artistic bar substantially. Culture has coarsened enough, one hardly needs to bow to it.

I mean, by way of comparison, here's last year's top 10 grossing films:

1 Star Wars: The Last Jedi BV $620,181,382 4,232 $220,009,584 4,232 12/15 4/19
2 Beauty and the Beast (2017) BV $504,014,165 4,210 $174,750,616 4,210 3/17 7/13
3 Wonder Woman WB $412,563,408 4,165 $103,251,471 4,165 6/2 11/9
4 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Sony $404,515,480 3,849 $36,169,328 3,765 12/20 5/31
5 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 BV $389,813,101 4,347 $146,510,104 4,347 5/5 9/21
6 Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony $334,201,140 4,348 $117,027,503 4,348 7/7 11/30
7 It WB (NL) $327,481,748 4,148 $123,403,419 4,103 9/8 12/14
8 Thor: Ragnarok BV $315,058,289 4,080 $122,744,989 4,080 11/3 3/15
9 Despicable Me 3 Uni. $264,624,300 4,535 $72,434,025 4,529 6/30 12/21
10 Justice League WB $229,024,295 4,051 $93,842,239 4,051 11/17 3/15

 and then the top 10 grossing films 50 years earlier, in 1967:

1. The Graduate AVCO Embassy / United Artists $104,642,560[2]
2. The Jungle Book nb1 Walt Disney Productions / Walt Disney Feature Animation $73,741,048[3]
3. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Columbia Pictures $56,666,667[4]
4. Bonnie and Clyde Warner Bros.-Seven Arts $50,700,000[5]
5. The Dirty Dozen Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $45,300,000[6]
6. Valley of the Dolls 20th Century Fox $44,432,255[7]
7. You Only Live Twice United Artists $43,084,787[8]
8. To Sir, with Love Columbia Pictures $42,432,803[9]
9. Thoroughly Modern Millie Universal Pictures $34,335,025[10]
10. Camelot Warner Bros.-Seven Arts $31,102,578[11]

Three of the five were nominees for the Academy Award in 1968 (if you add the 11th film on the gross list, In the Heat of the Night, it was four of five.)

It has been inclusive. Treating popularity as a thing worth giving a special reward to, when they already have oodles of money, is just going for the lowest common denominator.

 

Year in and year out the "best picture" or even the ones nominated for best picture are 90% niche movies that the majority of people did not see and will never see. They had to add several slots to the nominees to even make it look like blockbusters meant anything to them.

I didn't say that there aren't awards out there for these kind of movies, just that the Oscars didn't have one. The fact that the award is called most popular tells everyone, hey this isn't best, most artistic or even one that makes you think a lot or be emotional, this is simply something movie goers loved and flocked to.

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22 minutes ago, Fez said:

Yep, exactly. My opinion of the Academy changed a lot when I found that a friend of mine's father, who was a member, didn't even bother voting and instead let my friend fill out and submit the ballot. He was 17 at the time.

Though, as I mentioned in the Marvel thread, I still think this is a stupid change.

It might have been wiser to add something like “Best Stunt” or “Best CGI”, but really it’s not a big deal. Deserving action films get snubbed all the time, so now they basically have their own category.

Also, I really wish they’d stop rewarding obvious Oscar bait films.

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6 hours ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

You guys are making much to do about nothing. A recently deceased family member of mine was a voting member, and he described the process as an absolute joke. It’s just a combination of a popularity contest, trading favors and future networking. Many of the members don’t even bother watching a lot of the nominated films. I know this because I would get my great uncles copies, unopened. This new category is just a way to highlight the films that make the studios money while trying to draw in a younger audience.

I am well aware of what Academy is and how "game" works. They play it ever since Harvey Weinstein created it. It indeed became a popularity contest and the fact that each year is dictated by the narrative, suggests it.

I understand what they want with the new category, but it is completely wrong way. Instead of streamlining the show (who has 5 hours to watch movie awards these days, anyway) and making it culturally relevant, they create an award that is a slap in the face to everyone working on and watching the movies. 

5 hours ago, dbunting said:

Year in and year out the "best picture" or even the ones nominated for best picture are 90% niche movies that the majority of people did not see and will never see. They had to add several slots to the nominees to even make it look like blockbusters meant anything to them.

As Ran pointed out, that is simply not the case. Yes. the popular movies don't get awards like Titanic and ROTK did, but they are not ignored (and to be honest, popular movies nowadays are nowhere special and good as the two mentioned). Dunkirk earned half a billion dollars last year worldwide, In 2016, Arrival earned around 200 million, La La Land was above $400M. In 2015, The Martian earned more than $600M, The Revenant earned around $500M. These are not small movies, or niche. 

Simply put, blockbusters these day are visually exquisite (and they always get nominations for those), but the plot and acting is simplistic, the director do solid work, but nothing groundbreaking. Overall, they are entertaining but far from anything that needs to be specially awarded.

5 hours ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

It might have been wiser to add something like “Best Stunt” or “Best CGI”, but really it’s not a big deal. Deserving action films get snubbed all the time, so now they basically have their own category.

Also, I really wish they’d stop rewarding obvious Oscar bait films.

For years, people in industry asked for either Best Casting Director or Best Ensemble. 

This entire talk reminds me of Chris Rock's joke about "black categories". Instead of pushing for more quality films and "punishing" studios when they make terrible movies, we are now supposed to give them Oscars? We have gone from awarding Scorsese, Eastwood, Forman, Spielberg and Copolla to pushing for awards for the likes of Michael Bay and Zack Snyder. 

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I don't like the idea, especially since the last years there are more movies opting  for the best picture category. There are a lot of popular movies which are very bad. It is also true that some very specific-niche ones would not gain an Oscar otherwise, but for some reason I think that only the really worst ones will be the ones fighting for the statuette.

On another series of events, I don't normally watch it live.... I like cinema a lot and I know that some years I used to watch it (and in my case I lost one or half a night of sleep) but I don't necessarily like the new change (the 3 hours one). Yes, it's true watching all the ceremony is boresome even for cinephiles but I was interested in the technical (or not so mainstream) categories. Maybe they should have just reduced the spectacle and the speeches.

After all,the best picture category or best actor/actress will still be the last ones of the ceremony.

 

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