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Thread: 2013 Academy Award Nominations

  1. #16
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    Personal Preferences and Thoughts

    Best Picture - Silver Linings Playbook. As the other major contenders (Les Miserable and Zero Dark Thirty) were left weakened by the lack of an nomination for best director, Silver Linings Playbook still has a chance to replicate Shakespeare in Love win in 1998. I still contend that Lincoln is over-rated and is being considered based on its emotional merits of the historical blessings given to the real President Lincoln and our national guilt over what we did to Africa Americans, not on the true merits of the movie itself.

    Best Actor - Daniel Day Lewis. Regardless of the movie itself, like Heath Ledger in Dark Knight (2008), Lewis offered up a riveting character portrayal.

    Best Actress - Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark Thirty.” Even though I haven't seen the movie, there's no great reason to suggest that this award winning actress this year for her role in this movie won't also win this one either. She appears to be the leading contender based on this season's film awards.

    Best Director - Silver Linings Playbook. Same argument as Best Picture.

  2. #17
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    I agree that LINCOLN is overrated, but it's just the kind of high-toned, safe movie the Academy likes to pick. If you look at the list

    •“Amour” Nominees to be determined
    •“Argo” Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck and George Clooney, Producers
    •“Beasts of the Southern Wild” Dan Janvey, Josh Penn and Michael Gottwald, Producers
    •“Django Unchained” Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin and Pilar Savone, Producers
    •“Les Misérables” Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward and Cameron Mackintosh, Producers
    •“Life of Pi”Gil Netter, Ang Lee and David Womark, Producers
    •“Lincoln” Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, Producers
    •“Silver Linings Playbook”Donna Gigliotti, Bruce Cohen and Jonathan Gordon, Producers
    •“Zero Dark Thirty”Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow and Megan Ellison, Producers

    What else is that safe? Certainly not DJANGO or ZD30. BEASTS is too small and offbeat. AMOUR is too downbeat and too foreign. LIFE OF PI hasn't got enough stars in it. SILVER LININNGS PLAYBOOK is about crazy people. That leaves ARGO and LES MISERABLES. Or in case of a three-way tie, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, but that's a long shot, and not as big an audience favorite outisde the TIFF as the other two. So I'd say LINCOLN is going to win, and we can just be glad that several others that we might like did get mentioned.

  3. #18
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    I'm not qualified to address this as yet (five films in five days) and have only seen three of the films you mentioned. But from my current position and thinking about the Academy, most of the voters are actors and tend to support films that have strong performances in them. Django is an excellent film, technically, but the acting almost plays second fiddle to the story. That leaves Lincoln and Silver as the other two films I've seen so far. Silver has a strong cast but no single actor really stands out. Lincoln, while, and you are correct, a safe picture, has Daniel Lewis who gave it his all, perhaps the strongest performance I've seen on screen all year. It will be difficult to vote against that. If that is the case, then the members tend to go with the film as well.

    I really can't say yet. I have four days to go and plan on seeing... well, you'll see.
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  4. #19
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    Mistakes and oversights.

    Just want to mention that when we're talking about notable Oscar "snubs" this year, I'd say the biggest are of the two Andersons' Paul Thomas and Wes, the failure to mention THE MASTER or MOONRISE KINGDOM for Best Picture (P.T. mentioned only for his screenplay). There would have been plenty of room if you took off the overrated BEASTS, the unsuccessful LES MIS, and the aptly named ZERO. Ben Affleck has taken his "snub" well -- as he should: he's gotten more than he deserved. But my aim is not to undermine Ben Affleck's very real accomplishments. It's just that THE MASTER and MOONRISE KINGDOM are two of the best pictures, and they got left off the list, and that's a big mistake.

    Who votes?

    Are the Academy voters mostly actors, really? The makeup is said to be a subject of much speculation, but unpublished, one LA Times article noting it's been found that it is overwhelmingly white and male, and not equivalent to the voting public.
    A Los Angeles Times study found that academy voters are markedly less diverse than the moviegoing public, and even more monolithic than many in the film industry may suspect. Oscar voters are nearly 94% Caucasian and 77% male, The Times found. Blacks are about 2% of the academy, and Latinos are less than 2%.

    Oscar voters have a median age of 62, the study showed. People younger than 50 constitute just 14% of the membership.
    Keen that in mind: a median age of 62.

    It's a mishmash of people:
    The academy is primarily a group of working professionals, and nearly 50% of the academy's actors have appeared on screen in the last two years. But membership is generally for life, and hundreds of academy voters haven't worked on a movie in decades.

    Some are people who have left the movie business entirely but continue to vote on the Oscars — including a nun, a bookstore owner and a retired Peace Corps recruiter. Under academy rules, their votes count the same as ballots cast by the likes of Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio.
    There may be and should be lots of actors or former actors, many of the latter, but surely the majority of people who work on making movies are not the actors?

    And then there are all the publicity and PR and distribution people who never even make it on a movie set.

    Oh yes, and the studio executives. Guess what: they get to vote too! Surprised?

    Most were (isn't this obvious too?) never nominated for or won an Oscar award, and have no idea what it would be like.

    I recommend reading this Feb. 19, 2012 LA Times article: it's quie through, and equipped with pie-diagrams of the makeup of the group by categories. The main thing is that the Academy totally lacks diversity and a change of policy in 2004 to right that wrong has had almost no effect at all. A comment suggested that -- and I like this -- people of color who are awarded Oscars should go up on stage and say they cannot accept it, due to the lack of sufficient diversity in both the voters and the persons granted awards.

    94% white

    77% male


    That's outrageous!

    It's an Old Boys Club. Very literally. And Old White Boys Club.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 01-18-2013 at 10:35 AM.

  5. #20
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    Moonrise Kingdom Deserved More

    While Moonrise Kingdom wasn't among the top of my list of best movies, it easily made my top ten. This movie was a wonderful, fresh, different, film experience that captured the visual delight of what film entertainment can offer. Easily deserved a Best Picture nomination for the Academy's consideration.

  6. #21
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    I agree 150%.

  7. #22
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    I'm running back and forth between the playoffs and my movies. Here is what I could scrape up on percentages of who votes

    "Voters

    The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), a professional honorary organization, maintains a voting membership of 5,783 as of 2012.[21]

    Academy membership is divided into different branches, with each representing a different discipline in film production. Actors constitute the largest voting bloc, numbering 1,311 members (22 percent) of the Academy's composition. Votes have been certified by the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (and its predecessor Price Waterhouse) for the past 73 annual awards ceremonies.[22]

    All AMPAS members must be invited to join by the Board of Governors, on behalf of Academy Branch Executive Committees. Membership eligibility may be achieved by a competitive nomination or a member may submit a name based on other significant contribution to the field of motion pictures.

    New membership proposals are considered annually. The Academy does not publicly disclose its membership, although as recently as 2007 press releases have announced the names of those who have been invited to join. The 2007 release also stated that it has just under 6,000 voting members. While the membership had been growing, stricter policies have kept its size steady since then.[23]

    In May 2011, the Academy sent a letter advising its 6,000 or so voting members that an online system for Oscar voting will be implemented in 2013.[24]"

    Source:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award
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  8. #23
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    Thanks for that, cinemabon. However we are discussing this post by you, above, or I was, anyway:
    I'm not qualified to address this as yet (five films in five days) and have only seen three of the films you mentioned. But from my current position and thinking about the Academy, most of the voters are actors and tend to support films that have strong performances in them. Django is an excellent film, technically, but the acting almost plays second fiddle to the story. That leaves Lincoln and Silver as the other two films I've seen so far. Silver has a strong cast but no single actor really stands out. Lincoln, while, and you are correct, a safe picture, has Daniel Lewis who gave it his all, perhaps the strongest performance I've seen on screen all year. It will be difficult to vote against that. If that is the case, then the members tend to go with the film as well.
    Obviously your statement, which bothered me -- it didn't sound right to me -- that "most of the Academy are actors" and tend to support whateve (how would you know? You have no information what they tend to support without an exhaustive analysis of 85 years of voting, or however many it is) -- this is untrue.

    22% is not "most." It is, in fact, a small percentage. Most of the Academy voters are NOT actorrs. Moreover even if they were, a lot of them are retired. The figures are how many are white, how many are male, and what the median age is, 62.

    And even more significant, those under 50 constitute only 14$ of membership!

    If anybody who's not male, not white, not over 50, is totally dissatisfied with what goes on at the Oscars, she has every right to be!

    Of course we focus on the Oscars, and nowadays on Sundance -- which has been going on this week -- because the movies that come out in January are so bad. But that is in itself a situation created by the Oscars, at least to some degree, isn't i? Because all the big Oscar pictures have come out in the past three months and nobody wants to bring out a movie with future awards potential this far from the next end of Oscars cycle. Why January is such a dump season, much more than February, is a bit of a mystery though (there is an article on this in today's NYTimes).

    I don't see why we even watch this stuff. I like my choices better than theres, and do not want to pick my "best" or "favorite" films out of the list they set up. It's not a good list. (It's not terrible either. But then I'm white, male, and over 50.)
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 01-20-2013 at 06:49 PM.

  9. #24
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    Moreover I do not support your analysis of the films you're considering, which seems to me arbitrary. The actors dont' matter in a Tarantino film? Wow! Where did you ever come up with that idea? That DDLewis gave the strongest performance you saw this year may be true.... He would not be my choice. He was better in earlier roles. I likked him in MY BEAUTIFIL LAUNDRETTE. He was great before the eyes of the Academy came down on him. Her becomes more and more generic. He's a talented actor, though, an amazing one. But in LINCOLN, to my mind, and this is just my opinion, he does not shine as he has in the past. It's a rubber-stamp role. He has no wiggle-room in it.

  10. #25
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    Don't put words in my mouth, Chris (but do put in a pastrami sandwich). I never said "actors don't matter." I said that the technical side of the film overshadowed the actors. That said, if we are speaking of acting in "Django," I would go along with the Academy's decision to nominate Waltz. He was an excellent supporting actor (whereas Sam Jackson's Uncle Tom was a bit over the top, I thought). Jamie Foxx, playing the Clint Eastwood role, is underplayed to the point where he shows little or no emotion throughout. One can say that constrained acting is a legitimate form of acting, and they'd be right to say so. But in the history of the Academy, few of that type of acting style have won.

    Do I know how the Academy will vote with any certainty? No one does, and again, I never made such a claim. Also, 22% of 100% is a small percent. But if it constitutes the LARGEST voting block, then it amounts to something. No other part of the Academy is larger in members and they don't call each other up to form coalitions (DGA to PGA "Hey! You guys in the Producers Guild! Vote for Django, ok?"). When it comes to the Oscars, and knowing a few past Academy winners in SAG, I go with my gut... i.e. what's the scuttlebutt out there. Sometimes I am so wrong, I'm on the other side of the moon. But generally, I tend to pick better than 50%, though do poorly in the lesser catagories of animated short, etc. as it is difficult to screen these little gems.
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  11. #26
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    FYI - the rules of the AMPAS have never been publically published, so you won't find them on any website. In fact, no member is allowed to discuss the rules in public or on record. No one is a member for life. You have to pay annual dues to stay in (even the guilds, you have to pay dues), which is why the membership goes up and down so much (that and people die). Also, you have to be nominated in some catagory and not all of those are the ones on the list at Oscars.com. Every year the Academy holds it "techical" awards show and all of those people are members, too. They can vote for and nominate anyone in their area of expertise. But they vote only in the technical catagory. Their numbers are included in the nearly 6,000 members out there. I never heard of a taxi driver being a member, but if he or she is an out of work member of the Academy and has paid their dues and was once nominated, then they can maintain being an active member whether working in the industry or not. They did for a certain period and that's what matters. Finally, a member cannot vote if they haven't seen the film. They are required to file a report that they saw the film on such and such a day and at this theater. The Academy takes this very seriously. When I ran a theater in LA, all Academy members had to show their card and sign a sheet that showed they had seen the film in question.
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  12. #27
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    I think they watch them on screeners a lot, especially the elderly members. You know more about it that I do, but even you have to speculate. "But if it constitutes the LARGEST voting block, then it amounts to something". Yes, something. But what. And it's not really a voting "block" if they vote quite independently. But do they? I don't know. Maybe there have been studies of this, or maybe one is under way. I still wonder, why does it matter, how can it matter to me, when my favorite films are not nominated for anything.

  13. #28
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    When I heard you say that people vote who have not been in the movie business for ages, that was all I needed to hear.
    Shitpumps.
    Metamucil Shitpumps.
    More fuel for my rage. Great.
    --Johann
    I've known for years that the voters were old and disconnected to some extent because my friend whose father was a director and screenwriter, his widow voted, and she was in her eighties and had not been active (as an actress) in films since the Fifties.

  14. #29
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    How important is an Academy Award, anyway? Does it validate your status? Samuel L. Jackson said no- just yesterday.

    If they truly awarded the Best, EVERY YEAR, then I would shut my yap. But this voting system seems very arbitrary with many people voting whose vote means Jack Shit. How many palms are greased too? None? It's all above board? Do they throw bones to those they perceive as "flavors of the month"?

    I wonder, Boy.

    Stanley Kubrick never won an Oscar for Best Director and he never got a lifetime achievement award, when many others who I couldn't care less about did. At least Akira Kurosawa was recognized in his lifetime...

    Academy Awards are Vain. They should be recognition for a job well done, not crapshoots- and I'm talking about the nominations too. There should be no doubt of the Best- by clear consensus.
    The Academy is not clear consensus. It's a hazy, murky consensus that makes people feel jaded and overlooked. A CRIME.
    You win one year, and the next year or two you come back with a barn burner of a movie that is totally ignored.
    WHAT IS THIS MICKEY MOUSE SHIT?!
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  15. #30
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    It's not exactly Mickey Mouse shit. It's just not cinephile sophistication. This is not a bad list. It's half-bright.

    Best Picture: Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty

    Best Actor in a Leading Role: Bradley Cooper, Daniel Day-Lewis, Hugh Jackman, Joaquin Phoenix, Denzel Washington

    Best Actress in a Leading Role: Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Emmanuelle Riva, Quvenzhané Wallis, Naomi Watts

    Best Director: Amour (Michael Haneke), Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin), Life of Pi (Ang Lee), Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell), Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)


    It's just missing some key tites, most notably we agree MOONRISE KINGDOM and THE MASTER. For sure a lot of money goes into promotion and that must influence voting, and some palms may get greased too, but how?

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