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Feego wrote:Counting the days until the Academy just follows the Critics' Choice lead and has separate categories for action films, comedies and sci-fi/horror.

Arguably it’s the Awards film echo chamber that resulted in these separate categories for that awards body, they diagnosed the same problem the academy just diagnosed but they figured it out years ago, but rather than just vote for films in those second class citizen genres as the best of the year, they chose to segregate them to their proper place because honestly including “non Oscar” films might ruin their prized Oscar predicting role, and we can’t ruin that now can we?!

If this really is a gambit to avoid a BLACK PANTHER backlash, as has been suggested, then this is twice as stupid. Sure, there’s a BLACK PANTHER this year, but black-oriented “popular” films seem on balance to be just as white as normal Oscar contenders. So unless the Academy is going to nominate an annual Tyler Perry movie or every EQUALIZER sequel that comes down the pike, I doubt this will lead to much progress on the #OscarsSoWhite issue.

Brian C wrote: Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:09 am If this really is a gambit to avoid a BLACK PANTHER backlash, as has been suggested, then this is twice as stupid. Sure, there’s a BLACK PANTHER this year, but black-oriented “popular” films seem on balance to be just as white as normal Oscar contenders. So unless the Academy is going to nominate an annual Tyler Perry movie or every EQUALIZER sequel that comes down the pike, I doubt this will lead to much progress on the #OscarsSoWhite issue.

I don't understand why this should be an issue (with the Best Picture category, at any rate), since in the last five years two of the winners have been by Black directors and two have been by Hispanic directors. I think any 'backlash' might be more from crybaby manchildren than from black audiences.

zedz wrote:I don't understand why this should be an issue (with the Best Picture category, at any rate), since in the last five years two of the winners have been by Black directors and two have been by Hispanic directors. I think any 'backlash' might be more from crybaby manchildren than from black audiences.

Well, diversity concerns (specifically re: BLACK PANTHER) have been raised as a possible rationale for the new category in this thread and also pretty much everywhere else. So it plainly is an issue, whether it should be or not.

Brian C wrote:If this really is a gambit to avoid a BLACK PANTHER backlash, as has been suggested, then this is twice as stupid. Sure, there’s a BLACK PANTHER this year, but black-oriented “popular” films seem on balance to be just as white as normal Oscar contenders. So unless the Academy is going to nominate an annual Tyler Perry movie or every EQUALIZER sequel that comes down the pike, I doubt this will lead to much progress on the #OscarsSoWhite issue.

Well if the idea catches on that this is meant to segregate black panther away from best picture, then this more or less guarantees black panther gets a best picture nomination.

That was pretty much a given, anyway, which is probably why the Academy tried to create a new category for it. The film is this year's Avatar in that it's simply grown too big to ignore when you have ten Best Picture nominees, but unlike the Cameron film, it wasn't given a prime release date and wasn't expected to make several hundred million dollars, which makes its achievement that much more profound.

Possibly the bigger issue for the Academy is that if they allowed Black Panther into the Best Picture nominees, it would put pressure on them to allow future comic book films that are as commercially and critically successful into the same category. Ten years ago, they successfully avoided The Dark Knight, but from the Academy's perspective, they could be looking at a 2019 where they potentially end up with Captain Marvel and Avengers 4 both in the running for Best Picture. From there, it's not too big a leap to the other big children's and fantasy films being released in 2019, like Aladdin or Dumbo for example. If either or both films break out the way that, say, Beauty and the Beast did in 2017, then they could be hard to ignore, too.

The Ringer has decided to steer into the skid and speculate on what might have won Best Popular Film over some of the last 25 years.

Pretty hastily thrown together piece, would have loved to see this hit every year. But interesting thought experiment nonetheless.

mfunk9786 wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:29 pm The Oscars are adding a category "for outstanding achievement in popular film" beginning with next year's ceremony.

No "Popular Film" category at least this year as it's being re-evaluated

Haha I wonder if Disney realizing Crazy Rich Asians had as good a shot as Black Panther of winning had anything to do with that...

I knew it would be walked back. Not at all surprising.

NYT wrote:Some board members, including John Bailey, the organization’s president, voiced support for the category at the meeting, while others, including the actress Laura Dern, were adamantly opposed, according to two board members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Laura Dern can do no wrong these days

She did choose to be in Ed Zwick’s new movie.

Zero guesses which awards pundit is the only one upset this is going away:

Green Book wins the People's Choice Award at TIFF, Beale Street and Roma take 2nd and 3rd respectively.

A Star is Born was the notable snub, but I expect it could win in the end only if Green Book becomes the hated front-runner in its stead.

What's shocking is folks (rightly) expected A Star is Born and Beautiful Boy to win because there was an online voting component and these films have vocal social media fans due to their stars. Even with cheating they didn't make it! Green Book is pretty much the Cinderella Story of film festival successes: a movie literally no pundit expected to be an awards player whatsoever is now an Oscar front runner

Green Book is going to be, rightfully or not, hit with think pieces concerning the questionable racial politics that invoke a film from the late eighties that has now become a punch line of magical negro films. In a year where we have four films in contention that is written around black characters and were headed by black filmmakers, the white savorier who tells the black characters he's "blacker than him" isn't going to be settle well with the Twitter outrage crowd that dominates the film coverage on the site.


Can I say while understandable why Chalamaet has online stats, due to his looks and talent, that it's peculiar to have such a large following when it comes mainly from a small art picture that didn't make it to many Americans local multiplex.

There will always be internet think-pieces tearing apart any movie for any number of reasons, and I have no doubt we're going to get hit with a torrent once the film is actually seen and online writers can fill in the blanks on their 90% already written tear-downs. From what I've read of Ali's character, he sounds quite interesting and confrontational of the nether-region of racial identity many people of color navigate and/or reside within where they're not "black" enough by whatever metric is used to put them down

Dead or Deader wrote: Sun Sep 16, 2018 8:01 pm Green Book is going to be, rightfully or not, hit with think pieces concerning the questionable racial politics that invoke a film from the late eighties that has now become a punch line of magical negro films.

I have never understood the hate for Driving Miss Daisy. I think it's a quite beautiful and moving little film.

mfunk9786 wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 7:29 pm It's the awards season now, mid-October is currently (perhaps to diminishing returns as people might forget about something like First Man before too long) the hot time to release your Best Picture hopeful, before the pendulum inevitably swings back to Christmastime.

For better or worse, mid90s is A24's Oscar season release this year, along with what will surely be a strong campaign for Eighth Grade and First Reformed

Ethan Hawke is bubbling just under the Top 5 predix for most, he could be one of those unpredictable mainline acting noms we get more often than not. Depends on how passionate people are about the film. I actually think First Reformed has a better chance of surprising in Best Picture than most experts, but we'll see

Is there any chance that Schrader (who's never been up for an Oscar) could get nominated?

As of right now, GoldDerby has Schrader's screenplay in their Top 5

My trip over to GoldDerby ended pretty quickly once I saw that Barry Jenkins is at #6 in odds for Best Director - there is absolutely no way he won't be nominated.

But hey, they have Malek #5 for Bohemian Rhapsody - maybe this website isn't so bad if it's correctly predicting that I'm going to win that bet with Domino!

My out there prediction: the new 'woke' academy nominates Crazy Rich Asians for Best Picture