The 89th Academy Awards ceremony is only a couple days away and everybody is so excited to see “La La Land” pull a clean sweep with 14 nominations in 13 categories, as well as take home the glorious Best Picture award.
People are going to be real disappointed when “Lion” pulls the upset in Best Picture despite not winning any of the other five nominations it has.
It’s “Spotlight” all over again.
Last year, the film “Spotlight” upset “The Revenant” in the Best Picture category; a huge upset considering “The Revenant” was nominated in 13 of the 24 categories, 18 if you exclude the categories specific to documentaries and animated films. The full list of 2016 winners and 2017 nominees can be seen on the Oscars official website.
It feels like history is repeating itself, this time with the much ignored “Lion.”
Last year “Spotlight” had six nominations with wins in Best Picture and Writing for Original Screenplay. This Year “Lion” has six nominations one being Best Picture and another being Writing for Adapted Screenplay.
Normal people might ask: Does this mean “Lion” is the new upset pick for Best Picture?
I ask: Why is the academy giving highest honors to a film with six nominations compared to “Mad Max: Fury Road” which won six awards?
The answer isn’t as simple as “the Academy is comprised of thousands of members who put individual votes into each category.”
This explanation only raises more questions.
If “Mad Max” got enough votes to win six awards how did it not get enough for best picture?
Let me take a stab at the logic: “This film here had outstanding visuals, sounds, editing and was overall perfectly produced, but this other film was written the best so it is the best.”
That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever written and it’s really depressing to think that might have been the thought thousands of people had at the same time for a category named Best Picture. There’s a separate category for writing because those two things are meant to be different.
Were those votes based on the voters liking “Spotlight” better, that’s even more depressing. I liked “Creed,” I thought that movie was dramatic and powerful, how come that didn’t get a single nomination? Oh that’s right #OscarsSoWhite.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2016, 91 percent of the 6,261 members of the academy were white and 76 percent were male.
But, the Academy recently announced it would add 683 new members with a majority of them being culturally diverse.
Yay, a 10 percent increase to members with only about a five to six percent increase to diversity WHAT CHANGED!? Oh yeah, “Fences” has some nominations.
What is the ultimate point to talking about any of this? Ignore award shows.
The actors, directors and all the in-betweens of the film industry treat the Oscar award as the penultimate sign of quality, but don’t feel bad if you like a film that those stuck-up, snobby critic types say is garbage. Like what you like, the more things you like the less hate in your heart and that’s always a great feeling.
Six-thousand opinions are only opinions.