Posted on 03/27/2022 11:00:25 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Everyone has a theory about the decline of the Academy Awards, the sinking ratings that have led to endless Oscar reinventions. The show is too long; no, the show is too desperate to pander to short attention spans. The movies are too woke; no, the academy voters aren’t diverse enough. Hollywood makes too many superhero movies; no, the academy doesn’t nominate enough superhero movies. (A querulous voice from the back row: Why can’t they just bring back Billy Crystal?)
My favored theory is that the Oscars are declining because the movies they were made to showcase have been slowly disappearing. The ideal Oscar nominee is a high-middlebrow movie, aspiring to real artistry and sometimes achieving it, that’s made to be watched on the big screen, with famous stars, vivid cinematography and a memorable score. It’s neither a difficult film for the art-house crowd nor a comic-book blockbuster but a film for the largest possible audience of serious adults — the kind of movie that was commonplace in the not-so-distant days when Oscar races regularly threw up conflicts in which every moviegoer had a stake: “Titanic” against “L.A. Confidential,” “Saving Private Ryan” against “Shakespeare in Love,” “Braveheart” against “Sense and Sensibility” against “Apollo 13.”
That analysis explains why this year’s Academy Awards — reworked yet again, with various technical awards taped in advance and a trio of hosts added — have a particular sense of an ending about them. There are 10 best picture nominees, and many of them look like the kind of Oscar movies that the show so desperately needs. “West Side Story”: Steven Spielberg directing an update of a classic musical! “King Richard”: a stirring sports movie lifted by a bravura Will Smith performance! “Dune”: an epic adaptation of a science-fiction classic! “Don’t Look Up”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A great film, but the ending is different from the book.
Oh c’mom man Joe Willie is funny. Seriously some of these old folks ads are making their way to mainstream cable and I’ve seen a few on WCBS 2 NY during the 5PM News.
Story telling has become a lost art in hellywood.
I Dustin Hoffman I’d/was ok with doing disturbing trash. So no.
I’ve seen both movies.
They can’t figure out that most of the country can’t stomach the people who play in the films. Tell them to shut their traps and stop dictating to the rest of us how we should live when they had no idea how we live.
All these reasons but the nail in the coffin was forced diversity, inclusion, and representation. Movies 'feel' wrong because they're being made by diversity formulas.
I’ll check that one out too.
Great…that’s a start…
My family stopped watching movies and stopped watching the Oscar nonsense over 20 years ago. We think the whole Hollywood entertainment industry is a sickening anti-American blight upon what’s left of our country.
😉
Absolutely. A great movie. The U Boat crew singing is a great scene.
I think that was the last one I watched. I was a teenager and watched on the 13” black & white TV in my room.
There was a streaker. And “The Sting” won Best Picture, much to my delight. Teenage girl + Newman and Redford. Easy choice. (Plus, the ending was really fun.)
Movie industry..at least in America.. has been dying since the 90s..
They make up for US sales overseas.
It will only get worse.
Have you heard about Aperture 2025?
It may sound like a Roland Emmerich sci-fi movie, but it’s actually more frightening. And much more controversial. It’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s latest initiative to make Hollywood more equitable and diverse—more woke—by changing the rules by which films are eligible for Best Picture nominations. Here’s how it works: Starting in 2024, producers will be required to submit a summation of the race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status of members of their movie’s cast and crew. If a particular movie does not have enough people of color or disabled people or gays or lesbians working on the set—and what is “enough” will be determined by a knotty tangle of byzantine formularies—then that movie will no longer be eligible for an Oscar.
Not surprisingly, the plan is not being universally applauded in Hollywood. Critics say it’s invasive, anticreative, opens the door to privacy issues, and is spectacularly unfair to actors and crew members, who may want to keep their sexual orientation or health profiles to themselves, not to mention to producers and directors who have enough to worry about while shooting a movie than to be saddled with the thankless task of tallying up the identity markers of their creative partners.
“I mean, why aren’t animals in this?” sneers one industry insider. “What if the main character is a horse?”
Unfortunately, Aperture 2025 isn’t the only Academy initiative to recently raise eyebrows in Hollywood. In February, Oscar organizers triggered a civil war in Hollywood over a plan to pretape many of the below-the-line categories—film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, production design, the short-film selections—and roll edits of those awards into the live broadcast. Predictably, many Academy members (especially film editors, makeup and hairstylists, and production designers) balked at the change, but at least that one was designed to address an actual existential threat to the ceremony: that it’s become so long and boring that huge swaths of the audience have begun tuning out.
They know normal makers aren’t even watching anymore; today’s films are geared towards idle non-contributing takers (even justifying their sloth by pointing the finger at straight white men).
100% correct!
Nobody can come up with an original plot anymore.
I thoroughly enjoyed Don't Look Up.
I realize it's supposed to be an allegory about climate change but I ignored the propaganda and bought into the basic premise, a comet is crashing to earth but nobody believes the scientists trying to warn the world. It also offered some clever commentary on modern social media and celebrity culture.
And Meryl Streep playing a female President Trump earned some laughs.
I have one rule for Hollywood. Entertain me. And DLU succeeded in the simple request.
It was funny. The only thing I found mildly annoying was the MAGA crowd. At least be a little bit creative and use purple hats instead or something.
Great film. Bacall was 19 and Bogart 44. They met while making this film, I believe. They married. I wonder whose sensibilities this would offend today.
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