Posted on 11/30/2022 9:12:04 AM PST by Rummyfan
There was a time when Oscar heat meant big bucks at the box office, when Oscar talk would boost a movie no one was paying attention to into profitability and beyond. Again and again, what was known as the “Oscar effect” would kick in, and cash registers would clang.
Why?
Well, believe it or not, there was a time when the Oscars were trusted as an imprimatur of quality, a reliable signal of something special, and as guaranteed bang for the hard-earned buck.
As Oscar talk increased in intensity, interest and box office receipts would grow. Hey, look at all the nominations/wins/talk. This must be a movie worth seeing.
...
Well, those days are behind us.
Here is the domestic box office for this year’s titles enjoying the most Oscar talk.
Till – $8.7 million
The Banshees of Inisherin – $7.9 million
TÁR – $5.1 million
She Said – $4.3 million
Triangle of Sadness – $4 million
Bones and All – $3.8 million
The Fabelmans – $3.5 million
Armageddon Time – $1.9 million
Aftersun – $756,000
Top Gun: Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once might be nominated, but their status as box office successes had nothing to do with Oscar talk. If anything, it’s the other way around: their box office success won them some Oscar heat.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
It also has Whoopi Goldberg in a part. Hard pass!
You’re right in that “In the Heat of the Night” had a certain wokeness to it. But it’s still a great movie, mainly because of Rod Steiger‘s award-winning performance as Chief Gillespie. I still re-watch it every so often.
The final scene is most impressive. Gillespie mocks Tibbs most of the time. Then at the end, Gillespie shows Tibbs some respect by taking his suitcase. Nice touch, there.
A lesbian conductor at that. But it is a fact-based biographical flick.
LOL
Can I get in to see it for fie dollah, fie dollah?
I was thinking yesterday that Hollywood is way behind the woke times.
Why are there still awards for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, etc.?
That would imply a gender bias.
Funny you would say that-that was the last time I ever watched the Oscars-I thought “Saving Private Ryan” should have won that year.
“Shakespeare In Love” was a fluff movie, you forgot about it as soon as you left the theater.
I have never really followed the Oscars. I’ve never sat through the Oscars show. I really don’t care who wins. BUT ... I do glance at the nominations. Picking a single winner is usually pretty arbitrary and there can be a lot of studio gamesmanship and politics involved. My canonical position is that the nominations are the important thing.
And the only thing that’s useful about the nominations is that they are a screening device, one among many, to whittle down my choices. I pay attention to the other awards and the selection lists for major festivals for the same reason.
Yes, these are rough and imperfect screens. All they mean is that a bunch of people who watch movies for a living, or who are involved in making movies, think that a particular film somehow rises above the pack.
If I like the premise, the period, or have a favorite in the film, that’s enough for me to read a few reviews and check audience reactions on Letterboxd, which I find the most useful of the movie sites.
I almost never go into a film cold. I don’t spend a lot of time researching films. What I’ve described above doesn’t take much time. It’s more a matter of developing the habit of glancing at nominations, selections and reviews as part of my daily routine — my daily swoop through the current news. It’s a matter of casual situational awareness. I probably spend less time at this than most people spend on sports sites.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Yeah, they’ve got to fix that. But it’s actually pretty easy.
For example, just change the “Best Actor” category to the “Best Person Who Self-Identifies as a Male” category.
The only problem is getting that engraved on the statue.
I guess they’ll just have to abbreviate it: BPWSIAAM.
The movies made less then $50 million combined....
I don’t think it’s a bad film, just that it shouldn’t have won the Oscar and after that every Oscar winner has been mediocre (though I have liked some of them)
Avatar Underwater will underperform but sweep in a weak year. End story.
That movie beat out Saving Private Ryan because of Harvey Weinstein's shenanigans. Next year was American Beauty, a few years later Crash. All unworthy pictures.
This has been a problem with the Oscars for a LONG time. For instance, in 1968, "In the Heat of the Night" won largely for being racially correct. It could have been worse. At least it wasn't "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? had Hepburn and Tracy together, maybe for the last time, and could have been given the award for that.
Political correctness and racial sensitivity undoubtedly played a role, but I can understand In the Heat of the Night winning as a representative of Old Hollywood. The Graduate and Bonny and Clyde were better pictures but they were too edgy for the Academy. Bonny and Clyde was violent and seen as amoral. The Graduate struck the older film community as listless and uninspiring, a movie about a schlubby dropout.
The next year Midnight Cowboy won -- definitely a dark horse and an outsider picture. I'd put the beginning of the change there. After Moonlight won in 2016 the transformation was complete, and the movies the Academy liked were definitely very different from those public liked. You could see the downward spiral over the last 20 years, with one of the Lord of the Rings picture as maybe the only real exception.
If an actor or actress plays against type, i.e. pretty playing ugly (Charlize Theron in Monster) or an oppressed minority (again, Charlize Theron in Monster, playing an ugly trailer-park-trash lesbian serial killer), they are a shoe-in to win.
And that year they didn't even get the announcement right.
LOL!!! only one i’ve heard of is TopGun...
Oscars totally rendered meaningless due to political correctness. Same with the Grammies and even the Nobel Peace prizes. None of those awards mean a damn thing anymore and in fact might be more of an indicator of something that is mediocre and crappy.
It reminds me of the old joke abut the fictional Miracle Pictures Group. Their slogan:
If the picture is any good, it's a Miracle!
Or as my buddy who’s been in the local news biz for 50 years says, “There’s 30 minutes of news today whether anything happened or not.”
But only one could get the Oscar. Of the four, In the Heat of the Night is my favorite.
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