Awards Season 2023

[therewillbeblus]

I have no idea how to tally these things but I’m happy to run some version of a friendly competition if someone wants to send me/point me in the direction of the basic framework

[TechnicolorAcid]

I assume once the nominations are announced, people pick who they think will win each award and during the Oscars, whoever gets the most correct guesses (which is a point each), they win.
For example, say I said The Holdovers will win Best Screenplay after it's announced and it does, then I get a point, if not then I get nothing.

[Toland's Mitchell]

I have no idea how to tally these things but I’m happy to run some version of a friendly competition if someone wants to send me/point me in the direction of the basic framework

DI had a formula last year. It was a bit more complicated for the nominations than the winners, but obviously the nominations formula won't apply:

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=17388&start=75 (post #76, right at the top)

DI used a more straightforward approach the year before, whereby all correct predictions for the winners were worth the same amount of points, regardless of category:

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=17047&p=755290 (post #400, at the very bottom)

[TechnicolorAcid]

Nominations are up:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/01/23/ente ... index.html

[domino harvey]

Best Supporting Actor has six spots in that list

[thirtyframesasecond]

The Zone of Interest has done very well with noms, Anatomy of a Fall too. Are we still expecting any shocks?

[domino harvey]

Nah. The Holdovers was looking like a possible spoiler but Payne missing in directing ends that. This is Oppenheimer’s year (though I think Giamatti will win)

[TechnicolorAcid]

I guess I’ll start:

Spoiler

Best Picture: Oppenheimer
Best Actor: Paul Giamatti
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan
Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr.
Best Supporting Actress: Emily Blunt
Best Director: Martin Scorsese
Best Cinematography: Killers of the Flower Moon
Best International Feature Film: The Zone of Interest
Best Adapted Screenplay: Poor Things
Best Original Screenplay: The Holdovers
Best Live Action Short: The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar
Best Animated Short: Pachyderm
Best Animated Feature: Across the Spiderverse
Best Documentary Short: The Last Repair Shop
Best Documentary: The Eternal Memory
Best Original Song: I’m Just Ken
Best Score: Oppenheimer
Best Makeup: Maestro
Best Costume Design: Napoleon
Best Editing: Killers of the Flower Moon
Best Sound: Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning
Best Production Design: Barbie
Best Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One

[soundchaser]

Will there be a deadline if you're tallying, twbb? I'm usually a shameless watcher of the guild awards signposts.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm happy to do it in whatever way the majority of people preferred DI did, or an alternative method. I'm also happy to wait til you get the info you need.

My instinct is to do it 'straight up' to make things easiest. So, if you want to risk Barbie for best supporting actress, you do so knowing you're risking one point, not getting a million because everyone else voted for the right person. Likewise predicting correctly wouldn't count less for getting a surer thing right that everyone else also picked. This way it ultimately does come down to those few random categories (i.e. Murphy vs. Giamatti) with less point nuance

[willoneill]

I honestly had no idea until this morning that there was a movie about Flamin' Hot Cheetos, and now here it is, with more Oscar nominations than the entire filmography of Andrei Tarkovsky.

[therewillbeblus]

I don't want to clutter up the thread if a more designated poll would be preferable to mods, but I guess a start would be:

1. PM me or say in this thread if you'd commit to submitting a friendly Oscar ballot and competing jovially against your fellow forum members
2. If you want to play, say a preference for a simple tiered system (i.e. something like BP = 3 points, Top acting/screenplays/International Feature = 2, Technical Categories, etc. = 1) or something more complicated - get into the weeds with pitches if you want, I'm not going to die on any hill here
3. PM or say if you'd commit to a wager of watching and writing thoughts about a "reasonably-accessible" film picked by the winner, subjectively-defined as such indicated by air quotes manifesting as real quotes. Future participation in Oscar ballots won't hinge on you following through or anything, but it gives a nice incentive to the winner. So if you wanna just be a person and watch what they pick, that'd be sportsmanlike, but you do you. Or people can throw in gift cards like last time if that was more motivating. Personally, I think it's more in the spirit of the strongest facets of the forum to do the less superficial, critical-thinking-inducing, first option

[Kracker]

"Anatomy of a Fall" getting Best Picture and a bunch of other noms but snubbed for Best International Feature is weird, I mean, how did that happen.

[aox]

The Gerwig snub is this year’s most egregious offense.

[soundchaser]

"Anatomy of a Fall" getting Best Picture and a bunch of other noms but snubbed for Best International Feature is weird, I mean, how did that happen.

France didn’t put it up for consideration. They went with The Taste of Things instead.

The Gerwig snub is this year’s most egregious offense.

I wasn’t a fan of her direction on Barbie, but I have to agree — it’s genuinely surprising.

[Kracker]

"Anatomy of a Fall" getting Best Picture and a bunch of other noms but snubbed for Best International Feature is weird, I mean, how did that happen.

France didn’t put it up for consideration. They went with The Taste of Things instead.

Damn well i hope Jonathan Glazer sends them a big fruit basket for that


Greta may be snubbed but glad they are giving those international features more attention.

[swo17]

Gerwig was snubbed because there were only five spots. None of the five that made it were necessarily less deserving than her. Her film got plenty other noms and, more generally, she's already received a tremendous amount of awards attention for every one of her solo features. Also, so so much money. She'll be fine.

May December, now that was snubbed

[Kracker]

Not to mention one of those five spots went to a female director who didn't get the privilege of helming a billion dollar sensation.

[John Cope]

May December, now that was snubbed

At least it got a screenplay nom. Ferrari was snubbed.

[spectre]

I don't know why I let it bother me, but I always find it irksome when the Academy does this "one token foreign-language film in the Best Picture nominations" schtick. It's okay to just be an awards ceremony for American films!

[knives]

It hasn’t been that since at least Hamlet in the ‘40s (for which the studios threw a massive hissy fit). It’s expanded itself further and further and now seems comfortable with it just being films released on American shores.

[spectre]

Functionally, though, that translates to a bunch of US/UK films plus the one (or, once in a blue moon, two) foreign titles that have managed to sneak out of the Best International Feature pen, which of course isn't vaguely reflective of the diversity of high-quality world cinema being released on US shores. (I can't even begin to get my head around how British films are supposed to fit into this picture except that they seem to be a little more included in the club, albeit still at something of a disadvantage.)

What seems to be the case is that the Academy likes to appear cosmopolitan but still sees their core brief as celebrating Hollywood. And as I said above, the latter is totally fine, if that's how they view their remit! But by having it both ways, they only end up delivering backhanded compliments – the implication being, for instance, that Anatomy of a Fall is this year's king of the minnows, given a wildcard elevation to the level of the big hitters like Maestro. Whereas if it were something like the very best of US-theatrically-distributed cinema (however one defines that) being judged and celebrated, American movies would surely be in the minority most years – and, clearly, that can't happen because it would undermine what most people understand and expect the Oscars to be.

[knives]

I’m going to ignore your suppositions and just stick to verifiable points that nearly from the beginning you had foreign movies randomly being celebrated if they became popular enough. Even as early as the fifth Oscar’s you have a French film get nominated for Set Design.

Also to dismiss my Hamlet comment shows a real lack of knowledge of the history of the matter. It getting nominated was a major controversy at the time with Mayer calling for the closure of the Academy to give a sense of things.

As a real side point I assume all this is about Anatomy, but there’s tons of films like El Conde and Godzilla made from outside the American systems which got nominated this year which only shows how distribution in America is changing. To this point the Academy clearly does define what US distributed means. For most categories it means the movie needs at least a one week run in either NYC or LA (edit: apparently the number of cities has grown in recent years). That means films that only have festival screenings or just a couple of days at MOMI and the like do not qualify. Very few non-American films qualify in fact so the premise of your argument just isn’t reflected in the parameters of the contest.

[spectre]

Well, the key word there of course is "randomly". I agree that this isn't a recent thing – Bergman got quite a few nominations back in the day, for instance, while many great directors of the era who weren't Bergman (as suggested by willoneill above) didn't get a look-in.

I'm not sure why you thought I was dismissing your comment about Hamlet, though – I thought it was an interesting and relevant point! My comment in parentheses was intended as a concession that I'm not quite sure myself where British films fit into the overall schema, and that UK cinema probably needs a large asterisk in any discussion of how non-American films are treated by the Academy – particularly in a time when more than a few "British" Best Picture contenders like Shakespeare in Love, The King's Speech and even The Zone of Interest are actually US co-productions (and thus hardly barbarians at the gate). Obviously that wasn't the case in 1948, and the Hamlet example is salient for that reason.

I understand the minimum theatrical run narrows the parameters. It would be interesting though to look at data on just how many "foreign" films do qualify vs what we or the industry might consider to be Oscar-eligible American films. (I don't think it would make sense to merely stack up all non-American vs American theatrical releases; it goes without saying that a substantial proportion of the latter is dreck and broadly viewed as such, while that level of filmmaking from other countries mostly isn't getting through the filter.)

[brundlefly]

I'm still surprised people think anything gets "randomly" nominated when nominations are the result of months of campaigning and promotion. And of course visibility matters. NEON has been good at getting their movies nominated when they are popular and kept this one in theaters for a while. Anatomy also won the Palme d'Or, and if that doesn't qualify it as "king of the minnows" on some level, it's definitely a feather in its cap.

There are also more Best Picture slots, now, and it seems silly to only have American films there.

The most important thing about having foreign films eligible outside the "International Film" category is that International Film nominees are submitted by country, and as noted above, Anatomy wasn't eligible there this year. It's a solid way to circumvent that; my earliest memory of an attaboy moment was when Almodovar (hardly low profile, and he beat out Todd Haynes' only nom to date, but still) won for Talk to Her's screenplay when Spain submitted Mondays in the Sun (which, who knows, may have deserved that push, though it wasn't nominated). That same year the Academy writers also nominated Y Tu Mamá También when Mexico didn't.

It'd be extra righteous if they highlighted movies suppressed by state regimes more often, but those aren't the movies with the biggest PR budget.

Sad about May December, and it's a little weird Netflix put its shoulder behind Nyad (in addition to Maestro, which was a gimme) instead.