Awards Season 2015

[knives]

Yup, it being the fourth year in a row in the category would look bad in a way - it's like saying, okay, we'll give them this one, but none of the important prizes. It strikes of tokenism - we need to have a major category win for non-White people, so let's give it to director. Four years in a row.

Director is not viewed as a major prize?

[Ribs]

No, it is, but the principle of it being the one thing they choose to give the award consistently diversely indicates its becoming a category used solely to defend the fact no other diverse nominees can manage a win in any other category.

(More or less)

[knives]

If that's the best the devil's advocate can do...

[lacritfan]

As expected Spotlight and The Big Short win WGA awards.

[The Narrator Returns]

The Revenant wins Best Film and Director at the BAFTAs

[colinr0380]

I’d highly recommend catching Rebel Wilson’s hilarious speech at the BAFTAs if you can, which touched on all of the ‘Oscar issues’ without being too preachy or uncomfortable about it! And while Stephen Fry was a bit up and down (oo-er missus!) he did have a couple of fun gags, especially the early Valentine’s Day diversity-related one trying to ever more tenuously talk about the theme of boundary crossing love stories in all of the nominated films, such as love between two women in Carol, love between DiCaprio and the bear, or Matt Damon and his potatoes etc, until getting unfortunately stymied by “love between Roman Catholic priests and….um…”

(On the other hand Sacha Baron Cohen’s introduction to the “Best White Actress” award was a bit cringey. As was Sidney Poitier’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which came rather out of nowhere and felt a little too much like pushing the “We’re incredibly diverse! Here’s a black person you might know! From back in the 50s and 60s!” button much too obviously!)

I still did like those little moments where Fry had a little, more serious, aside which always feel refreshing for an awards show. This year there was that moment of praising The Martian for making a film about science that didn’t feature action heroics, even if it was a set up for teasing Matt Damon about going back to action heroics in the next Bourne film! And his moment of reflection on the consistency of film (for future generations to grow up seeing, being entertained and learning from people who had long since passed away) in the face of all of the losses over the past year was an extremely nice send off, although Fry’s faith in the permanent record of film could perhaps have been a good opportunity for a note about the importance of film preservation, as otherwise it seemed a little naïve to assume there were no challenges to keeping film accessible!

[domino harvey]

EW's annual look at actual Oscar voters' ballots

[knives]

Well that was the least interesting variation yet.

[mfunk9786]

The Screenwriter: Eddie Redmayne. No one was inspiring this year. But if I had to pick one performance, it would be Eddie, because he’s always good.

The Screenwriter: Kate Winslet. I’d give Kate an award for ordering pizza, so…

Woof, this guy.

[domino harvey]

Spoken like someone who's never seen Hick

[mfunk9786]

On the other hand, I wanna be pals with The Actress immediately - even her off-the-beaten-path pick for Best Director was well articulated and totally made sense

[captveg]

I like The Big Short, but right off the bat you have the Director saying how original it is, even though it cribs liberally with how The Wolf of Wall Street presented similar material (with nothing quite as inspired as the changing of the car color).

[flyonthewall2983]

Jeremy Clarkson on the Oscars

If you want the Oscar, Ridley, better start shooting Blade Limper (Feb. 14)

If you look carefully at all the people who've been nominated for a big award at the Oscars ceremony later this month, you will notice that none of them not one is a conjoined twin, or a man who's really a woman, or a dog. There's no one there whose mum took thalidomide, and none was born in Yorkshire. But everyone seems to have a bee in their bonnet about the single fact that none of them is black.

There was a photograph of all the hopefuls in the newspapers last week, and it was just a lot of rich people with one head each and four functioning limbs. It was billed as "the white face(s) of Hollywood", and lots of people were very cross.

Some even pointed out that in the awards' near-90-year history only 12 non-US films have won best picture. And 11 of those were British.

But if you stop and think for a moment, you have to conclude that the silver screen is just about the least white place on earth. You look at the really big film stars these days and for every Tom Cruise you have a Will Smith. For every Robert Downey Jr there's a Denzel Washington. And that's before we get to Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding Jr, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, Don Cheadle and Samuel L Jackson. Oh, and this year's Oscars host, Chris Rock.

And while none of these guys is up for a big award this time round, you can hardly accuse the Academy Award judges of institutional racism or naked Trumpery because in 2014 it was a two-horse race between Dallas Buyers Club, which was about Aids, and the eventual winner of best motion picture, 12 Years a Slave, which was about being a slave for 12 years.

In 2006 Crash, which was an excellent film about racism, beat Brokeback Mountain, which was about homosexuality. In 2009 Slumdog Millionaire, which featured no white faces to speak of, not even Ben Kingsley's, walked off with the top gong, and in 2011 it was the turn of The King's Speech, which was about disability.

It's obvious, then, that the judges love a cause. They like a film that addresses issues and rights wrongs. And don't say they avoid giving the best actor award to a black man, because they gave one to Washington, Foxx and Whitaker, not to mention Sidney Poitier.

However, they have never once given the top gong to a superhero film. And a blockbuster in which a rock is heading our way never gets a look-in, although, that said, the alien-fest District 9 was nominated. Mainly, I suspect, because actually it was about apartheid. This is my big problem with the Oscars. Anything even remotely populist is dismissed as being no better than the popcorn, or the Palace Tandoori commercials.

And that brings me neatly on to Ridley Scott. He's an Englander and the son of an army officer and the list of films he's directed boggles the mind.

There was Alien, which we all know is a masterpiece. Then there was Gladiator, which managed to be huge and engrossing even though one of the main actors died halfway through the shoot.

Black Hawk Down, Black Rain, Hannibal, Thelma & Louise, Blade Runner, American Gangster, Robin Hood. You've seen them all many times. They form the spine of the DVD shelf in your sitting room. They are to the world of cinema what Rumours and The Dark Side of the Moon are to your record collection.

And Ridley did them all.

You probably walked right past Matchstick Men one Sunday afternoon in your video rental shop, assuming that because it starred Nicolas Cage it would be impenetrable nonsense. But it was an extremely good film about a chap with obsessive compulsive disorder. And it was the same story with Someone to Watch Over Me. Yes, it starred Tom Berenger, who came and went in Platoon. But, again, it was excellent. And they were Ridley's too. Of course, there are some wonky moments in his back catalogue. The Counsellor, which starred absolutely everyone, was a bit of a mess, and I've tried many times to understand Prometheus. But it's like long division. I just don't get it.

Judging Ridley on these failures, though, would be like judging Paul McCartney on Ebony and Ivory, or Terry Wogan on The Floral Dance. Because the fact is he's a staggeringly good and versatile director who makes films people want to see over and over again. And he's never won an Oscar.

He's up for best picture at the end of the month for The Martian, and I can pretty much guarantee he won't win, because it's too exciting and too funny and too popular. So he'll have to sit there and gurn as someone else goes onto the stage, and I don't doubt he'll feel gutted.

But cheer yourself up, Ridley, with something Jilly Cooper once said: "Jeffrey Archer and I would trade all our sales for one prestigious literary award. In the same way that people who win prestigious literary awards would trade their statuette for a tenth of our sales."

In a much smaller way I know what she's on about, because Bafta never gave Top Gear an award. The great and the good from the world of British TV never thought our efforts were worthy of recognition, and I had to sit there in my frilly dinner shirt as someone who'd made a programme about social workers in Oldham was given the gong by someone who'd presented Britain's Heaviest Paving Stone.

I could smile, though, and I did, because our show was really popular with the viewers. And that's who we made it for. Not a dame from Islington.

The Revenant may win best picture. And the best actor will probably go to Leonardo DiCaprio, who has never won before, probably because he's never been forgiven for being Jack Dawson in Titanic. That's fine. It's a good film and I enjoyed it.

But I enjoyed Avengers: Age of Ultron even more. And that hasn't even been nominated. An omission that, it should be noted, has nothing to do with the fact that Samuel L Jackson is in it.

[Adam X]

I've never understood how anyone could be annoyed over the lack of non-US cinema getting the Oscar for Best Picture. It's an American awards ceremony! I'm more surprised that anything but US films have won the award. But then, Best Foreign Film, or whatever its called, I'm pretty sure only gets given to non-english language cinema. So who knows...

[lacritfan]

This is pretty fun.

[Gregory]

Jeremy Clarkson on the Oscars

Certified Rediculous.

He seems to be proving the point he's clumsily trying to refute: If there's any truth in claims such as "the silver screen is just about the least white place on earth," then that points up the injustice of this year's Oscars being the whitest place on earth (sorry, Montana and Idaho). Not everyone will agree with that, but it would nice at least not to have to see the absence of black actors and directors smirkingly compared to the similar absence of dogs, Thalidomide babies, and Yorkshiremen among the nominees, followed by the claim that black talent dominates the silver screen. If Clarkson was really looking for "racism and naked Trumpery," there it is.

Responses to the Oscars boycott are that I see most often are:
1) This a a nonissue because I don't see race. We live in a postracial society now. I was so surprised when Halle Berry brought up race in her speech. She's not white? Huh, I'd never noticed or thought about that before!
2) Straight Outta Compton doesn't deserve any recognition because it's about thugs!
3) But what about 12 Years a Slave, and Crash, and other examples? I won't even comment on Crash except, of course Clarkson thought it was an excellent film about racism.

[domino harvey]

The problem is we are talking about two or three great performances by black actors that missed being nominated versus twenty-plus great performances by white actors that failed to be nominated. There were less Oscar bait-y roles that went to black actors in the past year versus white, representative of the existing deficiencies in production of recent films. Some years are more anomalous and give us more persons of color up for awards, but the trend is not moving in that direction. And that's not the fault of the Oscars in reflecting this deficiency.

[DarkImbecile]

And that's not the fault of the Oscars in reflecting this deficiency.

That's the shame of focusing on the awards as opposed to the structural deficiencies in the industry itself, especially in the non-acting categories. If Hollywood got to a point that the level of diversity among actors, directors, writers, and producers were on par with the country as a whole, and the Academy failed to reflect that diversity and/or continued to vote in a way that was not reflective of that diversity, then it'd be time to focus one's ire on the awards.

[Gregory]

I understand that some years will be statistical outliers, but when there are two years in a row when all the acting nominees are white, it begins to look like a form of exclusion. I thought this Economist piece from last month presented some interesting data and made a fair case. They point out that 94% of the Academy voters are white but argue that the underlying problem isn't the Academy but the fact that ethnic minorities are underrepresented in top roles across all years generally (not just the past year), which they trace back to drama schools and casting offices, not the Academy's problems. Statistically, it looks like when black actors do get those top roles, they generally do get a proportional percentage of Oscar recognition, but Asian and Latino actors fare considerably worse in casting. And of course it's hardly just an issue of actors; the dearth of non-white directors is a far worse problem in the industry.

[swo17]

I would hardly call something that is expected to happen roughly 25% of the time an outlier.

[TMDaines]

Don't you dare bring statistics into a discussion featuring the phrase statistically!

[Gregory]

Right, when it happens it's hardly all that surprising (if I seemed to imply otherwise, it was accidental), especially in recent years. There was a run of 12 years (1999 through 2010) without the all-white nominees in acting categories phenomenon occurring once, but then in the past six years, that has happened half the time, so of course people are going to point this out and be angry. And actors are a natural thing for the public to dwell on, but as others have pointed out that's not even the worst of it if you compare other categories that have remained bastions of white and male predomination. So I don't think those who have been dismissive about this entire issue understand what's at stake or why others feel the way they do about it.
I rarely weigh in with any Academy Award-related opinions, but Jeremy Clarkson drove me to it.

[Zot!]

While you're at it, does anybody want to run the numbers on holocaust dramas, just so we can stop beating around the bush.

[movielocke]

I've never understood how anyone could be annoyed over the lack of non-US cinema getting the Oscar for Best Picture. It's an American awards ceremony! I'm more surprised that anything but US films have won the award. But then, Best Foreign Film, or whatever its called, I'm pretty sure only gets given to non-english language cinema. So who knows...

the artist was the first non us non UK film to win best picture

[essrog]

Everyone saying the real focus should be on the production system and lack of opportunities for black writers and directors is right -- what doesn't seem to be acknowledged much, though, is that the people protesting/boycotting the Oscars are saying the exact same thing. For example:

As I See It, The Academy Awards Is Not Where The “Real” Battle Is. It’s In The Executive Office Of The Hollywood Studios And TV And Cable Networks. This Is Where The Gate Keepers Decide What Gets Made And What Gets Jettisoned To “Turnaround” Or Scrap Heap. This Is What’s Important. The Gate Keepers. Those With “The Green Light” Vote.

The Oscars are just the most visible symptom of the problem, and that's why people are targeting it. Having a statistically "appropriate" number of nominees of color more recently just allowed the more significant institutional problem to be masked a bit -- akin to people who think racism is over because Obama got elected president twice.