February 04, 2006
The Oscar Nominations Week That Was
The 2006 Academy Awards nominations were announced this past week. While we usually discount the artistic and aesthetic selection of the Oscars every year as sentimental, mainstream Hollywood tosh, we have to admit that the Best Picture nominations for 2005's crop of films has impressed us
This year's Best Picture noms include several serious, politically-minded films ("Good Night and Good Luck," "Munich") as well as "that gay cowboy movie," "Brokeback Mountain," and a movie that explores racism in America, "Crash." The nominations in general reflect the presence of many small "indie-major" films that cost relatively little to produce and that were backed by big studios.
A look at the other categories undercores these themes, for example, George Clooney getting the nod for "Syriana" and a Best Foreign Film nom for "Paradise Now," two more politically-charged films focused on current events, and Felicity Huffman for "Transamerica," a movie about a pre-op transgendered man.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences system of categorization, nominations and winner selection is seriously flawed and fails on many levels to account for the broad spectrum of film releases in a given year. It tends to reward the "serious" much more often than the "comedic." And don't get us started about its convoluted, unfair and anachronistic approach to vetting foreign film entries.
The awards show and the awards themselves may seem increasingly irrelevant to television viewing audiences given the plunging ratings figure for recent broadcasts of the annual program. Sometimes we think that the television broadcast is really less about films these days and more about celebrity gawking -- albeit at a distant remove -- and passing judgment on the fashion parade of starlets and their designer gowns that file down the red carpet of the Kodak Theater. (And really, hasn't that always been a part of why people watch the show?)
But mighty Oscar and its noms and wins carry much weight for movie marketers. A win is an awesomely powerful tool for advertising a movie and prolonging its theatrical run. We've had little faith in Oscar as a reflection of true filmmaking merit in the past.
This year may change that.
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