by Bob Shultz, Independent Writer
The Academy Awards, the way it should be…the Second Annual “Oscar Night Party” to benefit Second Harvest comes to the East Hills Library Theatre on Sunday, February 24th. Doors open at 6pm. Watch the golden night festivities, play Oscar trivia, bid on celebrity memorabilia and do it all for a good cause.
Admission is 2 cans of food or a free will donation (at the door) to the Second Harvest Food Drive. 100% of all proceeds benefit the Second Harvest’s campaign against hunger in our community. This event is brought to you by FAME (The Film Alliance of the Midland Empire) and the St. Joseph Public Library. If you or your company would like to contribute additional prizes, or are looking for additional information, drop a line at secondharvestoscar@live.com.
The Oscars: a Joe’s perspective
By Bob Shultz
For a lot of Joes, it’s simply 4 hours of boring TV time: a snotty, pretentious exercise of Hollywood excess. But I challenge you to change that outlook. If you glance at the Academy Awards in the right way, it’s an exciting night and great “pop-culture” pastime locked between the Super Bowl and March Madness.
There really is a race going here and if you can take a few cues from a master prognosticator like me, you can dazzle your office pool and impress what is left of your circle of friends.
Sure, it doesn’t have the flair of NASCAR or the intensity of the Final Four…but Oscar does have its own unique charm.
First off, if you’re watching the “red carpet” arrivals and actually care what people are wearing, then THIS Oscar perspective is not for you. I’m talking about the actual awards themselves. This is the meat and potatoes portions of the broadcast; the real reason to tune in.
How do you predict an Oscar winner? Well, like all competitions, there is a pattern. It’s not always accurate, but it is pretty reliable. Now, I’m not going to give you my full formula, but I will give you the basics to consider. My prediction rate is averaging around 80-90 percent over the past 10 years, and like any good system, I’m not revealing my full secrets. Before we get to that, we’ve got to have a little background on how the yearly race begins.
The Road to “Oscarville”
The gears start churning faster on the Tuesday following Labor Day weekend. Summer is over and movie companies already have game plans. They know which films they will be pimping for the awards season. This is where I enter the picture.
I don’t vote on the Oscars themselves. That is done by a body of persons who are part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS.) Academy members include past winners, members of entertainment unions and others in the production industry. But I do vote on one of the earlier races: The Critic’s Choice Awards (CCAs)… the first in long string of award shows that includes the SAG awards, the Golden Globes and The People’s Choice Awards.
Ours is the best. For the past 10 years we have accurately echoed the final outcome of the Academy Awards. We set the tone for the rest of those crappy award shows, which are usually just a publicity event garnered by such mystery organizations as the Hollywood Foreign Press Core. Most of whom are neither journalists nor foreign… it’s a sham.
Real critics refer to these party-goers as blurb hounds; they will praise anything in order to be invited to the insiders’ parties and have their picture taken with a celebrity. They are not required even to watch the movies they vote on.
Critics, and blurb hounds alike, start finding themselves on a mass marketed mailing list around late September. This is the time we have our butts royally kissed. We receive DVD copies of films not in theatres, or not opening until December or January, nationwide. We start getting random phone calls and “thank-you-for-your-consideration-notes” from actors and directors who want to put their film in the front of the mind. It’s a nice place to be.
Over the course of next six weeks we watch, literally, hundreds of movies. Sounds fun right? Well, bare in mind… these are not terribly, enjoyable films. They are “Oscar contenders;” movie after movie about the Holocaust or “a leper with a heart of gold”. It can make you scream by mid-November.
For the CCAs, we come up with a list of about ten finalists. Over the course of the next few weeks we come up with a winner, and by mid-December… my contribution to the awards season is done.
The Oscar ballots are not released to Academy members yet, and the dead beats that choose the Golden Globes are just hitting the party scenes and reviewing our choices. Yes, it’s just like High School, only with money involved; BIG Money.
“Why haven’t I ever heard of that film?”
It’s around this time you start seeing commercials for movies that have critic’s quotes all over them. Films you probably haven’t heard of and films that may not ever open in the Midwest. To be considered for Oscar contention, a film only has to be in theatres for 2 weeks. A lot of these films play at a single house in LA or New York for the minimum required time. Then it’s off to home video or if it’s lucky, national release.
Why aren’t all films released nationally? The answer: Money.
Movies are and will always be a business. It is that classic struggle between art and commerce. The marketing people at the studios will predetermine how much money a film will make based on how it’s released.
Here in the Midwest, we are openly considered “fly-over” territory. It’s a negative perspective that says that everyone who chooses to live here will only be interested in “Big Mama’s House 6” instead of something that may be creatively “out of the box.”
“The BEST pictures of the year?”
Here is an Oscar secret. If a movie makes TOO much money, it’s often not considered for this category, unless it is an unheard of amount of cash and crosses over in all aspects of popular culture. “Star Wars”, “Titanic” and “Lord of the Rings” are a few examples of this exception. “Spiderman 3” and “Knocked Up”, sorry, but enjoy your box office receipts!
Of the 5 final nominees, they usually fall into very predictable slots. Let’s look at this year’s crop. There is: the Indie Fan Favorite (“Juno”); the artsy-fartsy English film (“Atonement”); the politically flavored film with a popular actor (“Michael Clayton”) the so bizarre I don’t understand it so it must be good film (“No Country For Old Men”); and one film that combines all of these elements… I call it the Pizza Supreme (“There Will Be Blood”).
Who will win? Well, of all 5 nominees it is usually just a horse race between two of them. Being this is a political year, and being that everybody loves George Clooney, and being that George Clooney is a popular voice protesting an unpopular war, and being that he was just named a Good Will Ambassador for the United Nations… the winner is going to be Michael Clayton… a film that not many people saw on its first release.
When picking a Best Picture, throw your personal faves out the window and breathe deep into the social-political climate of the present day.
“What about the rest of the nominees?”
Again, for the safety of my own choices, I’m holding my cards close to vest and not revealing my own, very effective, system. But here are a few other trends to consider.
-If a SHORT SUBJECT film involves Israel, Palestine or the Holocaust… It usually wins.
-The film with the most nominations usually wins BEST COSTUME DESIGN
-BEST DIRECTOR doesn’t necessarily direct the BEST PICTURE
-If composer John Williams is nominated for BEST SCORE he will usually win
-If composer Randy Newman is nominated for BEST SCORE he will always lose
-BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY is most likely the Indie Fan Favorite in the BEST PICTURE category (this year, “Juno”)
-Everyone Loves TOM HANKS, everyone is starting to hate TOM CRUISE
-Statistically, Pixar Pictures will win the BEST ANIMATION FILM unless it’s against a film with heavy political overtones
-With the exception of “Annie Hall”, “The Apartment” and “It Happened One Night” comedies will not be nominated, let alone win, the BEST PICTURE prize
-If an actress has appeared nude in “Playboy” she won’t win the BEST ACTRESS Oscar
-If a male actor has appeared nude in a film, he will eventually get a nomination in his career
-The film with most box office receipts usually sucks up the category of BEST SOUND EDITING and/or BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS
-And most importantly… the most popular and revered film artists are not a guarantee for the Academy Awards (Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant never one an Oscar… but both were eventually honored with the “atta boy”… the Lifetime Achievement Oscar)
I hope this gives you a different look at the “Golden Night”. Every year is slightly different, but all still follow a reliable, and often predictable, pattern. A little investigation on your part, like all “sporting” events, will pay off in the long run.
If this piece appears slightly cynical, it really isn’t. For all the politics behind the award, the award itself still symbolizes the best, not the most popular and maybe not the funniest, that Hollywood has to offer in a given year.
As you look back over the list of films and actors that have taken the prize, they do reflect an art form that appeals to the mass audience, long after the actors have died and would otherwise be forgotten. This is why we still consider Oscar… legendary.
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