2018-2019 Awards Season

All non-Nolan related film, tv, and streaming discussions.
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This is JUST for them to give Black Panther an award so everyone doesnt freak out on them about political and social issues when tbh the film doesnt deserve a Best Picture nomination for the filmmaking alone. So now this is going to be a category where it should say "Ehhh Not Good Enough for Best Picture".


THEY ADD THIS STUPID AND CONFUSING CATEGORY AND NOT STUNTWORK?!?!

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This "Best Popular Film" category is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. It raises thousands of questions and answers none.

The problem is that the Oscars or Academy Awards are usually looked upon as the highest possible achievement in film making, even on an international level. It had its fair share of weird choices for winners, almost every year there's a sort of controversy, and every sane person must understand that marketing your film FOR the jury or whatever is a huge part of the process by which your film might end up as a nominee. So of course it's not a definite statement on any film's merits etc. but I think we can all agree that the world watches the Oscars with the utmost excitement each year and results are usually respected.

There's a possibility that you don't care for the awards and nominees and winners, and I'm sort of in this category, but IF you really care, then this new category is a blow to the whole system. I think the main problem is that it further divides people who see the film industry as being part "popular and exciting popcorn entertainment" and part "boring European tearjerkers".

Just a few points that were already made by several people:

1. How can you define a "popular film"?
2. If a film is "popular" (e.g. seen by a lot of people), does it mean by definition that it's "just" a blockbuster popcorn flick?
3. If they made The Godfather today and it turned out to be an instant classic, and people, simply by the spreading of the word, rushed to the cinemas to see it so that it ended up a box office success, would it be nominated in the popular film or the "normal film" category?
4. Actually, are the saying that the regular "Best Film" category is filled with unpopular films? What the fuck?
5. If there is no distinction based on the quality of the films, only based on certain films' "pop cultural reach", does it mean we need to include franchises like F&F or Transformers or every fucking comic book movie ever made, from now on, in EVERY Acamedy Award season? Do we really need to praise certain movies because they made shit-tons of money, regardless of their actually artistic qualities? As some people put it on Twitter: there's already an award for popular films, and it's called money.

It's just a complete mess and my mind is blown that grown up, supposedly intelligent people came up with this.

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Ok, so I'll be the first to say that shortening the Award ceremony is a good idea. If it means that some categories have to be downgraded into "highlights" then so be it. Most people really don't tune in to see the award speech from the people who won best sound mixing or best animated short film (ok, unless it's a star like Kobe). I know it's not fair, I know that a lot of them work really hard on these movies and are payed way too little compared to the stars. But that's the market and the general audience for this ceremony really doesn't care about these niche categories. They had to do it and I understand it. Plus, keep in mind that they already have been giving certain "less-prominent" awards pre-show. So this is just a natural progression of that. Be realists - most people only really tune in to see the BIG 6 (Film, director and the 4 actor categories). I assume they'll keep best cinematography, music, editing and song (because of certain musicians' star power). Possibly art direction, costumes, vfx, animated and foreign film. The rest I see getting the highlight treatment and I'm ok with that.

BUT... the Popular Film category is just BULLSHIT. Because it causes a precedence that these movies will "never be worthy" of the main award, whereas superhero films have been some of the best reviewed movies in recent years. I know that the majority of the Academy members are actors and that they don't really see those films as "artistic enough" and that they're "paycheck films" or "lack in character depth". And they're right a lot of the time. They're fun and often more enjoyable than some Oscar films but sometimes lack strong characters. Then again, when these films finally transcend "fun" and you do get a Dark Knight or a Logan and you still don't nominate them, even though they're clearly some of if not the best movies of the year, that just shows a lack of foresight on their part.

Plus it will create an equally stupid category as the Animated film category, where sometimes you can't even find 5 films worthy of Award recognition. What's the point of giving an Oscar or even a nomination to a film, which has been in serious competition with only 3 other movies? Most of these nominees are chosen out of a pool of hundreds of movies. It's just not fair to have this category being of equal value as some of the others.

Plus, what's the criterium of a "Popular Film"? Ones that make a billion dollars? Half a billion? Sure a financial criterium sounds fair... until you take into consideration films that come out in late December that might not reach that half a billion dollar mark before the nominations are announced.

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Maybe cut down the montages and fucking lame jokes, then we can still watch Roger Deakins and Ennio Morricone win Oscars.

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God this is so ridiculous when talking about this whole "Popular film" category. People just keep saying "Black Panther deserves a Best Picture nomination and this category is making it so it wont". Jesus people Black Panther is NOT that good or BP worthy. They are completely forgetting about all the other BETTER movies to come out this year. Why is it only Black Panther being talked about? Hell, critically and filmmaking wise MI:Fallout is the better film by far and deserves the nomination more when talking Best Picture or even Popular Film.

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xWhereAmI? wrote:
August 9th, 2018, 10:38 pm
God this is so ridiculous when talking about this whole "Popular film" category. People just keep saying "Black Panther deserves a Best Picture nomination and this category is making it so it wont". Jesus people Black Panther is NOT that good or BP worthy. They are completely forgetting about all the other BETTER movies to come out this year. Why is it only Black Panther being talked about? Hell, critically and filmmaking wise MI:Fallout is the better film by far and deserves the nomination more when talking Best Picture or even Popular Film.
culturally and critically and thematically, Black Panther is to superhero movies what Get Out was to horror. and many speculate the Academy made this BS category so there wouldn't be an outcry when Black Panther wasn't nominated.

That's what makes this category all the more patronizing and demeaning. They're creating an oscar ghetto for a movie that celebrates black people since they know it won't get serious nominations.


-Vader

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Playing a devil’s advocate here, but who where expected BP to be considered in BP category? I’m against this ‘popular’ thing by the way and believe that every movie, be it a standalone or franchise entry can get on the level high enough to be considered as ‘the best picture’ chosen by the majority of the voters. You just have to... get on the level. But we all remember 2009 and how it went with TDK so for the pompous Academy sometimes even that isn’t good enough. Who am I kidding, never good enough. Academy doesn’t exactly have a history of awarding fresh attempts, yet (Return of the King aside). 🕷️

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m4st4 wrote:
August 10th, 2018, 1:19 am
Playing a devil’s advocate here, but who where expected BP to be considered in BP category? I’m against this ‘popular’ thing by the way and believe that every movie, be it a standalone or franchise entry can get on the level high enough to be considered as ‘the best picture’ chosen by the majority of the voters. You just have to... get on the level. But we all remember 2009 and how it went with TDK so for the pompous Academy sometimes even that isn’t good enough. Who am I kidding, never good enough. Academy doesn’t exactly have a history of awarding fresh attempts, yet (Return of the King aside). 🕷️
whether or not BP would have been nominated is entirely not the point


-Vader

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Vader182 wrote:
August 10th, 2018, 1:31 am
whether or not BP would have been nominated is entirely not the point
But isn't part of the point/problem how the general public would have reacted to a film like Black Panther (which critically and technically has very little place getting a nom for Best Picture) getting snubbed from a nom simply off it's cultural relevance? That's what caused the Academy to act so stupid in the first place like you just said.

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