Announcement

**Frank Cox** · 03-18-2021, 03:08 PM

I was reading an article the other day where it was being argued that the viewership and prestige of the Academy Awards is declining because they are nominating and honouring high-brow arthouse movies and not the movies that people are actually watching so the awards are less relevant to the average man on the street, i.e. the folks who are supposed to be buying tickets and supporting the movie industry.

Looking over that list, I can certainly see the guy's point. Out of eight nominations for Best Picture, I've only played two of them here. In some of the categories I've played a total of none of them at all.

Are audiences supposed to get excited about and start water cooler discussions about movies that most of them have never heard of and probably haven't had an opportunity to see anyway?

**Geoff Jones** · 03-18-2021, 03:53 PM

My favorite bit of trivia about this year's nominations: There are now 4 pairs of movies where both the 1st and 2nd installments were nominated for best adapted screenplay:

The Thin Man
After The Thin Man

The Hustler
The Color of Money

The Godfather
The Godfather Part II

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

**Martin McCaffery** · 03-18-2021, 04:09 PM

Are audiences supposed to get excited about and start water cooler discussions about movies that most of them have never heard of and probably haven't had an opportunity to see anyway?

I think the problem is that in the year of streaming they have heard of them, and certainly had the opportunity to watch them on TV (whether they did or not). Will the public think of them all as TV movies?

And have to add, between me and the AMC all of the Best Pics except The Sound of Metal and the Trial of the Chicago 7 has played in Montgomery.

**Marcel Birgelen** · 03-18-2021, 05:40 PM

Originally posted by Martin McCaffery View Post

I can't believe it has been four days and no one has posted the Oscar Noms, much less bitched about them.
Has COVID destroyed all of our sacred traditions??

I'm afraid so...

What COVID has shown me is that I never watched any movie anymore on TV for the last 25 years or so... For me, a movie on TV is just... meh?

From the list of the movies nominated for Best Picture, I've only seen a single one, which we ran in our screening room... So, yeah... what can I say about the rest?

**Jim Cassedy** · 03-18-2021, 06:53 PM

IMO The Oscars long ago ceased being a "sacred tradition". The Cornapacoplyse was just one more nail in the coffin.
In a normal year, by now, I would have run and/or seen most of the Oscar contenders at opening night or film festival premiers,
private previews & press screenings or or during some aspect of post production. This year, I probably couldn't even name more
than two or three titles of films that got released, and that would take some concentration. Theaters here have been closed a few
days over a year now. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them stay that way even when they are given the green light to re-open.

Sunlight Has Bleached All The Color Out Of
This PARASITE Poster. It Was The Last Movie
Which Played When The Theater Behind This
Display Frame Closed Over A Year Ago.

ParasitePosterFaded_1year.jpg

Attached Files

ParasitePosterFaded_1year.jpg (68.7 KB, 104 views)

**Mike Blakesley** · 03-20-2021, 08:51 PM

This must be the first time in history that we have never played even one of the movies nominated in any of the major categories. You have to go all the way down to "Production Design" before you get to a movie that we played (News of the World, and Tenet). I am a little surprised that Tom Hanks didn't get an acting nomination, considering he's usually nominated for almost anything he's in. Not high-brow enough this time, I guess.

This may be the year that Netflix finally wins their Best Picture Oscar, which is okay with me since everything was a TV movie this year. I think it's kind of funny that their big breakthrough will always have to have an asterisk by it.

That Parasite onesheet pic reminds me of a neighboring theater near here -- their poster cases have sported that day-glo Wonder Woman '84 poster and "The Call of the Wild" (the last movie they played before closing). They both are faded like that and look awful. I've heard rumors the place has been sold or maybe leased out but there's no sign of it reopening yet.

**Leo Enticknap** · 03-21-2021, 09:17 PM

Originally posted by Frank Cox

I was reading an article the other day where it was being argued that the viewership and prestige of the Academy Awards is declining because they are nominating and honouring high-brow arthouse movies and not the movies that people are actually watching so the awards are less relevant to the average man on the street, i.e. the folks who are supposed to be buying tickets and supporting the movie industry.

This in the Daily Mail:

Originally posted by Daily Mail

Critics are increasingly out of touch with moviegoers as films fall into categories like 'crowd pleasers' and 'critical darlings,' according to a new analysis.

So movies the critics liked - take 2019's AdAstra that starred Brad Pitt as an astronaut - aren't always fan favorites. While Venom, which fans loved, was panned by critics.

Stephen Follows, a film statistician and movie producer, released a study on his website that analyzed 10,499 movies released between 2000 and 2019 in an inquiry to the differences in how fans and critics perceive them.

Follows compared each film's IMDB score, an average of fan ratings, to those from the critic score aggregator Metacritic.

'We can see that there is a very rough trend in which audiences and critics do broadly agree. That said, many films show deviation from the trend line,' Follows wrote on his website.

He noted that the worse a film was reviewed by critics, the more deviation it may see from fan scores.

'It's interesting to see the agreement in the 'good' quadrant. It seems that the two groups agree most when they are talking about extremely good movies,' Follows wrote.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Follows for more information and additional comment on his analysis.

Follows noted that films beloved by fans, called 'crowd pleasers,' were often hated by critics. Movies that critics loved, 'critical darlings,' were often despised by fans.

The Times of London noted that one critical darling, Ad Astra, received a fan rating of just 6.5/10 with users calling it 'alarmingly bad' on IMDB while it received a Metascore of 80/100.

The film stars Brad Pitt as astronaut Roy McBride who goes on a mission across the solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father. New Yorker critic Richard Brody hailed it as 'an instant classic of intimate cinema.'

Other critical darlings include La La Land and Gravity, the Times of London reported.

The 2016 film La La Land received a Metascore of 94, though nabbed just 8/10 stars from IMDB fans. Meanwhile 2013's Gravity received a Metascore of 96, and seven Oscar wins, with just 7.7 stars from fans.

Some crowd pleasers include Sweet November, The Dark Knight, Venom, and Snatch, according to the Times of London.

In Venom, Tom Hardy stars a failed reporter who is bonded to an alien entity in a movie based on the Marvel comics. The movie's sequel, Venom: Let There Be Change, is scheduled for release in September.

It received a low Metascore of 35 while earning 6.7/10 stars from fans on IMDB.

Christopher Nolan's Batman sequel The Dark Knight, which starred Heath Ledger as the Joker, received a whopping 9/10 stars on IMDB with a Metascore of just 84.

Sweet November, the 2001 film which starred Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron, got a rating of 6.7/10 stars on IMDB but has a Metascore of just 27.

Follows' study concluded that there has been a strong correlation between audience and film critics scores in the past, but that 'a de-synchronization taking place fairly consistently over the past two decades.'

He determined that among factors that influence the discrepancies are a film's budget and genre.

According to Follows: action, thriller and sci-fi movies could be called 'crowd-pleasers' while westerns, historical films and documentaries are 'critical darlings.'

'In short, critics and audience are disagreeing more about low budget films, all while a greater number of low budget films are opening in cinemas,' he determined.

While Follows' study reviewed the differences between Metacritic and IMDB scores, past articles have examined the discrepancies between critic and audience scores on another site – Rotten Tomatoes.

In seeking to find the most divisive film of all time, RAVE Reviews determined that Knock Down The House, a documentary about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign for Congress in 2018, had the largest discrepancies between critics and audiences.

The critics consensus from Rotten Tomatoes reads: 'A galvanizing glimpse behind the scenes of a pivotal election, Knock Down the House should prove engrossing for viewers of all political persuasions.'

The 2019 film, which received a perfect 100% from critics, had received an audience score of just 18% - which has since fallen to 10% since that study was released.

I think part of the problem is that we now no longer have any high profile film critics whose shtick is to anticipate and reflect mainstream public taste, rather than to reflect the tastes of middle aged liberal arts graduates. The Roger Eberts and the Leslie Halliwells of the biz have all gone, pretty much. I remember the latter once writing a scathing op-ed in one of the British newspapers, attacking the highbrow film magazine Sight and Sound for sneering at a writer who judged Jumanji to be a better film than Vertigo, and mentioned another article in the same issue which claimed that Caroline Leaf was a more influential animator than Walt Disney. It seems that this sort of writer is now dominating what used to be more mainstream outlets for movie criticism, too. If the trend continues, then journalistic film criticism will stop being a significant part of film marketing, because most of the public simply won't trust the critics' judgements. They'll go by word of mouth, social media, advertising, or whatever. The Oscars are in danger of going the same way, if the top awards continue, consistently, to be given to unpopular movies.

**Jim Cassedy** · 03-22-2021, 01:36 PM

People forget that the Oscars have nothing at all to do with the opinions of critics or the public, or with boxoffice receipts.
Films are nominated and final voting is done by people totally within the motion picture business, or more specifically, those
working in the 'movie biz' who are also members of the " Motion Picture Academy" - - PERIOD!

This is one of the reasons I get somewhat upset when during the awards ceremony I have to sit though a series of
condescending lectures by a bunch of overpaid actors complaining about the lack of diversity or some other social justice
issue within the motion picture business. "We" (the public) don't have anything to do with the hiring practices in Hollywood.
If they've got a diversity problem- - IT's THEIR PROBLEM- - that THEY need to fix within the their own business. (It would
be like 'the church' lecturing ME about a pedophilia problem in the priesthood. Yes, it is a problem, but It's not MY problem
to fix. I no control over nominating people into the clergy or deciding what parishes they serve at. )
<end of rant>

**Martin McCaffery** · 03-22-2021, 01:55 PM

Jim, agree with them or not, when they are talking at the OSCARS, they are talking TO the Motion Picture business. They're just letting the general public in on it. That's sorta the charm of the Oscars. It's Hollywood telling themselves how great they are and the starstruck public is allowed a fleeting glimpse into the glamorous world of show business.

From my skewed perspective, I don't see the public caring at all about the Oscars, except for the period between the nominations and the presentations. The noms are like a shopping list for the less involved general public. The week after the Oscars, no one cares because they have likely already seen the winner.

The marketing value of the Oscars is now all in the BluRay/Streaming side of the biz. In the days before wide releases, it could be months before the Best Picture played in your town. [ I don't have the material in front of me, but To Kill A Mockingbird didn't play in the town it is set in until a couple of month's after it won Best Picture. Probably 6 months after its release]. The exception may be what they are now calling Best International. But, again from my point of view, winning the Best International is the kiss of death with the general public, outside of the major urban markets.

I'm sure I've said it here before, they only reason to watch the Oscars is Bad Dresses, Bad Production Numbers and Bad Speeches. And, I'm sure, for the 93rd year in a row, the worst Oscars ever.

**Bobby Henderson** · 03-22-2021, 05:56 PM

I'm coming around more to the opinion they should just shit-can the Oscars, maybe for good. I'm surprised they're even having an Oscars ceremony this year, given what the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic did to rout the movie business (theaters in particular) since early last year. There is a much smaller pool of eligible movies and most were pretty much straight-to-TV kinds of affairs.

The past 12 months have been really terrible for many millions of Americans, not to mention far more people across the world. How many regular people are in the mood to watch a bunch of rich celebrities on national TV do a self-congratulatory circle jerk for 4+ hours? I didn't give two shits about the Grammy Awards. This year I feel pretty much nothing about the Oscars too. The topic on my mind is a local friend I've known for almost 20 years died of COVID-19 on Friday evening after languishing for a month in the hospital. Celebrity worship is far down my list of priorities. I'm due to get my 2nd shot of the Pfizer/Bio-N-Tech vaccine on Friday. I've been spreading the word to friends and colleagues about where they can get vaccinated if they want to do so. A bunch of people in "eligible" categories in Oklahoma haven't been getting the vaccines, leaving many pharmacies and vaccine clinics looking for any adults to get shots in arms.

Regarding the Oscar nominations being too snooty, they've been that way for decades. The winning movies are often "high-brow" types of shows. Some years the Best Picture winners seem worthy while other years leave movie fans angered. You can go back 40 years or more to find good examples.

I also have a big problem with certain chosen movies grabbing lots of nominations in technical categories (sound editing/mixing, cinematography, editing, production design, etc) when it seems like certain big budget "crowd pleaser" movies put in a lot more effort in those categories. But that's nothing new either.

Not too long ago the Academy expanded the Best Picture category to more than 5 nominees. The field has been around 9-10 nominees for some time. They did that to get more "crowd pleaser" types of movies nominated even if they still don't win.

Here's my problem with the "crowd pleaser" movies these days. While many are good, they're not really great either. Worth watching once or twice, but that's it. So many movies are hammered out via the Save the Cat clip art template. Even if such a movie rakes in a bunch of money at the box office why should it get a bunch of awards? My movie disc buying habits have dropped off to almost zero. It's not like I've decided to avoid buying movie discs. I just don't see any new movies these days that I feel like watching multiple times, enough to justify a disc case taking up space on a shelf.

The Oscars aren't the only thing in the movie business losing a sense of legitimacy. Decades ago theatrical movie releases would have the most edgy or boundary-breaking content. That isn't true anymore. Premium cable and streaming services dominate that now. Hollywood movies are often very predictable. Series TV seems more fresh and less predictable, even with the lower production budgets.

So, yeah, I'm probably going to skip the Oscars telecast.

**Leo Enticknap** · 03-23-2021, 12:25 PM

Expanding on Jim's points, part of the problem is that the AMPAS voting members seem to have lost sight of the fact that their choices determine the viability, or otherwise, of the whole Oscars show. Someone who works in the AMPAS film archive once told me that the Oscars show generates about 90% of AMPAS's income, and that the ratings and ad sales that show generates directly affects the archive's budget for the following year. They've also just built that huge new museum in town, and I'd be surprised if it'll ever turn much of a profit, if any - especially in the first 2-4 years, when tourism will remain depressed, thanks to C19 and the economic hangover from it.

So if the AMPAS members continue to celebrate and promote minority interest movies that are never going to reach an audience of tens of millions, they will be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. The film criticism business understood this, too. Sight and Sound type writers who believe that Jumanji is a better movie than Vertigo, or that Caroline Leaf is worthy of front page coverage but that Disney isn't, will always have their place. But that place isn't in the mainstream media, and if the mainstream media fail to provide critics who evaluate how well or not a movie entertains a couple on a date night, or mom, pop and kids going to their local 8-plex on a Sunday afternoon, then film criticism will no longer be a significant component of the marketing and release of movies.

**Bobby Henderson** · 03-24-2021, 10:28 PM

How many mainstream movie-goers even read Sight and Sound, or other trade magazines like Variety? I used to subscribe to Premiere, but stopped in the mid or late 1990's. Most of the old issues I had went into the recycle bin (I kept just a few). Premiere when bust in 2007. Sadly Cinefex announced the February 2021 issue would be its last.

The disappearance of movie publications is compounded by the death of brick and mortar video sales/rental stores and retail book stores. Walmart and Target are not an acceptable substitute. The same goes for sales of music on physical media (red book CD).

I guess that puts more power into the hands of a few movie-related web sites, such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb.

The market isn't exactly booming for movie critics either. Thousands of local newspapers around the nation have either folded or transformed into hollowed-out shells of their former selves. Our local paper has hardly any staff at all. The paper's production is done out of town wherever the big media company ownership group has the work done. A movie critic will be a needless luxury for all but the largest newspapers. There's no movie ads, showtimes or anything in the local paper anymore. Hell, even having someone cover a city council meeting or do any kind of investigative reporting is a big ask. Anyone wanting to get into the business of being a movie critic probably has to figure out how to make a name for himself online.

**Mitchell Dvoskin** · 03-25-2021, 03:18 PM

Dear moderators, If I have stepped over the line into political please feel free to delete this post. I just don't know of any other way to express my reasons for feeling that the Oscars are no longer about the "best" of anything.

I mostly lost interest in the Academy Awards when it ceased to be about what people in the various fields thought was the best work of the year by their peers. While increasing diversity among the voting members of the academy is definitely a good thing, doing it by excluding retired members is offensive. Are they saying that former retired members like Alfred Hitchcock, Carry Grant, etc, or current retired members suddenly do not know a good film/performance from a bad one? This is nothing but blatant age discrimination. Now they have taken it one step further, and will not accept nominations for any movie that does not meet their ethnic personnel requirements. Lets face it, promoting ethnic diversity by exclusion (a bad thing) rather than inclusion (a good thing) has made the award a meaningless waste of time.

**Mark Ogden** · 03-25-2021, 05:41 PM

I'll go ya one better.

I pretty much gave up on the Oscars and the Academy the night that the Best Picture award was literately torn from the hands of the deserving winner, La La Land, and thrust into the hands of the minor but politically correct Moonlight. I understand that it was a careless screw-up, but in terms of the Academy and its priorities yanking the award away from the hugely entertaining crowd pleaser and giving it to a picture that, while well made and moving, is now in the “Flicks for $5” basket at Ralph’s was just SO metaphorically perfect.

Diversity is important, inclusion is undeniably needed, and all voices and viewpoints deserve a shot, but when you are handing out awards for these reasons in the absence of actual merit, then you have gone down a rabbit hole you cannot return from with either your credibility or relevance intact.

Don’t even get me started about Little Women.

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2021 Oscars

2021 Oscars

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