7/1/09

It's certainly not every year that one has cause to be talking Oscars in July, at least other than the usual delusional frenzy that the year's Pixar blockbuster has already locked up Best Picture despite the fact that no Pixar flick has ever even been nominated.  But things are looking up for Up, because one of a trio of befuddling rule changes announced last week literally doubles its' chances of a Best Picture nomination.  When the nominations are announced next February 2, there will be no fewer than TEN films up for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' top honor.  This isn't a new idea:  in the early days of movie awards, up to ten flicks regularly vied for the prize.  But the last time it happened was 1944, when a little movie called Casablanca beat out the likes of Heaven Can Wait, The Ox-Bow Incident and The Song of Bernadette.  And Madame Curie.  And For Whom the Bell Tolls.  And In Which We Serve.  And Watch on The Rhine.  Not to mention The Human Comedy and, of course, The More the Merrier.

It's easy to understand the superficial appeal of this change.  After several years when the Oscar shortlist-generating critics societies had kept their choices to just two or three main contenders, the 2009 awards season was fascinating and surprising in its' diversity, featuring over a dozen distinct Best Picture picks running the gambit from unseen art house fare like Wendy & Lucy all the way to the second highest-grossing movie of all time, The Dark Knight.  Yet despite it all, the Academy managed to select the most frustratingly inert list of five imaginable, forcing host Hugh Jackman to include Knight in his classic opening number as a virtual apology for the body's bad taste.  I don't believe this decision comes in a vacuum.  The Academy must know for a fact that had the field been ten, both The Dark Knight and WALL*E would have made the cut, and instantly become the most popular potential spoilers of Slumdog Millionaire, which went from favorite to inevitability when nothing with a real shot to win made the cut.  But, of course, the fact that they weren't nominated pretty much assured that they HAD no chance to win:  what the Academy wants to do here is trick us into thinking relevant movies are part of their thought process, when they really haven't been for years.

And that won't be easy.  Yes, 2009 was tailor-made for these new rules, but most recent years have been anything but.  Think 2008's eternal struggle between No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood needed five more nominees to keep bridesmaids Juno, Atonement and Michael Clayton company?  Did the 2006 race need more quality nominees to make us hate Crash all the more for beating them?  And who's to say that most years won't just produce TEN movies nobody's ever heard of, succeeding only in further proving just how out of touch the voters are.  The real business of separating contenders into those with a chance to win and those without goes on at the Critic Circle level, and those guys in most cases have no nominees at all, just cold, hard winners (their one choice) and losers (every other movie released that year).  If the critics say only two movies have a shot, then only two movies have a shot.

But then, all this theorizing is based on past voting trends based on a five-movie field.  Is it possible that a more diverse collection of movies (maybe even one that includes an action blockbuster?  Sorry, I went a little crazy there) might split the vote in a way a smaller one doesn't?  Each time an Academy member is faced with the choice of a movie they actually loved rather than just the one everyone at Spago's is talking about, that's gonna shave some votes off the Movie for Members Who Didn't See Any Movies This Year.  Some will tell you that just surviving the cut keeps a movie's hopes alive, and you never know what might happen between the nominations and the voting, although I do think that the theory that the movie that finishes 6th in the first round of voting will finish first in a second round conducted just one month later stretches credulity.

But wait, there's more!  Just in case you got too comfortable with simple up-down votes in these different categories, the Original Song race the Academy just can't keep itself from making annually worse is now burdened with rules that make the scoring system on Dancing with the Stars seem positively intuitive.  Already, the nominees are pared by a system determined to separate "relevant" songs (those whose content and staging would be at home in Oklahoma!) from mere soundtrack-padding piffle (anything you'd hear on the radio).  Now, they will be judged Olympic-style rated (for no imaginable reason) on a scale of 6-to-10.  If nobody scores 8.25 or better, there will be no Original Song category that year.  If only one does, it and the second-highest finisher will be the two nominees.  If two or more hit the 8.25 threshold, then up to five total nominees will be announced.  Yeah, I know what you're thinking:  woo-hoo, let's get rid of that category and shorten the ceremony.  Ha!  Paging Beyonce and Hugh Jackman!  And this time you've got twenty minutes!

The Academy's compulsive need to fiddle with this category is a mystery to me.  Rare is the song that really stands up and demands the honor as an artistic achievement (Eminem's "Lose Yourself" and Bruce Springsteen's "The Streets of Philadelphia" come to mind, but both of those were mainstream pop hits), so what we're left with is an opportunity to keep the ceremony entertaining by inviting performances of memorable songs from the year.  But with a determination to eradicate commercial success from the equation (and I don't mean its' consideration, I mean its' existence), the rules have been rewritten again and again to minimize the kind of songs that tend to be hits.  Played over the end credits?  Soundtrack filler!  You know, like "My Heart Will Go On", or last year's unduly snubbed "The Wrestler".  Played over a montage?  Soundtrack filler!  Sung by a non-cast member under fifty?  Soundtrack filler!  On the one hand, the Academy mystifies me.  On the other, they're relentlessly consistent.

Which brings us to one change that's a real surprise, and not a good one.  Starting with the 2010 ceremony, the Academy's lifetime achievement awards will no longer be part of the televised ceremony.  In fact, they'll have already been handed out four months before, back before even the National Board of Review has made their picks.  Never mind that in a dry award year, the Irving Thalberg and Jean Hersholt awards are often among the evening's highlights.  At least we generally know the winners.

Bottom line:  will any of this make the Oscar results more in line with the general consensus about the movie year we just experienced?  Of course not.  Will it make the telecast more entertaining?  Probably not.  OK, how about shorter?  I'll believe it when I see it.  After all, it's gonna take a while to show clips from those five extra movies...