The Official 2020 Oscar Discussion/Contest Thread

[Heather19]

Hell yeah, I will! Thanks for playing and good luck. This is the 11th year we are running the contest. Here is a look at the past winners. I am the defending champ. Heather was on a New England Patriots like run for a while, but has been in a little bit of a funk recently. Feev says he is going to play every year and then "forgets."

11 years! Wow, how time flies. Last year was my worst year yet. But then there was that year that I did get 22 out of 24 right

I guess I should start thinking about my picks. I didn't realize that I planned a weekend getaway for the weekend of the Oscars. On the plus side I wont have to work monday so maybe I'll actually be able to stay up and watch the whole thing.

[fernandito]

...Feev says he is going to play every year and then "forgets."

Hey you listen here you little shi---- nah you're right, I got nothing.

OK, I will play this year, FOR SURE, or I'll forget the face of my father and Uber it out west.

[mae]

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/...ersity/605101/

It started, as it so often does, with a series of tweets from someone famous enough to need a social-media manager. Early Tuesday morning, the author Stephen King logged on to Twitter to share his thoughts about the fact that the Oscar nominees, announced the day before, included no female directors and a single actor of color. “As a writer, I am allowed to nominate in just 3 categories: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay. For me, the diversity issue—as it applies to individual actors and directors, anyway—did not come up. That said,” King added, “I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.”

And thus the usual forces were set in motion: responses from disappointed peers and moviegoers alike, and an apparent backtracking of the ill-conceived comments within the same day. “You can’t win awards if you’re shut out of the game,” King wrote, acknowledging the structural challenges that many creators face. For those who have followed the industry’s responses to widespread calls for greater diversity, especially since the #OscarsSoWhite campaign began five years ago, cycles like this are a familiar part of the awards season. After a Golden Globes that featured many presenters of color but a primarily white set of winners, this year’s Oscar and BAFTA Awards nominations didn’t deviate much from a well-worn script either. (Cynthia Erivo, the only Oscar-nominated actor of color this year, stars in HBO’s adaptation of King’s The Outsider and offered an implicit critique of the author’s tweets when asked about them on Wednesday.)

The Academy’s perceived snubs—of actors such as Us’s Lupita Nyong’o and Hustlers’ Jennifer Lopez, along with directors such as Little Women’s Greta Gerwig and The Farewell’s Lulu Wang—are as unfortunate as they are predictable. And comments like King’s reveal a major reason why: Diversity is too often discussed as something separate from, or even in conflict with, artistic virtue. It is treated as an abstract concept meant to materialize without industry gatekeepers and Oscar voters, such as King, challenging their own possibly narrow views and instituting different practices. Put more plainly, the lack of representation is regularly talked about as a problem, but one for someone else to solve and for other institutions to address.

Consider, for example, the equivocal responses that prominent white filmmakers have given throughout the years when asked about the glaring demographics of their industry—and of their own works. In 2016, at the height of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign’s first awards season, the industry veterans Joel and Ethan Coen answered a question about diversity with “matching groans,” with Joel telling The Daily Beast that the complaints overestimated the awards’ impact. “I don’t think they even matter much from an economic point of view,” he said, before adding, “Diversity’s important. The Oscars are not that important.” This is, of course, demonstrably false: Oscar nods and wins often influence what kinds of films get financed in the future and can even lead to “stratospheric increases in salary” for actors in particular. At the time of the interview, the Coen brothers had won four Oscars and been nominated for 10.

Perhaps the most pernicious factor contributing to such deflections is the oft-repeated belief that the industry is an impartial adjudicator, or that things just pan out the way they do by chance. King is hardly alone in his views. In 2016, the second year in a row that saw the Academy nominate only white actors, the director Quentin Tarantino answered a question about the Hateful Eight actor Samuel L. Jackson not receiving a nomination with a mealy-mouthed assessment. “My only guess, frankly, is that [voters] take him for granted. That would be my only guess," Tarantino said, later adding that his own films actually represented racial progress within the Western genre. Tarantino’s latest movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which isn’t a Western, has been nominated for 10 Oscars this year and was criticized for casting an all-white ensemble.

Tim Burton, who directed Jackson in another racially homogenous film, compared concerns about all-white casts with the existence of genres created precisely because of Hollywood exclusion: “I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black,” he said in a 2016 interview with Bustle. “I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies."

So often, though, even Hollywood gatekeepers who have expressed a theoretical wish for a more inclusive entertainment landscape seem resigned to maintaining the status quo within their own field of influence. Martin Scorsese, who in 1993 wrote a letter to The New York Times arguing that “diversity guarantees our cultural survival,” rejected a question last year about the lack of prominent roles for women in his films. “That’s not even a valid point,” he said while promoting his latest, The Irishman, which received 10 Oscar nods. “It’s a question I’ve had for so many years. It is a waste of everybody’s time,” later adding that his films did include these sorts of roles “if a story calls for a female lead.” It’s a commonly raised point—that storytellers should put the needs of the story first—but one that often frames diversity as a chore, or in clinical terms rather than considering its narrative possibilities through an imaginative lens. “You don’t sit down and ... say, ‘I’m going to write a story that involves four black people, three Jews, and a dog’—right?” Joel Coen said in 2016.

There are, of course, ways to shift the Hollywood landscape without radically changing one’s own art, and many Hollywood heavyweights do use their cachet to open doors for others. But the seeming reluctance of men such as King, Tarantino, and Burton to conceive of themselves as figures of influence obscures their responsibility to the broader entertainment community. Despite often being arbiters of both financial resources and soft power, these artists continue to place industry-wide concerns at arm’s length. As my colleague David Sims wrote, “Academy members themselves have the power to expand what kinds of movies are considered Oscar contenders. One step would be to reject the preemptive hand-waving doled out to so many acclaimed films, many of them artsier or smaller-scale, that supposedly will never play with Oscar voters for little reason other than tradition.” Until Oscar voters acknowledge—and reconfigure—their circumscribed visions of artistry, the rest of Hollywood (and the moviegoing public) will be subject to the same wearying cycles.

[mae]

[Still Servant]

See: The Dark Knight.

I'm really surprised so many people aren't giving Once Upon a Time in Hollywood more of a chance. It's a film ABOUT Hollywood and movies directed by one of the more well-respected directors the industry has to offer.

I agree with Web, definitely give Joker a shot. Just keep in mind that Web gave Polar a 10 out of 10 and anointed it the best film of the year earlier in the year.

The Dark Knight is exactly why Joker should be considered the favourite. People have been wanting a film like Joker to get the big award since The Dark Knight. And unlike The Dark Knight it got nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, which shows people in all divisions of the academy really liked the movie enough to vote it onto the shortlist in 11 categories. Hollywood has a shot, sure, which is why I have it ranked at #4 in my own odds. But between 1917 no doubt getting top pick from many technical members of the academy and The Irishman will probably get major support from the old crowd, and with Joker no doubt appealing most to all the young members that went into the Academy recently, Hollywood I don't think will be able to make up that gap....especially if Little Women gets a lot of support from the female Academy members.

Also, don't discount how HARD the media tried to sink Joker before it came out. There could be many people in Hollywood quite sick of the media's behavior who could push Joker up just to spite them. That's why I want Joker to win. It is the ultimate triumph of the year, even if it isn't the best film. a 50M budget film making over a billion dollars, a major risk for a comic book film that the media tried to tank with fear mongering and trying to cause hysteria and may end up winning best picture AND will probably end up outgrossing Rise of Skywalker which cost over 400M. Joker is everything Hollywood wants in a film. Don't sleep on it.

Just because people have been wanting a film like Dark Knight and Joker to win doesn't mean it's going to happen. It's got a good shot at it, but I will be surprised.

[Hunchback Jack]

I tend to agree. While movies like Joker are getting more recognition, I still don’t think they are the kinds of movies that win best picture. I suspect those who nominated it will feel they’ve given Joker it’s reward by nominating it.

Phoenix winning best actor is another story, however. I think he’s in with a good chance there.

[Mattrick]

I wouldn't be thinking Joker if another film had a lot of steam behind it, but I don't think any film right now has clear favourite written on it. 1917 maybe, but I can see a lot of people not enjoying that film.

[Still Servant]

All 4 Actor categories are locks at the moment.

[Still Servant]

After Parasite's win for Best Ensemble last night at the SAGs and the fact that the cast got a standing ovation just for coming out and introducing the package for the film, I'm starting to think we are all sleeping on Parasite for BP. The film seems to be incredibly popular with those within the industry. It's my favorite film of the year, so I wouldn't have a problem with it winning Best Picture.

[mae]

Not me, I've thought for a while it had a real shot.

[Still Servant]

Not me, I've thought for a while it had a real shot.

I kind of thought the Academy would just give it Best International Film and give BP do another film, but I'm starting to rethink that logic. Parasite seemed to really resonate with people.

[mae]

Yes, more so than Roma.

[Ricky]

After Parasite's win for Best Ensemble last night at the SAGs and the fact that the cast got a standing ovation just for coming out and introducing the package for the film...

I was really surprised by that as well. The movie seems to have a lot more steam than I thought. I'm seeing it on the 8th, so I'm curious what all the fuss is about.

[fernandito]

I live in the Koreatown part of Los Angeles. When I went to catch the movie at a local theater, literally every single person in that theater was Korean (or Asian at the very least) except for me and my date.

It was awesome, like it added to the experience

[Still Servant]

After Parasite's win for Best Ensemble last night at the SAGs and the fact that the cast got a standing ovation just for coming out and introducing the package for the film...

I was really surprised by that as well. The movie seems to have a lot more steam than I thought. I'm seeing it on the 8th, so I'm curious what all the fuss is about.

This is the point where I start to worry that it's going to get super hyped for people. Hopefully, that doesn't happen.

[Mattrick]

Roma had tons of Steam last year too. It won lots of the big awards. But the Best Foreign Film aspect...I'm not picking another Foreign Film for best picture after Roma because of that.

[Mattrick]

I live in the Koreatown part of Los Angeles. When I went to catch the movie at a local theater, literally every single person in that theater was Korean (or Asian at the very least) except for me and my date.

It was awesome, like it added to the experience

My good friend lives in Seoul. That's his experience for every movie lol

[mae]

[Mattrick]

"In the past ten years, the only non-English language films nominated for best picture are Amour and the aforementioned Parasite."





oof

[mae]

Yeah he added a note about Roma in the comments. But the point is that it happens very rarely. True, it has been happening more and more, three times this past decade. That's great news, I hope it happens even more often. Prior to the 2010s, in all of Oscars history only seven foreign films have been nominated for Best Picture (eight if you count Babel): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...Academy_Awards

But three movies in ten years?

[Mattrick]

It's a regional awards show. Most people don't have access to foreign films. The one thing a lot of people seem to forget is that many Academy members are still working...they don't have time to see everything that's wide released, let alone more obscure foreign films.

Still, most countries have it easier than Canada. Our films never get nominated for shit unless they're in French. Room is the closest to an English Canadian film to get nominated for Best Picture, but that was also co-produced with Ireland and England.

[Still Servant]

I live in the Koreatown part of Los Angeles. When I went to catch the movie at a local theater, literally every single person in that theater was Korean (or Asian at the very least) except for me and my date.

It was awesome, like it added to the experience

My good friend lives in Seoul. That's his experience for every movie lol

Is he the one that gives you the posters that you are going to "send" me someday.

[mae]

[johnny981]

Here are my picks for the 92nd academy awards and they are-

1. Best Picture: 1917
2. Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix-Joker
3. Best Actress: Renee Zellweger, "Judy"
4. Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt," Once Upon a time...in Hollywood"
5.Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern," A Marriage "
6 Best Director: Sam Mendes,"1917"
7.Adapted Screenplay-Little Women
8.Original Screenplay-"Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood," Quentin Tarentino
9. Animate Feature-Toy Story 4
10. Original Score-Thomas Newsman,"1917"
11.Original Song-Toy Story 4
12.Cinematography-Roger Deakins,"1917"
13. Costume Design: Little Women
14. Animated Short: Hair Love
15. Visual effects: 1917
16. Live Action short film: Nefta Football Club
17. Documentary short subject: St. Louis Superman
18. Documentary feature: The Edge of Democracy
19. International film: " Parasite," South Korea
20.Film Editing: Parasite
21. Production Design: 1917
22. Makeup & Hairstyling: Judy
23.Sound Editing: 1917,Oliver Tarney & Rachel Tate
& 24. Sound Mixing: 1917, Mark Taylor & Stuart Wilson.

I Hope that I am a winner!

John Huerta
308 W. Elm St.
Warren, Arkansas 71671
870-466-5016

[mae]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...le/2020/01/27/

Stephen King: The Oscars are still rigged in favor of white people

Discussions of arts and culture, like discussions of politics, have become increasingly acrimonious and polarized in recent years. Lines of belief are drawn with indelible ink, and if you step over them — wittingly or otherwise — you find yourself in the social-media version of the stocks and subject to a barrage of electronic turnips and cabbages.

I stepped over one of those lines recently, by saying something on Twitter that I mistakenly thought was noncontroversial: “I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.” The subject was the Academy Awards. I also said, in essence, that those judging creative excellence should be blind to questions of race, gender or sexual orientation.

I did not say that was the case today, because nothing could be further from the truth. Nor did I say that films, novels, plays and music focusing on diversity and/or inequality cannot be works of creative genius. They can be, and often are. Ava DuVernay’s 2019 Netflix miniseries, “When They See Us,” about the wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five, is a splendid case in point.

Has there been progress in the film community? Yes, some. I’m old enough to remember when there were only a handful of African American directors and about the only female director in Hollywood was Ida Lupino, who made hard-edged noir B pictures in the 1950s and later worked in television. Her directing work was never nominated for an Oscar or an Emmy.

For answers to why some talented artists are nominated and some — such as Greta Gerwig, who helmed the astoundingly good new version of “Little Women” — are not, you might need to look no further than the demographic makeup of those who vote for the Academy Awards. It’s better than it was, certainly. Only eight years ago, 94 percent of the 5,700 voters were white, according to the Los Angeles Times, 77 percent were male and 54 percent were more than 60 years old. This year, women make up 32 percent of voters (up only 1 percent from last year) and minority members equal 16 percent of the total.

Not good enough. Not even within shouting distance of good enough.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is trying — in a stumbling fashion far too slow for the Age of Apple and Facebook — to make changes. In the years before #OscarsSoWhite (2015), the academy added about 115 members per year, arguing that a smaller voting pool kept the professional caliber of the voters high. If that makes you mad, it should.

In 2019, the academy invited 842 new members, after inviting 928 the year before, which would bring the total to about 9,000. Give them credit for trying to catch up . . . but not too much credit. Of the nine films nominated for Best Picture this year, the majority — “The Irishman,” “Ford v Ferrari,” “1917,” “Joker” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” — are what my sons call “man-fiction.” There are fights, guns and many white faces.

Here’s another piece of the puzzle. Voters are supposed to look at all films in serious contention. This year, that would be about 60. There’s no way of checking how many voters actually do, because viewing is on the honor system. How many of the older, whiter contingent actually saw “Harriet,” about Harriet Tubman, or “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”? Just asking the question. If they did see all the films, were they moved by what they saw? Did they feel the catharsis that’s the basis of all that artists aspire to? Did they understand?

Where am I in this diversity discussion? Fair question. The answer is white, male, old and rich. (I didn’t grow up rich, and the memories of working for minimum wage linger, but I sure am now.) It would be absurd to dispute that and equally absurd to apologize for it. The first two traits are genetic, and the last two are the work of Time the Avenger.

Yet I’m proud to have written about strong female characters facing complex issues, in novels that have often been adapted for movies or television, with the characters brought powerfully to life by gifted actresses. The span runs from “Carrie,” a novel of female empowerment, more than 40 years ago, to “Lisey’s Story,” now in production as a limited series, about the power of sisterhood, a thing I learned about from my mother and her sisters, plus my wife’s mother and hers.

When people complained on social media a few years ago about Idris Elba being cast as Roland Deschain, the gunslinger at the center of “The Dark Tower” books, I replied that I didn’t care what the character’s skin color was, as long as he could draw fast and shoot straight.

The response reflects my overall attitude that, as with justice, judgments of creative excellence should be blind. But that would be the case in a perfect world, one where the game isn’t rigged in favor of the white folks. Creative excellence comes from every walk, color, creed, gender and sexual orientation, and it’s made richer and bolder and more exciting by diversity, but it’s defined by being excellent. Judging anyone’s work by any other standard is insulting and — worse — it undermines those hard-won moments when excellence from a diverse source is rewarded (against, it seems, all the odds) by leaving such recognition vulnerable to being dismissed as politically correct.

We don’t live in that perfect world, and this year’s less-than-diverse Academy Awards nominations once more prove it. Maybe someday we will. I can dream, can’t I? After all, I make stuff up for a living.