Award Season 2015

[Chienfantome]

I would have loved to see Dano get nominated for Love & Mercy, and The Good Dinosaur for Best Animated Film.

[transformers2]

If Elba was eligible, he would've certainly gotten a nomination. He got a Golden Globe, SAG and BAFTA nod and his performance was way more buzzed about than Hardy or Ruffalo's. Like six said, his performance was substantially better than Bale's and Ruffalo's (haven't seen Bridge of Spies yet so I can't comment on Rylance) and as good if, not better than, Stallone's.

[numbersix]

I didn't know Beasts was ineligible. What your source on that, Boosch?

[BanksIsDaFuture]

Beasts of No Nation was completely eligible.

It came out day-and-date, and it's listed as eligible by the Academy itself. http://www.oscars.org/oscars/rules-eligibility

[numbersix]

Well it's on the Eligible List, and rule 3 says:

"Motion pictures released in such nontheatrical media on or after the first day of their Los Angeles County qualifying run remain eligible".

The "on" in that sentence means day-and-date releases are eligible.

EDIT: Banks got there first.

[Buscemi]

But was it really a day-and-date movie? Day-and-date movies are titles filmed for theatrical release and released on VOD services such as Vudu and CinemaNow (where you have to pay a certain amount for a single movie). Beasts of No Nation was made for Netflix and distributed much like a made-for-TV movie (and most awards committees consider Netflix a pay cable service rather than a VOD service). Considering it a movie made for theatres feels like bending the rules (much like how the BBC until recently was able to get Sherlock entered in the miniseries categories just because every series was a different case) and you think the Academy would have caught on. Sure, it played on the festival circuit to give it the legitimacy of a theatrical release but those screenings were mostly one-offs and it was still going to premiere on Netflix no matter what.

In short, I really don't get how this one was so different from past titles ruled ineligible (Scenes from a Marriage, The Last Seduction) for running on television first. Netflix might not be traditional television but they play by the same rules. It just feels kind of unfair.

But anyway, I feel Netflix will change their strategies in the near-future and make all future film productions be considered direct to television for awards purposes. The Beasts of No Nation day-and-date experiment didn't work the way Netflix hoped it would (as only a couple of chains ran the film and Bleecker Street only got about a tenth of the hoped-for 300 theatres, in addition the theatrical gross was minuscule). Also, The Ridiculous Six was almost totally exclusive to Netflix and did a lot better for the company (even though there was almost no promotion for that one and general reception was awful).

[Walleye413]

No new news to this crowd, I'm sure, but I remember reading a great interview on Gabrielle Union. It was a few years back and she was commenting not he fact that she believed she was just as capable of any audition that Jennifer Aniston was getting at the time. Their resumes were awfully similar: Television, Movies, both near the same age and just stunningly beautiful. But she said try as she might, she never, ever got to audition for the same roles. Not once. It's hard to get quality parts when you can't even get in the room. A role would be listed as Female Lead, but she didn't have a chance unless is said Female Lead of Color. That doesn't fall on the Academy necessarily, but someone's got to make a stink before it will change.

[numbersix]

Boosch, I think you're going to have to accept the way film is going. Beasts is a totally valid Oscar film and not a TV Movie. It certainly doesn't look like one and it's budget (6m) is above most TV movies. It's not made for TV in the way TV movies used to be (poor production values). Companies like Netflix are changing the way film is released and consumed and the world is changing to adopt that. In fact, most Netflix deals (for films like Jadotville, The Invitation, or War Machine) have a built-in window for a theatrical release that producers can use to release a few weeks in advance, so that option is there if they want.

Anyway, I doubt Netflix will change their strategy with awards. Fine, Beasts didn't make an impact, but with War Machine and other films, they will be looking for awards to finally prove that this model is a way the aging Academy will have to accept. It's already happening.

[Buscemi]

Have you seen some of the movies HBO has made for their network? Things like Behind the Candelabra and The Normal Heart are theatrical-quality in cast, direction, and budget (the former even played theatrically outside the US). So it's very possible to make a TV movie look theatrical and Beasts of No Nation is more comparable to an HBO movie than say, a big studio movie (hell, it even says in the promotional material "A Netflix Original", much like how product made for television is promoted) But you don't see people confusing HBO's in-house films for theatrically released product, even though it's right up there. So why should Netflix not be subject to the same standards HBO must face? Netflix, like HBO, produces shows and picks up movies for first and second run pay cable rights. They are long past being a video store at this point. They have become a television network, just without the TV.

Meanwhile, I would be honestly surprised if War Machine went to theatres. It's a $60 million film with a limited audience and most theatre chains (not even AMC, who has been lax with traditional day-and-date releases) won't play it. If Netflix wants to make any money back on it, they may have to sell some of the rights (most likely home video rights, as I can't see a Brad Pitt film not hitting physical formats). Most of their other planned releases are limited to a certain audience. If Netflix really wants to challenge the establishment, they'll need to get something that has more appeal than your typical one-and-done at the box office product. None of this Adam Sandler/Duplass Brothers exclusivity business.

And Drafthouse is putting out The Invitation, not Netflix.

[Chienfantome]

this model is a way the aging Academy will have to accept.

I think this is where it went wrong for Beasts of no Nation. I'm pretty sure many Academy voters didn't want to vote for the film because it was a Netflix film, a company which is "desecrating" the film theater. And I'm pretty sure that's something a certain generation of voters took into consideration.

[numbersix]

HBO isn't a good comparison, because it fits into the traditional model (though it must be said that Candelabras was released abroad as a feature and did well and won awards). Netflix is in the process of changing the model.

As for War Machine, they will probably release it on a limited basis. Of course that won't cover its budget, but the point is that it will play to the traditional model and audience (such as those who don't have Netflix) and also make it eligible for awards. As Chien said, the Academy are resisting Netflix, as the film industry is one of the most backward industries I can think of, but it's only a matter of time before that changes. Beasts was the first, and while that didn't work the slew of original features Netflix is currently making will alter that completely.

[undeadmonkey]

Six is right. Unless the academy wants to nominate Transformers 11, Cars 7, Fast and Furious 18 and Star Wars 201 for Best picture, they'll have to start looking elsewhere.

In the not too distant future, if you want dumbed down generic studio blockbusters, you'll go to the theaters. If you're looking for something else, you might be lucky enough to live in a town with an art-house theater, but for those of us who don't live in LA, New York, Paris or London, we'll have to go online.

[Buscemi]

Spotlight won the Critic's Choice Award for Best Picture. That now gives it a incredibly strong shot (65% chance, 76.5% chance using results since 1999) at winning Best Picture. DiCaprio and Larson won the lead acting awards, Stallone took Supporting Actor, but Alicia Vikander took Supporting Actress instead of Leigh, Mara, or Winslet. Best Director was also a bit of a surprise as George Miller won (Mad Max: Fury Road also took home the most awards with nine by sweeping the action genre categories as well as nearly every technical and artistic category).

[W]

Anyone else think Spike Lee and Jada's "lily white" boycott hurt by their (what I've heard are) bad Oscar bait films getting no noms. Spike made a film he thought would be nominated and it isn't so it looks like he's taking his ball and going home. Jada's husband made a film with all the Oscar bait categories checked off on paper and nothing. I'm not saying that's their thinking, but it would definitely sound better coming from others.

There should be more minorities in starring roles and perhaps Coogler, Jordan, Elba, etc should have been nominated. I don't know, I haven't seen them yet. Creed is never on at my theater at the time I want to go. I've yet to see most of the nominated films. Is it possible they're all better than Creed or Straight Outta Compton? Maybe. Is it sad that we only have two films with minority leads that I can make examples of? Probably.

There is some racism in Hollywood. There is racism everywhere. People get mad when you change a white character to black for instance (Fantastic Four, that Harry Potter Play). But the real problems are minority films aren't green lit in the first place, minorities are skipped over for bigger roles, and parts are written as white by white writers 90% of the time. Hopefully with some of the success of minority films like Compton, Ride Along, Creed, etc more things will get greenlit (Spanish language Latino themed films are starting to do decent the past couple years as well). Also, are there enough minorities in the field to begin with? From my limited experience, drama clubs/majors are a very high percentage white and when you see a "struggling actor" they're always white.

I don't think the Academy is looking at the screeners saying "Black, no. White, maybe." But like I said, I have no experience with it.

[Buscemi]

I think the Academy decided that they did their job in 2013 and went back to standard operating procedure of picking the generic product (The Danish Girl, Joy) and avoiding things people raved about (Love & Mercy, Dope, and Inside Out, Sicario, and Creed for more nominations). And it's not just black-themed movies that they snubbed. Feminist-themed movies (Grandma) and performances (Charlize Theron, Lily Tomlin) were passed over in favor of Jennifer Lawrence playing someone who invented a mop and animated movies were once again pigeonholed in their own category as Inside Out didn't get a Best Picture nomination.

As for the screeners, two companies (Fox and Weinstein) pretty much control the Oscars and the only non-white lead I can recall in any of their award entries was Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight (who was stuck in a crowded Best Actor field). Potential new Oscar perennial Open Road only had one (the aforementioned Dope) and it was pretty much ignored in the shortlist (only one of the four songs was shortlisted in the Best Original Song category) while Focus had nothing in contention that wasn't featuring mainly white leads. The voters aren't making the decisions, the distributors (the same distributors that refused to greenlight Selma but have no problems making unfunny and often stereotypical Marlon Wayans movies) are.

And I can attest that Chi-raq is a horrible movie (it's pretty much what if Tyler Perry made Selma) that critics somehow liked but Concussion was better than the reviews stated (Smith's actually great in it but it had no chance as it opened in the thick of the NFL season and the Sony/NFL battles became public).