Alternative Film Guide

Jack Mathews‘ "Next Up in Oscar Race: Voters Who Matter" in the New York Daily News:

"It’s been fun watching the evolution of the awards, as critics’ groups narrowed the field with their collective awards while breaking the hearts of many of the individual members. Movies that will end up on many top 10 lists didn’t even get a nod of collective approval. When the small Irish musical Once [above] opened in May, it received almost universal praise and with an 88 (out of 100) score on the review collating site metacritic.com, it’s the year’s third best-reviewed film. Only No Country for Old Men and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly rank higher, yet Once is completely off the awards radar screen."

***

Jack Mathews again: "Jack’s Pix for Best Pix" in the New York Daily News:

"I dropped out of the New York Film Critics Circle a few years back because I thought its awards voting process was corrupt. Many of its winners are compromise candidates that score third or fourth on the first ballot and, after several more politically-motivated ballots, come in first.

"In fact, as many critics vote AGAINST movies as vote for them."

***

Stephen Witty’s "Critical Mess" in the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

"I chaired Monday’s vote of the New York Film Critics Circle. But after I’ve read some of the reports on it, I wonder if I was just dreaming.

"I’ve read about how the old guard rallied to keep the difficult [Bob] Dylan picture I’m Not There [right, Cate Blanchett] from winning any awards. I’ve read how we honored No Country for Old Men only because other critics groups had honored There Will Be Blood, or that we only mentioned Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone because everyone else did.

"I’ve read that our foreign-language prize to The Lives of Others, last year’s Oscar-winner, showed our reluctance to support new films, or demonstrated a lack of imagination. I’ve read, from a disgruntled ex-member, that our entire voting process was corrupt. I’ve even read that I wasn’t the chairperson at all.

"What I haven’t read are many facts."

***

Scott Foundas in "To Everything There Is a Season" in the LA Weekly:

"As the editor of this paper’s film pages as well as the chief critic, I try to afford as little coverage as possible to the phenomenon known as ‘awards season,’ in large part because it is a season presumed to end with the handing out of the Oscars — a statuette whose golden luster has been so tarnished by the number of thoroughly undeserving films upon which it has been bestowed in recent years (Crash, The Departed, Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, American Beauty) that one can scarcely be expected to take it seriously as a barometer of the year’s best film achievements. And when you hear the ballyhoo that, in 2007, the likes of Atonement, American Gangster, The Kite Runner and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are seen as serious Academy Award contenders, you know it’s going to be business as usual come Oscar night. Yet, the blogosphere and mainstream print media alike continue to pour forth with Oscar soothsayers, whose column inches rival or exceed what these same newspapers and websites devote to legitimate film criticism, implying that how you play the game (which is to say, whether the films in question are any good or not) is considerably less important than whether you win or lose."

***

Patrick Goldstein’s "Critics make much ado about Oscar" in the Los Angeles Times:

"Just when you think the media’s intoxication with Oscar and Golden Globes buzz has finally reached a fever pitch, some new brawl breaks out that takes it to a new level of hysteria. Current highlights include: A rant by LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas, who wrote off a string of recent best picture winners (including The Departed, Crash and American Beauty) as "thoroughly undeserving" of real achievement, then went on to dismiss Oscar soothsayers as "pseudo-journalistic white noise" taking up valuable column inches that could be devoted to legitimate film criticism.

"This provoked a tart zinger from Oscar blogger Scott Feinberg on his website andthewinneris.blog.com. Feinberg asked, referring to Foundas’ account of the LA Film critics’ voting, ‘How do you have the gall to participate in an awards season vote and then criticize those of us who cover it?’ That came just days before Feinberg, assessing Thursday’s Golden Globe nominations, described the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. as ‘one of the most corrupt, pathetic, kowtowing groups of awards voters imaginable.’"

***

It’s too bad that U.S. film critics have such short memories — see Jack Mathews’ top comment above — as Once is the type of small, foreign film that needs year-end critics’ awards so Academy members can a) become aware of its existence b) check it out. Here’s wondering if voting "compromises," as mentioned by Mathews in his second comment, ended up leaving Once almost totally shut out of the myriad U.S. critics’ lists.

Both Stephen Witty’s and Scott Foundas’ articles are well worth a read. I do, however, disagree with Foundas’ statement that the Oscar’s "golden luster" has been badly tarnished in recent years. After all, his views on Crash, American Beauty, etc. are his own. Oscar voters — and many others elsewhere — may find those and other recent Oscar winners simply marvelous. There’s no golden-luster tarnishing if it’s all a matter of personal taste. (Many film critics, for instance, loved The Departed.)

That said, on a personal level I always worry whenever a movie I admire ends up receiving many Oscars — especially the dreaded Best Picture statuette. Not that that happens very often. The last time was when American Beauty won the best film and best director awards back at the 2000 ceremony. I clearly remember that then and there I began wondering if the movie was actually any good. (I still haven’t rewatched it. It’ll happen one of these days.)

Also, going back to what Foundas says about the Academy Awards’ tarnished luster, it’s not as if the Best Picture Oscar has only recently begun going to films of lesser merit (as per some film reviewers). In fact, each decade has its (large) share of Oscar picks that critics enjoy pounding on, from The Broadway Melody and Cimarron to Going My Way, The Greatest Show on Earth, Oliver!, Gandhi, and Braveheart.

And finally, in his article Patrick Goldstein asserts that "critics are wrestling with their waning relevance, especially when it comes to the Oscars. The award announcements make a nice one-day headline, but the reality is that while a chorus of negative reviews can hurt a small film, if a film has a big studio campaign behind it (2001’s A Beautiful Mind being a good example), it can survive a lot of critical brickbats. Critic awards have little correlation to Oscar victories. You have to go back to 1993 to find a film (Schindler’s List [right]) that was awarded best picture by both the academy and the LA Film Critics Assn."

Now, a quick glance at studio ads for potential Oscar contenders tells a radically different story. Critics’ awards and good notices are prominently displayed because they do have an effect on Academy voters. Without critical raves and awards, films such as In the Bedroom, Capote, Brokeback Mountain, Sideways, and Letters from Iwo Jima would have had little chance to receive Academy Award nominations for best picture or in most other categories, for that matter.

Come Oscar time, Academy members receive a gazillion screeners. They have time to watch only a handful of those before their ballots are due. Thus, critics’ best-of-the-year lists serve as reliable guidelines for Academy-ites to decide which lucky titles will get seen and quite possibly voted for.

This year, if Julie Christie (right), Amy Ryan, or even No Country for Old Men (which has been distributed by Paramount’s specialty arm, Paramount Vantage) had been ignored by critics’ groups, you can be sure they would be ignored by the Academy as well. (That’ll be the case of the aforementioned Once, no matter how well-liked it was upon its release. The same goes for Christie’s outstanding Away from Her co-star, Gordon Pinsent.) Small films can’t rely on big budgets for Oscar ads; but if critics back them up at awards time then the money for such ads are deemed worthwhile.

Also, Goldstein’s LA Film Critics Assn. (LAFCA) example is misleading. True, Schindler’s List was the last film that won top honors both from the Academy and the LAFCA. But that’s only part of the story.

From 1993 to 2006, only three LAFCA winners failed to receive an Oscar nod for best picture. (For the record, they were Leaving Las Vegas in 1995, About Schmidt in 2002, and American Splendor in 2003.)

During that same period, co-winner Sacha Baron Cohen (for Borat in 2006; he tied with Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland), Vera Farmiga (for Down to the Bone in 2005), Liam Neeson (for Kinsey in 2004), Michael Douglas (for Wonder Boys in 2000), and co-winner Ally Sheedy (for High Art in 1998; she tied with Fernanda Montenegro for Central Station) were the only five LAFCA best actor/actress winners who failed to receive either an Academy Award nomination or the statuette itself. Last year, LAFCA winners Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren went on to win Oscars.

As for the New York Film Critics Circle, the odds of an Oscar match are similar to those of the LAFCA. Two matching winners since 1993: Schindler’s List and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003. Five winners that failed to receive an Oscar nod for best picture: Leaving Las Vegas in 1995, Topsy Turvy in 1999, Mulholland Dr. in 2001, Far from Heaven in 2002, and United 93 in 2006. (It should be noted that of those, only two — Topsy Turvy and Far from Heaven — failed to receive a best director nomination.)

Also from 1993–2006, only six NYFCC winners in the best actor/actress categories failed to get at least an Oscar nod: David Thewlis (for Naked in 1993), Linda Fiorentino (for The Last Seduction in 1994; the film was deemed ineligible for the Oscars because it had been shown on US cable television prior to its big-screen debut), Jennifer Jason Leigh (for Georgia in 1995), Cameron Diaz (for There’s Something About Mary in 1998), Hope Davis (for American Splendor and The Secret Lives of Dentists in 2003), and Paul Giamatti (for Sideways in 2004).

Not bad for critics’ groups with so little influence.

 

THE IRONY OF FATE Strikes Again

Nashville Film Festival 2008 - Dates

Critics’ Poll at indieWIRE

Interview with Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud

North American Film Critics’ Best of 2007

Top Ten Undistributed Films in the US in 2007

THE GOLDEN COMPASS and Catholic Censors

Critics’ Choices

Slamdance 2008: Short Films

Slamdance 2008

 

 

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