Kevin Spacey, Mena Suvari in American Beauty
Critics and Awards Season: Part I
It's too bad that U.S. film critics have such short memories — see Jack Mathews' top comment in the previous page — 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 of receiving 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, had Julie Christie, Amy Ryan, or even No Country for Old Men been ignored by critics' groups, you can be sure they would be ignored by the Academy as well. In fact, that'll be the case of the aforementioned Once, no matter how well-liked it was upon its release, and the same goes for Christie's outstanding Away from Her co-star, Gordon Pinsent, who has been all but ignored by US-based critics. After all, small films can't rely on big budgets for Oscar ads; but if critics back them up at awards time then such ads are deemed worthwhile. Ads may lead to nominations, nominations will surely lead to lots of publicity, and that publicity will likely lead to more people becoming aware of films that had previously gone under the radar.
Also, Goldstein's Los Angeles Film Critics (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, LAFCA 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, above), 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 (NYFCC), 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 an Academy Award nomination for best director.)
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.