No more pencils, no more books, and no more dirty looks for Oscar voters! At least when it comes to accepting new forms of cinema.
All too often, the industry hears, “It’s fine, but not for the Oscars,” or “That’s not something the branch would go for.”
As the Academy heads into the future with new leadership in place, CEO Bill Kramer, just-elected President Janet Yang, and the 54-strong Board of Governors have a chance to invite the casual movie lover along for the ride. The organization has the opportunity not only to expand the attractiveness of its television broadcasts but also to expand what it deems to be ‘worth doing’.
We recently learned that the Academy’s Animation Branch rejected Netflix’s “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood” for consideration, stating that it “doesn’t feel the technologies meet the definition of animation in the category rules” due to “extensive use” of live-action footage. It is feared that A24’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes on will face the same fate.
How would a classic animated hybrid like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) perform today? The motion-captured animated film “The Adventures of Tintin” (2011) was considered eligible but later discarded. What about movies like “Avatar (2009), which is not made for animation but uses a mo-cap cover, or “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993), which survived before the animation category was created and featured clay dolls? There’s no real difference Cut between any of them except for the filmmaker’s aesthetic preference.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who were behind the Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018), have called on the Academy to take their medium more seriously. Lord tweeted following the news of the Apollo 10½ exclusion: “I would like to make a controversial statement that animated films are animated films.”
This holding on to pearls by the academy’s old guard goes beyond the animation branch. The Documentary Branch, which has just over 650 active members, has barred anyone outside its community from participating in its shortlist or field nomination. By contrast, for the best international and mobile features, Academy members can choose to vote for the final candidates. The average international submission is about 90 applications per year and approximately 28 motion pictures. In the past two years, the Documents branch had to review 238 and 138 features, respectively. It’s hard to believe the branch took so long to look at the pool properly, especially considering the rarity of adding films to the Academy Streaming Room. Instead, voters maintain the status quo, relying on name recognition rather than seizing the opportunity to embrace discovery.
Read: Latest predictions, visit miscellaneous Oscars distribution.
We’ve seen Docs features evolve in the way they tell their stories and also find acceptance from the branch – take last year’s “Flee” (nominated in the International, Animation, and Docs categories). But there are countless scratch-off examples of films removed from their respective rolls, such as “The Rescue” (2021), “Dick Johnson Is Dead” (2020) and “Wouldn’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018).
Let cinema – in all its many forms – prevail.
Oscars 2023 predictions
Best picture | Director | Actor | Actress | assistant actor | assistant actress | original screen | Modified screen | Animated feature | Production Design | cinema | Fashion Design | Film Editing | Make-up and hairstyling | sound | Visual Effects | original class | original song | Documentary feature | International Advantage | movable shorts | short documentary | Direct action is short
[ad_2]
