The Hot Blog

While I sincerely am bummed writers are losing their job....screw anyone who makes a living predicting what will be nominated for an Oscar. That includes fellow commenter Kris Tapley. I mean...really. It's an ABSURD assignment. Not only that, but it's like, anti-journalism.

Whatever these people write finds it's way into the conscience of voters and worse (or is it) the folks at large. Ugh. Lame and stupid. Good luck with a new gig G. Whipp!

It does suck that major papers will hire more people to predict Oscars than actually review the movies.

I don't wish anyone out of a job though. I wish for more jobs. Probably hopelessly.

My living is sustained by a lot more than predicting the Oscars, don lewis, increasingly a minute detail in what I do. If you've read my site and the work I did for Variety (and continue to do in their features issues this time of year), I'd expect you to see that.

Certainly the current state of economy is causing job loss, but the newspaper industry has been hemorrhaging readership and jobs for many years.

Only the fucking newspaper industry could not figure out how to use the INTERNET! Mooks, the lot of them, but the Gurus seems to be a jinxed lot as of late. May Poppa Shinga Dinga suspend all guru update until this lot are unjinxed.

"screw anyone who makes a living predicting what will be nominated for an Oscar."

Kind of a weird thing to be upset about, Don. Clearly, if people are making a living off something, that means there is a market for it and I don't see anything wrong with giving people what they want. It's not like they're making a living off of eating the flesh of print journalists, now that would be something I'd be against.

I've never understood the disdain that some people have had for the Oscars and the business surrounding the Oscars; it actually gives people jobs while at the same time promoting the discussion of quality films.

I don't read your site, Kris because I don't give 2 poops about Oscar prognosticating. However since you do do more there, I'll check it out. I seriously just thought you popped your head up once a year...my bad!

Things have changed drastically, Don.

"I've never understood the disdain that some people have had for the Oscars and the business surrounding the Oscars; it actually gives people jobs while at the same time promoting the discussion of quality films."

The problem I've always had with the incessant Oscar-talk that happens at certain times of the year is that it promotes the discussion of _some_ quality film (i.e., the ones with that particular Academy stamp of approval) while crowding out discussion of other, smaller and less conventional quality films, not to mention all the lousy films that get way more attention than they deserve (throatclearCrashcough).

That's a good point too, Jeff. But I also think that all those "snubs" by the Oscars and the prognosticators make people like me beat the drum for films and performances that will be overlooked. I think because of that, most good films don't go overlooked by film fans even if they might be overlooked by the Academy. Look at Zodiac last year; a brilliant film that didn't get a nomination, but we talked about it a whole lot last year during Oscar season.

The Oscars aren't about recognition, they're about competition. If the Academy were geared toward the former, they'd run the awards more like a Hall of Fame than a Super Bowl. And what I read and hear more of than the promotion of the discussion of quality films is the promotion of the DISSING of the OTHER guy's quality films.

But Hallick, that back and forth is for the parties directly involved with the making and marketing of the film. For fans of film, it's really all about what you make of it. If you really detest the Oscars as a whole, then it is just another event that provokes a discussion about what is and what isn't "worthy" as a film to a fan. If you really love the Oscars, then you can discuss what is worthy of recognition by the Academy. But again, it' what you make of it, so you can love or hate the Oscars as an institution but as a conversation-starter, it's not a bad one.

Noah, you're true to a certain extent, but the mere existence of the Oscars as the frame for the discussion means that it gets channeled in very particular ways. David Poland doesn't make a running tab for months on end of the movies that he thinks are the best of the year, he makes a running list of the movies that he thinks a small group of voters may or may not pay attention to at the end of the year, even knowing that a certain number of them are movies that he actively dislikes. And I'm not saying that to indict him but rather the Oscar hype machine as a whole.

And just to be clear, here and in the other thread, I understand that to a large degree I'm tilting at windmills - but those windmills aren't going to tilt themselves, dammit.

Hey, I'm with you to a certain extent as well. I think it would be great if we could just talk about movies without having the Oscars always lingering in the background. But if it wasn't the Oscars, it would be the Golden Globes and if it wasn't them, it would be top ten lists, etc. We historically like to categorize things and put them into lists of what is best and what is not the best and I think it comes from being a country that loves sporting events where a winner is decided.

I'm as guilty of this as anybody. Some critics that I admire abhor top ten lists, but I compulsively list not only my top ten but I keep a running count of every film I see throughout the year and put them in a hierarchy and I think we all do this to some extent. We are always going to categorize things and prefer things and film is no exception. So yes, the Oscars are a flawed system and while I hated some Best Picture winners, I've been okay with the last two winners and I think they'll continue to improve as the voting bloc becomes more and more contemporary. But it's always going to be a game of which film the most industry people like. And I think it's actually kind of an important tool, to gauge what the industry likes in a particular year and why that is. But that's just me.

i still can't believe 'zodiac' didn't get one lousy oscar nod - most notably snubbed for the spot-on art direction, which particularly burns my ass

Noah what Jeff's referring to is the very long season of prognosticating. Really I don't pay any attention to it until perhaps a week or two before nominations. And that's how it should be. Making Oscar columns right now is financially feasible because the studios see some marketing benefit, NOT because there's this huge contingent of people out there that are drooling for Oscar guessing, months before the nominations. If people want to do it to pay the bills, fine, but it's certainly not a worthwhile journalistic endeavour. Critics own top-ten lists, at any time, I can respect. Critics "guessing" at a nomination based on other critics best-of lists is just a parlor game worth no ones time.

A worthwhile journalistic endeavor? Well, I mean, writing the Oscar beat might not necessarily be like covering the election, but it's giving information to people who clearly want that information. If people weren't interested, then they wouldn't visit those sites anxious for the latest news on Oscar films. But I do agree that I don't think they're as interested in which film is going to win as they are in discussing the merits of the films that will potentially be nominated...which goes back to the original point that all this Oscar talk is really a gateway to talking about films and is therefore not completely worthless.

Noah, you're right that if it wasn't one thing, it would be another, but Martin clarifies my point about the whole thing being a big marketing exercise (which it always was from the beginning).

Also, just because a lot of people want something, doesn't mean they should have it. People love McDonald's, but I don't see a lot of journalism about the subtleties of their menu.

Okay, I looked at your site Kris... Here it is for anyone who can't figure out the "click on name" thing:

http://www.incontention.com/

And just about every single space of that blog is dealing with awards or Oscars... from the "For Your Consideration" ads (which probably help to sustain a nice living) to just about every single blog post. You made your "rep" doing Oscar prognostication, a territory you've claimed as if it's yours and yours alone at times... so why get so defensive about it? The way I see it, your involvement with Variety has just given you some leverage to become another pompous ass who thinks his opinion is the only one that's right because he knows how to string words together and has a Variety blog to prove it. Am I missing something?

You can't get too testy with people, just about every site right now is in prognosticating or award congratubatory mode.

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: