Oscar Review

No real surprises among this year’s Oscar winners, although Time’s prediction sheet managed 12 wrong, to 12 right. What dawned on me, however, as it must have before, is how much the Oscars are little more than a popularity contest, rather than a recognition of technical talent. I’m not referring to Sandra Bullock’s win over Meryl Streep’s far more amazing performance; instead, I’m looking at the secondary awards, things like sound mixing.
Now, I am no cinema expert and am in no position to judge films on technical merit; but surely there must be films that aren’t particularly “good” that nevertheless are blessed with extraordinary cinematography or sound editing. But it so happens that of the five nominees for sound editing, all five were also best picture nominees. And we all know that it was not the sound editing that got them included on the best picture list! The situation is not so extreme, but close to it, for all the other categories that apply to every movie released last year, with the exception of makeup (more on that in a minute).
Every movie would seemingly qualify for the awards in art direction, cinematography, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing and, for most, original screenplay. But guess what: Hurt Locker, which happened to win best picture and director, won in four of those six, and presumptive runnerup Avatar won the other two. Now, I felt all along that Hurt Locker was the best American movie of the year, but on its “low budget,” could it really have had the best sound? In other words, if you’re a technical genius but your movie is not one of the two or three favorites of the Academy crowd, you can forget winning an Oscar.
There are two more categories I have omitted that also apply to every film but whose nominations don’t mirror the best picture: costume design and makeup. I exclude the former because, while every movie has costumes, this category is clearly aimed at “costume dramas,” movies employing out-of-the-ordinary clothing, like this year’s winner, The Young Victoria, or even movies about clothing, like Coco Before Chanel. One could almost say the same for makeup, citing the winning Star Trek, where the makeup created alien races. But the makeup in the other nominees, Il Divo and The Young Victoria, was no more extreme than that found in many other flicks – yet the Academy, for this category alone among the 24, offered only three nominations. Maybe for this award they really voted for best makeup, not best picture.

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