Oscar’s new attitude: It’s not about the audience
EW’s Owen Gleiberman says the Academy Awards “have undergone a sea change: They’re no longer about the audience”
Read MoreA couple of weeks ago, based on the fact that The Artist, as it began to open across the country, didn’t exactly seem to be setting the box office aflame (I don’t mean when compared to Thor — I mean on the traditional indie-crossover circuit), I made an Academy Awards prediction. It had much in common with a lot of the Academy Awards predictions that people have been making recently, in that it was fearlessly wrong. I said that I thought The Artist had peaked, and that The Help would win Best Picture. That could still happen, of course, but at this point I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, or even a nice steak dinner. Despite its less-than-Richter-scale-rattling performance thus far, The Artist, as it racks up wins (the Golden Globes, the Producers Guild, the Directors Guild), is looking more and more like a classic Oscar juggernaut, a runaway awards train fueled by the metaphysics of the entertainment-media echo chamber, in which the relentless chatter about the “inevitability” of one movie winning becomes a big part of the reason that it inevitably wins. (It’s Access Hollywood meets the doctrine of predestination. Or maybe just the doctrine of Harvey.)
I bring up my mistake not so much to come clean (the great thing about Academy Awards predictions is that so many people get so many of them wrong that you don’t have to), but because I think the reason I was wrong illustrates a quiet sea change that has taken place in the Oscars: The audience — remember them? — is no longer a very big part of the equation. I had assumed, mistakenly, that because The Help was an astonishingly big hit, and because its success sprung from the way that it clearly touched a racial-cultural nerve in people, that the movie’s organic popularity — as opposed to the heavily marketed freeze-dried quasi-popularity of The Artist — would be decisive at the Academy Awards. But all I was demonstrating was a mode of analysis about how the Oscars work that is now, more or less, completely outmoded.
Slinky Sexy Vanity Fair Oscar Hotness Issue
Normally the VF Oscar edition is our cue to make wry sighs observing the immaculate snowy frost of Vanity Fair’s annual White Party — but a few angry voices have taken some of the fun out of that this year… Click to see the super-sized full-length trifold spread. (thanks to Mel)
Read MoreViola Davis accepts her Best Actress SAG award
Watch this speech again. Listen to it. Parse and analyze Viola Davis’s warm wonderful words any way you wish. If anybody wants to argue with me that there’s any race angle being dealt here, I’m here waiting to take on that debate. Anybody who thinks this speech plays up the black factor is seriously mistaken. That’s a warped misconception. Anyone who thinks I’m wrong to be angry about a sneering attitude toward this speech, Come at me, bro. Come at me.
On a happier note — watch Octavia Spencer’s great speech, after the cut.
Read MoreAwards Daily’s 13 Annual Predict the Oscars Contest is Open
Well my friends, it has all come down to this. Another scorcher of a year, another horror show, another drama feast for your hysteria and your pleasure. Now let’s see how well you do ignoring my advocacy and remembering how “they” vote. ”They” vote with their hearts, supposedly, so is that the wisest course of action? Hm. Well, let’s see how you do. The rules are you may enter as many times as you’d like but we only count your most recent form. Let the show begin. Contest after the cut.
Read MoreSAG Contest Winners!
These remarkable few got all five film categories right, including Jean DuJardin:
Michael Barrick
Andrea Santucci
Nazrin Nasir
Gentle Benj
Massimo C.
Anne RR
Nestor Araiza
Thomas lawrence
And the TV winners plus total high scorers after the cut.
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