On May 4th the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hold a huge group discussion among its members in three cities — Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco — to discuss the Academy’s future. The idea is that members will spill their gut feelings about what’s wrong with the Oscar race and suggest changes, etc. This’ll definitely be something to cover and kick around, although brutal honesty almost never happens when members of an esteemed organization get together.

I for one believe that Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone has offered two excellent suggestions.

Boiled down, good suggestion #1 is “go back to ten Best Picture nominees.” Here’s how Sasha puts it: “Do not have it both ways with having members choose five Best Picture nominees only to have them include the fringe dwellers when a film gets more number one votes. Keep the list to ten — as they did in 2009 and 2010, which resulted in brilliant inclusion of films that never would have gotten in otherwise like District 9 [and] The Kids Are All Right — because a voter is going to include a better variety when given ten slots. Having it both ways wreaks unnecessary havoc because (a) it doesn’t include movies that wouldn’t have been included otherwise, and (b) it doesn’t honor films that the general public likes more.”

Good suggestion #2 is “don’t let the guilds call the shots.” In Sasha’s words: “Why have an Academy at all if all they do is put a period on the end of an already written sentence? Just because the DGA and PGA tells you to vote for something doesn’t mean you always have to vote for it. Will the Academy ever be original again? Will they always fall in line with the guilds? Hard to say but in the years that I’ve been doing this I’ve watched their power and their influence slip dramatically. The Golden Globes are gaining in prominence as the Academy dims in the wake of the precursors that decide the race. Of course, we bloggers and pundits aid in that — we herd them into the pen and say ‘pick that one.’ Can it change? Doubtful.”

Sony doesn’t screen movies like The Evil Dead (4.5) for guys like me…is that it? Because…what, I’m not that big on roaring chainsaws plunging into screaming mouths? Do I need to man up and expand my cinematic vistas? All I know is that if Lou Taylor Pucci is in a film there’s a good chance I won’t like it. It’s not fair, it’s cruel, it’s heartless but years of experience have taught me about the Curse of Pucci. I’d like to have my mind changed about this. I really would.

I’ve also learned to regard any positive or semi-positive review written by Variety‘s Joe Leydon at South by Southwest with a grain of salt. Especially when it comes to horror.

I am, however, impressed by the following: “There’s no CGI in the movie. Everything you will see is real, which was really demanding. This was a very long shoot, 70 days of shooting at night. There’s a reason people use CGI it’s cheaper and faster, I hate that. We researched a lot of magic tricks and illusion tricks. [Like] how you would make someone’s arm disappear.” — director Fede Alvarez speaking to io9.

“The bloody mayhem is so graphic and frequent throughout “Evil Dead,” one cannot help suspecting that alternate takes had to be shot to ensure an R rating,” Leydon wrote on March 8th. “The emphasis on dismemberment and disfigurement should make this must-see entertainment for gorehounds, but could literally scare off auds accustomed to less explicit, PG-13 fare.

“Ultimately, the new Evil Dead will rely heavily on existing fans of this unlikely franchise to make a killing in theatrical and homevid release. Those who get the inside jokes should be easy to spot: They’ll be the ones laughing when the onscreen carnage erupts most furiously.”

Nicholas Wrathall’s Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia will screen at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival three times — AMC Leows Village 7 on Thursday, 4.18 at 8:30pm and Saturday, 4.20 at 2:30pm, and Friday, 4.26 at 5:30pm at the Chelsea Clearview Cinemas.

This Universal late-summer release (8.2) looks like reasonably efficient escapism. My only concern that the last U.S.-made film by Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur was Contraband, which was my idea of dogshit. Denzel Washington is looking a little slimmer than he did in his last four or five films, which is good. He was looking pretty blimpy in Flight. Note: I posted this hours ago and for whatever reason it vanished.