Penned by Sasha with significant Jeff edits: The film industry and the Oscars have dug themselves into a hole, and that hole is called “not celebrating movies for normal people.” They celebrate movies made for themselves. They make movies to look good to define who they are…their utopian diorama.

In the late teens they brought in international voters, who don’t care about the film industry here. They don’t care about movies that we care about. Or if our movie theaters survive. That’s not their ultimate goal. They like to pick movies that they like, which is fine. Nothing wrong with that.

But the Academy basically made its bed when they invited in all those international voters, which they did to solve the problem of the screeching activists who were coming at them for Oscars So White and all that.

Oscar voters have shown “not just their disdain for the public but also the American studio system. This is the second year in a row in which two films from the International Feature category hav also landed in Best Picture, taking slots away from A Real Pain, September 5 and Sing Sing. Why? Why can’t there be any way to recognize American studio films to help, you know, salvage a collapsing empire? Revive a corpse? Save movie theaters? Just spitballing here.

So the Oscars are going “international” and on streaming, specifically Netflix, which is also international. How convenient for them, eh? Shame about Hollywood though. Shame about movie theaters. Shame about all of us who love them.

I don’t think there is any bringing back the industry we all knew and loved, and I mean one that was somewhat vibrant and semi-humming along as recently as ten years ago.