After every major awards show, year after year, the same thought is on everyone’s mind: “Good for this or that film (or this or that creative player) for winning — the voters have spoken. But my God, the final decisions in some respects were so clueless, so behind-the-curve, so old-farty, so off-on-their-own-island.”
I know that Children of Men, United 93, Paul Greengrass, The Lives of Others, Volver and Penelope Cruz (to name but a few) are probably going to get the shaft on Oscar nomination day (1.23), and that’s okay — not the end of the world. It’s just that they could all use the extra attention that nominations always bestow. And it just doesn’t feel right.
I have a theoretical equation in mind. How much more on-target would the Oscar show be if, say, the blue-hairs who haven’t really been in the game for the last 15 or 20 or 30 years had, let’s say, half a vote, and the active members — people caught up in the rough-and-tumble of the present tense, people half-familiar with cyber-space, etc. — kept their full votes?
Can’t happen, won’t happen….but the unhip, out-of-touch element is definitely sapping the vitality of the enterprise. Deadwood almost always gets purged in other groups and organizations — why not the Academy?