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 cincydooley wrote:

 Polonius wrote:


As for the broader issue, I think this year being a complete shut out in the four acting categories (for a second year), no best picture nomination for a movie with a non-white lead (and done' forget, up to 10 can make that cut), and one Mexican (and no women) for best director, makes it frustrating for people of color in the industry. Once is an occurrence, twice is a coincidence. I wouldn't lose my stuff, as it's a small data sample, but there were some very well regarded performances and movies that weren't nominated, and I think it's natural to wonder why.

So what would you proffer as the snubs, outside of the aforementioned Jordan and Coogler?

Straight Outta Compton was okay. I personally don't think anything about it was particularly Oscar worthy, though....

Idris Elba was considered the biggest snub based on the conventional wisdom going in by 538: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/oscar-nominations-2016-snubs/

The main snub I can think of would probably be Concussion.

Which may also explain why a couple of the players already mentioned in this thread are so vocal.

 Polonius wrote:


Idris Elba was considered the biggest snub based on the conventional wisdom going in by 538: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/oscar-nominations-2016-snubs/

I'd posit his absence has far more to do with Beasts of No Nation being a Netflix Original and the release structure of it (and pending theatrical boycott) more so than his skin color.




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 d-usa wrote:
The main snub I can think of would probably be Concussion.

Which may also explain why a couple of the players already mentioned in this thread are so vocal.

Did you like it?

I was wunderwhelmed with it. Smith really overacts, and it felt very preachy.

 cincydooley wrote:


So what would you proffer as the snubs, outside of the aforementioned Jordan and Coogler?

Straight Outta Compton was okay. I personally don't think anything about it was particularly Oscar worthy, though....

And yet it's been nominated for an Oscar. Best screenplay, which is a bit weird considering out of a film with that large of a black influence, they've managed to nominate four of the few white people working on it.

 Goliath wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:


So what would you proffer as the snubs, outside of the aforementioned Jordan and Coogler?

Straight Outta Compton was okay. I personally don't think anything about it was particularly Oscar worthy, though....

And yet it's been nominated for an Oscar. Best screenplay, which is a bit weird considering out of a film with that large of a black influence, they've managed to nominate four of the few white people working on it.

And?

Bridge of Spies got a writing nom, too.

That movie was nice and bland.

 cincydooley wrote:
I'd posit his absence has far more to do with Beasts of No Nation being a Netflix Original and the release structure of it (and pending theatrical boycott) more so than his skin color.

I doubt any snubs of black actors (or non-white actors generally) was the result of conscious racism. That's possible, but unlikely. After all, they clearly recognize slam dunk performances. What happened this year, and arguably last year, is that in a field of a handful of borderline nominations (as in, nominations with no realistic chance to win, but merely to fill out the card), the black performances keep striking out.

There was a saying I heard once that said that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, but didn't end racism. After all, he was a blue chip hall of famer, rookie of the year, MVP, and helped the Dodgers win a World Series. It'd be tough to keep him out with anything less than an official color ban (which MLB always denied having). Racism in baseball ended when you can have black players as middle relievers, platoon infielders, and guys batting .215 riding the pine. In other words, the hallmark of diversity isn't having all stars of all races, but in having replacement level players of all races.

There's a reason to pick other actors ahead of Elba, Smith, or Jordan. there were also reasons to pick them instead of Bale or Damon. If you lose enough close calls, you start to wonder if there's a thumb on the scale. And I don't doubt that a mostly white, mostly old, somewhat out of touch Academy just doesn't relate more to the performances of white Actors, and gives them the nudge.

As others have pointed out, this isn't the illness, it's a symptom.


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 Goliath wrote:
Best screenplay, which is a bit weird considering out of a film with that large of a black influence, they've managed to nominate four of the few white people working on it.

Yeah, that's the sort of thing that doesn't help.

 cincydooley wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
The main snub I can think of would probably be Concussion.

Which may also explain why a couple of the players already mentioned in this thread are so vocal.

Did you like it?

I was wunderwhelmed with it. Smith really overacts, and it felt very preachy.

Never watched it, just know it's considered one of the snubs.

He was up for a Golden Globe for it, and those often/usually foreshadow the Academy Awards nominations. Being nominated for one, but not for the other, often creates suspicions of a snub.

For what it's worth, even the Academy President, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, is upset about the lack of inclusion. http://www.vulture.com/2016/01/academy-cheryl-boone-isaacs-diversity-statement.html

I'd like to acknowledge the wonderful work of this year's nominees. While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and it's time for big changes. The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.

As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. but the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly.

This isn't unprecedented for the Academy. In the '60s and '70s it was about recruiting younger members to stay vital and relevant. In 2016, the mandate is inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. We recognize the very real concerns of our community, and I so appreciate all of you who have reached out to me in our effort to move forward together.

Interestingly, she's the third woman, and first African American to hold that position, and is a PR executive in her full time job.

Seaward wrote:
10.6% of the Best Actor nominees in the past 30 years have been black. They're underrepresented proportional to their actual population share, but not by very much.

If anyone ought to be bitching, it's folks of Hispanic descent. 1.3% of Best Actor nominees in the same period have been Hispanic/Latino.

Wait so if US demographics are going to be the factor for deciding who gets an Oscar, aren't Jews then massively over-represented? I don't really need any Academy numbers to know that way more than 2% of Oscar winners have been Jewish. Why is this not suddenly a factor?

The fact that Arnold or Bruce Campbell never got a mention just proves the Oscar's have terrible taste in movies.

The people who watch films aren't a 1:1 of the make up of the population, so the argument that they are somehow close doesn't really correlate. Now if the percentage of actual viewers matched up with nominees that might mean something.

 Ahtman wrote:
The people who watch films aren't a 1:1 of the make up of the population, so the argument that they are somehow close doesn't really correlate. Now if the percentage of actual viewers matched up with nominees that might mean something.

If that's true then Tyler Perry would have one.

It's possible. At one time nobody ever though McConaughey would get one, and Madea has tried to get serious and be an action star in Alex Cross.

DutchWinsAll wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
The people who watch films aren't a 1:1 of the make up of the population, so the argument that they are somehow close doesn't really correlate. Now if the percentage of actual viewers matched up with nominees that might mean something.

If that's true then Tyler Perry would have one.

No, they would still have to be good movies so he wouldn't qualify. Besides I never said who should or shouldn't win, just that the people who watch movies aren't proportionate to the ethnic numbers in the whole population.

 Polonius wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
I'd posit his absence has far more to do with Beasts of No Nation being a Netflix Original and the release structure of it (and pending theatrical boycott) more so than his skin color.

I doubt any snubs of black actors (or non-white actors generally) was the result of conscious racism.

That one isn't even unconscious racism. The cinemas boycotted the movie for some combination of the following financial reasons: they didn't think enough people would want to see Beasts of No Nation to make it worth tying up one of their screens when they could just watch it at home on Netflix; they didn't think enough people would want to see a movie about children being brutalised and brutalising others (at least, not without whitewashing and sanitising the premise like The Hunger Games did) to make it worth tying up one of their screens; or they wanted the movie to fail so that the idea of refusing them their usual three month timed exclusive didn't spread.

Does anyone remember when Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain for best picture, and everyone called the Academy homophobic?

I think it’s more that the weirdness of the Academy members is a lot more complex than simply shutting out black artists because of racism. The Academy actually loves movies about racism. It’s only a few years since 12 Years A Slave won best film, and a black actress won best supporting in that movie. That was a great movie and a rightful winner of course, but there’s also been some very favourable treatment of some very average movies about race. The Help was nominated for best film, and a black actress won best supporting, and that film was pleasant at best. And of course there was Crash, which actually won, despite being absolutely fething awful.

It’s actually a very weird kind of racism. The academy is kind of like a white guy who really wants to be friends with every black person he meets, but the only thing he can ever talk about with a black person is racism, and how he isn’t racist at all. So if a film about racism is made, the academy covers it with nominations and awards whether it deserves them or not. But the academy seems unaware that black people are actually involved in some really good work that isn’t about racism.

Thing is, faced with a weird kind of racism like that, I’m not really sure strong activism and boycotts is the right approach. By placing race first and foremost, it's likely to exacerbate the weird kind of racism the Academy suffers.


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 Polonius wrote:
Idris Elba was considered the biggest snub based on the conventional wisdom going in by 538: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/oscar-nominations-2016-snubs/

That one can be understood more through industry politics, I think. A film that releases in just enough cinemas to meet the Academy’s rules, and then distributes almost entirely through Netflix is always going to have a hard time among the old Hollywood set that dominate the Academy voters.

Will Smith is the other one that people are suggesting has been hard done by, and I don’t know, I haven’t seen Concussion. But given Smith has been nominated twice before, and both times lost to black actors, it seems a stretch make that a story about racism.

 sebster wrote:
It’s actually a very weird kind of racism. The academy is kind of like a white guy who really wants to be friends with every black person he meets, but the only thing he can ever talk about with a black person is racism, and how he isn’t racist at all. So if a film about racism is made, the academy covers it with nominations and awards whether it deserves them or not. But the academy seems unaware that black people are actually involved in some really good work that isn’t about racism.

That's about as good a description on how racial politics work with the Academy as anyone could get.

Let's not forget that at it's heart, the Academy is still an old boy's club and will probably stay that way for the foreseeable future.

 LordofHats wrote:
That kind of happens every year though. I mentioned in the thread on the Hugo Award/Sad Puppies that if the Academy Awards were a fan choice award, the nominees and winners would all look very different. People express shock every year at the movies and actors that don't get any recognition, let alone the ones that don't win/win.

The Academy seems to have a very peculiar sense of what it's looking for, sufficiently peculiar that us plebs get confused every year for some reason or another.

Yup. I never understood why people look at the Oscars as anything other than the opinions of a relatively small group of individuals.

 Bromsy wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
That kind of happens every year though. I mentioned in the thread on the Hugo Award/Sad Puppies that if the Academy Awards were a fan choice award, the nominees and winners would all look very different. People express shock every year at the movies and actors that don't get any recognition, let alone the ones that don't win/win.

The Academy seems to have a very peculiar sense of what it's looking for, sufficiently peculiar that us plebs get confused every year for some reason or another.

Yup. I never understood why people look at the Oscars as anything other than the opinions of a relatively small group of individuals.

yep just the movie business patting their own back.

DutchWinsAll wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
The people who watch films aren't a 1:1 of the make up of the population, so the argument that they are somehow close doesn't really correlate. Now if the percentage of actual viewers matched up with nominees that might mean something.

If that's true then Tyler Perry would have one.

Pretty sure the idea of Tyler Perry winning an Oscar just made something inside my chest start bleeding.

So are any of the nominations actually talented this year or is it more time filler?

 n0t_u wrote:
So are any of the nominations actually talented this year or is it more time filler?

Mad Max: Fury Road is great. The Martian and Creed are supposed to be really good too, but I haven't seen them.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
So are any of the nominations actually talented this year or is it more time filler?

Mad Max: Fury Road is great. The Martian and Creed are supposed to be really good too, but I haven't seen them.

Really I know one of them is just crap (talking the awards shows) but I can never remember which it is.

DutchWinsAll wrote:

Wait so if US demographics are going to be the factor for deciding who gets an Oscar, aren't Jews then massively over-represented? I don't really need any Academy numbers to know that way more than 2% of Oscar winners have been Jewish. Why is this not suddenly a factor?

The fact that Arnold or Bruce Campbell never got a mention just proves the Oscar's have terrible taste in movies.

I don't think US demographics ought to be a factor in deciding who gets an Oscar, I'm merely pointing out that African-Americans aren't as underrepresented (at least in the Best Actor category) as people like to claim. They're pretty close to parity with the actual demographic proportion of African-Americans in the broader population.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
So are any of the nominations actually talented this year or is it more time filler?

Mad Max: Fury Road is great. The Martian and Creed are supposed to be really good too, but I haven't seen them.

All 3 of those movies are really, really great and you should watch all of them if you haven't.

 n0t_u wrote:
So are any of the nominations actually talented this year or is it more time filler?

So...I've seen 6 of the best film noms (Bridge of Spies, Max Mad, The Revenant, The Martian, Spotlight, and The Big Short) and IMO, Spotlight is by far the best movie of the bunch.

I was actually really lukewarm on Bridge of Spies. It isn't bad by any stretch, but I think it earned the nom due to the Spielberg + Hanks = nom formula.

Mad Max is a fun, well made, great looking, but ultimately hollow film. I really like the movie, but I still have trouble seeing it as this feminist opus. Fun movie, though.

The Revenant is a beautiful, well acted, majestic film that doesn't have a lot to do. It's a revenge film. A really great looking, well done one, but a revenge film.

The Martian is a fun, light, well acted movie from good source material. Matt Damon is charming in it, but essentially plays Matt Damon.

Spotlight is amazing. The best ensemble acting I've seen in a movie in some time. Great story. My favorite movie of the year.

The Big Short was good and well acted, but it didn't leave any real lasting impressions on me. I've read the novel, too.

If I'm being honest, I think Inside Out and Ex Machina are more deserving of a best picture nomination than a few of the actual nominees.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
That kind of happens every year though. I mentioned in the thread on the Hugo Award/Sad Puppies that if the Academy Awards were a fan choice award, the nominees and winners would all look very different. People express shock every year at the movies and actors that don't get any recognition, let alone the ones that don't win/win.

The Academy seems to have a very peculiar sense of what it's looking for, sufficiently peculiar that us plebs get confused every year for some reason or another.

Old people that grew up when hollywood was different and refuse to change is what its about really.

I know you're all about posting from your phone so shortcuts, glib, 'clever' and all that, but ageism?

Really?

For shame!

 cincydooley wrote:
The Martian is a fun, light, well acted movie from good source material. Matt Damon is charming in it, but essentially plays Matt Damon.

I can't really agree with this assessment, as I don't really see him playing himself... If he does, he is miles better than Nicholas Cage, who is quite blatantly playing the same role over and over again.

That in itself doesn't make Matt Damon an outstanding actor, though.

That said, the way the Oscars work, a prize has to be awarded every year regardless of the spread and depth of talent in competition.

This again huh, so tired of this crap. You have to be good and top 5% of your race or else you get cut for being white. Thats not racest at all you just keep lowering standards for each race til you get a couple of each no matter how many before them desrve it.

I hate this idea of forced diversity. There probably is a problem with the awards and Hollywood in general (though I do think it's getting a lot better) but this sort of reaction will just lead to quota-filling token nominations. It needs to change naturally, not through Internet outrage and Twitter campaigns.

I don't really care if Chris Rock does it or not. The awards are stupid anyway. I don't think he should be brow beaten by keyboard warriors into not doing it though.

Edit: Rock. Not Tucker. Stupid me.

 jhe90 wrote:
Of all the race issues, in all the world, this is a storm in a teacup.

The acadamy snubs tons of white actors too. It's a very closed and political group. You have to make the "right film"

More like a storm in a toliet. Because the urge to flush the toilet is extremely strong. But I don't care enough to look at whats bubbling to the surface.