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It's All Academy-ic

On Tuesday, the nominees for the Academy Awards were announced. Maybe once upon a time, this was a significant event. But in this day and age, when you have about 696 awards shows, critic “prizes” and assorted other dross prior to the announcement, the event is right up there with another episode of “Sesame Street”.

I have no intention of dumping over the nominee selections. It is a thankless task because, from a film fan perspective, you have people who see their 4-5 movies a year and can find the true meaning in all those burp-and-fartathon comedies versus people who watch 100+ movies a year who will scream that “The Squid and the Whale” was the laugh riot of 2005.

Unfortunately, nobody in either of these camps is eligible to vote. So let’s dump on the Academy membership itself.

If you ever track nominations and award winners over the years, you pick up on common threads. But since you are all just biding time waiting until March 5 for the answer to the key question – namely, will Scarlett Johansson’s boobs be propped so high that they’ll actually fling over her shoulders? – I’ll tell you some of them. Bank of these for recreational purposes (because wagering would be bad. I don’t need governments picking on me because they aren’t getting their cut):

1) The entire membership is comprised of people involved in the entertainment industry. Note: these are the people, particularly in the acting community (the dominant portion of the membership), that will tell you that racism is bad and that not recognizing gay lifestyles is a conservative conspiracy. However, for nomination and winning purposes, they’ll just shove African-Americans and gays and lesbians to the side if not right out the door. Ballot anonymity provides such luxuries.

2) At least African-Americans get a token reprieve now and then (witness last year). Don’t get me started on what they do with Asians.

3) Entertainment types will tell anyone with a microphone that American politicians and too many citizens are Pax American and need to think globally. Yet foreign films are always largely shut out of nominations and generally shunted to the Best Foreign Film category which, itself, because only a maximum of ONE film from any non-US nation is eligible for nomination.

4) There is some serious friction going on between Los Angelino and New York-based members of the Academy. Alas, because Los Angelinos form the majority of the votership, chances of New York-based directors winning run somewhere between slim and nil. In case you want to know why Martin Scorsese can’t win. Or Ang Lee for that matter (although Lee has the double-negative because of 2))

5) TV actors are considered low-brow until they have at least 10 years of solid big-screen experience. George Clooney has now reached that point which is why he has nominations coming out of his ears. They’re much more useful for the red carpet fashion show. In fact, I bet Eva Langoria is offering her soul to be Felicity Huffman’s date (or applying to the Academy to be allowed to sit on William Macy’s lap.)

And lest anybody forget the most important #6 – the studios who do the best jobs of sending the DVDs and free movie tickets to the membership reap the most fruit. And forget the jibberish about the independents – they’ve all been either bought by or have been in big distribution deals with studios for years.

TAGS: oscars nominations George Clooney Ang Lee