Comments on: This Year’s Oscar Nominees Not Getting Expected Box Office Boost

By: Mane

Mane — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:59:43 +0000

Maybe people are tired of films that are just designed to be nominated for/win academy awards. The same type of melodramatic shmaltz seems to be nominated for best picture every year. And in the years they do pick good movies, the good movies never seem to win (i.e. brokeback mountain losing to crash, saving private ryan losing to Shakespeare in love, I’m sure there are more examples) I also agree with the sentiments in the posts above that once again this years best pictures aren’t represented enough in the academy’s picks

By: Andrew James

Andrew James — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:02:43 +0000

Liz is right.

i.e. where is Rachel Getting Married? Wrestler? Happy-Go-Lucky? Revolutionary Road? Elegy?

Of all the movies that are up for Oscars this year, I doubt I’ll ever watch any of them again.

By: Liz

Liz — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:28:32 +0000

“Most people seem to be jumping to the obvious conclusion that the Oscars are getting further and further out of touch with the general movie-going public by choosing to recognize films that no one is interested in”

Is it that the Academy is out of touch by choosing films no one cares about or is it that this particular time, they’ve chosen films no one cares about that also happen to not be that brilliant? I’ve seen all five Best Picture nominees and none of them are anything I’d ever want to see more than once (and maybe one or two are films I’d like to un-see).

There’s the marketing dollars to consider, sure, but I feel like word of mouth is equally important here and I haven’t encountered a lot of people coming out of any of these films, save Slumdog Millionare, absolutely raving how you MUST SEE those films now. There’s no buzz because most of the nominees are good but not great. There are no controversial choices. People don’t have opinions on these movies the way they have for other films in the past. No one is talking about it and no one cares. (Makes for a rather dour Oscar party!)

I double checked my own list to see where I had ranked these movies for 2008 and while four cracked the Top 20, none cracked the Top 10. Obviously this is entirely subjective, but I had such an incredibly difficult time caring about any of these movies that I haven’t felt any urge to talk them up to friends or family.