Movie Man
When film critic Will Pfeifer isn’t watching movies, he’s reading about movies, talking about movies, thinking about movies or dreaming about movies. Now he shares that unhealthy obsession with you. From Hollywood hits to Japanese obscurities, from Oscar night to the summer season, he’s got movies on the brain — and on this blog.

Archive for June 25th, 2009

And still more on the Oscar change…

1 comment June 25th, 2009

Over at the Onion’s AV Club, Noel Murray offers a look at one of the positive effects this doubling of nominated films may have…

And with more Best Picture slots open, studios and indies alike could be pushing harder to get their movies seen. What does that mean to you, the home viewer? It might–just might–mean that some smaller movies get longer runs in the big city arthouses, and even end up finding their way into the hinterlands. Everyone knocks the taste of the Academy (and often with good reason), but it’s not like everything that gets nominated is dowdy and self-serious and simplified. And it’s certainly true that plenty of excellent movies contend for the honor of contending each season. More of those excellent-but-low-priority movies may put up more than just a token campaign, and as a result, the average movie fan may become more aware of them, and may even get to see them.

Read the rest — including some potential downsides to the change — here.

Of course, with only two movie houses in the Rockford area (both owned by the same company), whether we’ll see any of these “excellent-but-low-priority” here is the big question. We might just get a dozen screens of more movies about Paul Blart.

More on the big Oscar change

Add comment June 25th, 2009

Mark Evanier, who works in Hollywood and does a great job of observing all that happens in that crazy town, offers this astute analysis of the doubling of Best Picture nominees…

Some number of powerful filmmakers and major studios pressured the Academy because they want the prestige and promotional value that comes with the nomination. A large reason for any award ceremony of this kind is to hype the product. The Academy probably also figures that it’ll bolster interest in the Oscars if there are nominations for films like THE DARK KNIGHT  and IRON MAN. I don’t mean movies based on comic books. I mean movies with a more populist appeal…the kind that traditionally get shut out of the nominations by films with loftier themes.

Read the rest here.

It’s pretty obvious this is a shameless effort to promote movies — but then again, that’s what the Oscars always are.


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