Terminological Accuracy in the Academy Awards

[tealin]

I hereby petition the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences to change the official title of awards handed out, when applicable, from 'Best' to 'Most.' This would more accurately reflect the guidelines by which winners are selected.

For example:

Best Special Effects: Master & Commander
Most Special Effects: Return of the King

Best Animated Feature: Persepolis
Most Animated Feature: Ratatouille

Best Costume Design: Sweeney Todd
Most Costume Design: Elizabeth: the Golden Age

I don't know if this would work for Most Director unless the award traditionally went to the director whose fingerprints were deepest in his film, or if you could have a 'Most Picture,' though it would be interesting to see how running time correlates with award probability (it certainly worked for Titanic). I'd look it up only I'm supposed to be unpacking. I will, however, look up this year's in an attempt to predict the winner ... using Science!
Atonement: 118 min
Juno: 96 min
Michael Clayton: 119 min
No Country For Old Men: 122 min
There Will Be Blood: 158 min
According to my scientific process, There Will Be Blood should claim a surprise victory over the front-runner No Country, unless you go by perceived running time wherein the latter seemed to last for a good four hours.*
UPDATE: Well, the bookies had it. So much for science.

*I dislike it more every day. So far the biggest thing it's got going for it is that it wasn't The Cooler.

Comments

[septentrio.livejournal.com]

God, I so agree. Especially when it comes to costume design. That's exactly what I was thinking when Sweeney didn't win.

Two reasons why.

1. I heard from a costume-o-phile that the costumes in Elizabeth are not actually very period accurate.
2. Sweeney took more creativity. You could very easily draw from historical images for Elizabeth, but Sweeney was a fantasy that was barely based in reality.

Stupid Academy. :\

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Not only were Sweeney Todd's costumes more creative (and were friggin' CHARACTER DESIGN, not just costume!) but the costumes in Elizabeth were ... so ... costumey. Okay, the Elizabethans had pretty artificial fashions, but they should have looked less machine-made and plasticky. Raleigh's outfit looked lived-in, as it should, but everyone else's looked like it was sewn for a semiprofessional Shakespeare company. They're even more costumey-looking up close.

Yeah, generally I pick the most cynical winners possible but sometimes even the Academy surprises me.

[anathelen.livejournal.com]

As a reenactor for the two periods before Elizabeth's (England circa 1539 and 1483) I can't say too much about the patterns of the costumes, but the dyes and fabrics aren't accurate (don't get me started on the armor). Those purples and reds are synthetic, and her costume definitely isn't made of silk velvet, wool, and linen. Then again, it's hard enough to get reenactors to use only period colors since dying all of one's fabric is expensive and cumbersome, so I wouldn't expect a film to comform to such rigorous standards. Wool is incredibly hot under studio brights and no one cares anyway; it doesn't take away from the story for Elizabeth to be wearing rayon.

What is important is that most of the actors looked like they were wearing costumes, not clothing. It didn't look like the actors spent much time in their outfits, which is a shame. Costumes that become clothing are much more enjoyable and natural to live in. Reenactors will never be satisfied by costume dramas, but I'm more than willing to sacrifice absolute accuracy for characters with costumes that give personality.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

That's a really fascinating take on the subject – and you're absolutely right, they didn't look like they belonged in their clothes at all.

(then again, that might give some rationale to why they were so eager to take them off... the director strikes me as the 'statement' type.)

[anathelen.livejournal.com]

Certainly, the director could be making a statement: these people, these characters, are men and women in clothes they're not comfortable with, unsure of where they are and what they're doing. The state of their existance is artificial and forced. Or it could just be that the actors didn't spend enough time eating, drinking, and going to the bathroom in their costumes.

I must confess I've stolen the inception of this idea of costumes being a part of a character from watching the part of the DVD extras on the Lord of the Rings where the actor who played Aragorn talks about how he wore his costume outside of filming, fixed it himself when it broke, and let it get dirty. I've noticed that I can tell the old reenactors from the new ones: even if their outfit is brand new, an old-timer is used to that style of clothing. Elizabeth would probably be very uncomfortable in a business suit. I've worn my garb long enough

I didn't see Sweeney Todd, but looking at stills it really looks like 'Todd had better costumes inasmuch as they pointed to the nature of the characters much better than Random Noble Garb Costume #4 in Elizabeth. The costumes were less arbitrary in 'Todd.

[phonixa.livejournal.com]

I was expecting Persepolis to win for animation, and was pretty surprised when Ratatouille won. I was happy that Sweeny won for Art Direction, because it definitely deserved it. I was surprised to see Elizabeth win as well for character design.

It will be interesting to see what the next winners are.

...but i am bloody glad that Surf's Up didn't win.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Aha, BUT – Sweeney Todd almost definitely had the most art direction, possibly tied with Golden Compass but definitely surpassing all other nominees.

[phonixa.livejournal.com]

true. You should submit this as a paper and change the way we view the academy awards.

[beckychan.livejournal.com]

lol Huge difference between best and most.

[mothos.livejournal.com]

If it was Most Director and Most Picture, I sadly think Michael Bay would sweep every year he made a 'film'.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't necessarily mean 'Most In-Your-Face Director' ... The Coens have a very distinct touch, for example, as does Tim Burton, and M. Night Shyamalan. It's primarily a matter of to what level they control every aspect of the film.

[fani.livejournal.com]

you know what, the Academy's "BEST..." in the end is never really BEST at all. I think some of their choices are...well, not that "BEST" at all

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

I think the "Most Director" award would go to Michael Moore, because he's huge.

I'm sorry, that was mean.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

But hilarious! :)

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

It was also accurate and funny. That guy has a HUGE carbon footprint shadow.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Oscars are a joke. A fine, glittery, gaudy, funny, fascinating joke. I'm looking forward to the digest, and hope I manage to catch it when it's on around here.

That being said, I'm all a-yay over Tilda Swinton getting an Oscar. I don't know if she deserved it; I just love Tilda Swinton.

[thefordmustang.livejournal.com]

Now THAT is an idea worth pursuing. It does seem to sum up the Oscars which seem to be way over-rated. I thought Persepolis should have won "Best Animated" myself...

Disagree re: LotR

[sullivander.livejournal.com]

While I tend to agree with most of the examples you've given, I think you're shorting Return of the King. You're absolutely right, King did have the most special effects, but as in the famous dictum about the Soviet military, "quantity has a quality all its own", and I think that the magnitude of the work done by Weta really went a long way in selling the vision of Middle Earth. When you consider the sheer number of things that count as effects — matte blending, scale models, live action, digital effects, all of it — I have to think that if any one of things hadn't worked, the movie wouldn't have either. They did, and it did. Moreover, the quality of the work was itself quite good, and in many places excellent — Gollum, for instance, or the (99.9%) seamless blending of scales for the hobbits, etc.



This is not to say the effects in Master and Commander weren't good, even great — just that (in my opinion) those of King were better.



—Andrew

A festival of parentheses

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the effects in the Lord of the Rings series as a whole - it was a stupendous amount of work that was carried off with astonishing success, with Gollum and the forced perspective stuff being top of my list. My problem with its Oscar was not so much a matter of merit as a whole but rather the specific circumstances: Fellowship should have won many more awards than it did, its year, and it still stands as the best of the three films, not just in my opinion. Gollum's spectacular presence should have won the Oscar for Two Towers - it was old news by Return of the King and the quality slipped a little in that one, probably because of the quantity. The effects in Return of the King were just not as good as in the two films that preceded it (note especially the cheap particle-effect day-glo horde of the dead) but it won the effects award (and many of the other awards as well) because, I suspect, the Academy decided to hold off awarding anything to the trilogy in order to give it all the prizes at its completion, a strategy which has sentimental value but meant the more deserving films of 2003 didn't stand a chance. Master & Commander should have won best effects because although it had all the same sorts of effects as Return of the King (miniatures, motion capture, CG) it was completely undetectable.. I was blown away to see that there was a CG crew at all, when the credits rolled, and it wasn't until the fourth or fifth time I saw it that I caught anything that looked less than completely real. By the way, don't judge the effects by the DVD - the film transfer is SHOCKINGLY bad. I saw it four times in the theatre, the last time only a couple weeks before the DVD came out, so I was rather familiar with what the film looked like, and it's simply awful on the DVD. Effects I had no idea existed popped out on the TV screen - even on a nice plasma screen. All three Lord of the Rings films, by contrast, look better on DVD, though the difference shrinks film by film, I guess it's due to better film printing techniques or something. I wish I knew why.

Re: A festival of parentheses

[sullivander.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I see your point about the three movies being counted as one — I guess I've done it enough myself that I just think of it as The Lord of the Rings, not the Fellowship, etc. I'd counter the CG crew from Master and Commander with the CG armies from Return of the King — similarly, I didn't realize many of them were CG until I saw the "Making of" bits. On the other hand, I'll have to take your word for the screen/DVD difference, though I'm willing to concede the point.



The whole thing's somewhat moot, anyway, isn't it? Didn't Weta do the effects for both movies?



— Andrew

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I thought they did, too, but I seem to remember finding it hard to find a mention of them on the credits. It seems to have been done by about twelve different studios.