By John H. Foote
In the hopes of bringing back young audiences, the Academy, in their infinite wisdom (yep, sarcasm)
will add a new category, Most Popular Film.
This further dilutes the Best Picture category, as moving from five to up to Ten Best Picture nominees did. The night’s biggest award has become Best Director, because we just have not a clue where the voters will go for Best Picture. For years Best Picture lined up with Best Director, which made sense, the best film should be the Best Directed.
However, for films made in the years 1998, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 Best Picture and Best Director have differed.
What will Most Popular Film look like? Why not just give a special award to top box office film of the year?
It gets worse.
In an effort to cut time out of the show, several of the tech awards, the below the line awards will not be given live. Again, I like seeing the winners of these awards, so kill the musical and dance numbers, the tributes, anything not pertaining to the previous year. Bad enough they took the Lifetime Achievement Awards out of the main ceremony, cheating us of seeing Francis Ford Coppola and Spike Lee Get their awards.
It is the dumbing down of the Oscars.
The Academy Awards as we knew it are gone, dead.
How will Best Picture be different than Most Popular Film? Once again, a dumbass idea.
Why not add Motion Capture Performance, kicking it off with a Special Lifetime Achievement Award to Andy Serkis, and an award for Stunt Sequence.
Honour film dammit!
Forget it is a show!
John H. Foote is a well-recognized Canadian film critic/historian who has been an active critic for 30 years. His deep love for the movies began at a very young age. He began his career as co-host of the popular TV show Reel to Real where he remained for nine years. While on TV he began dabbling in education, eventually ascending to Director of the Toronto Film School, where he also taught film history. After leaving the college to care for his wife, he returned to teaching at Humber College where he taught both Film History and Method Acting Theory. John has written two books: “Clint Eastwood – Evolution of a Filmmaker” and the upcoming “Spielberg – American Film Visionary”. He is currently working on two books, one about the films of the seventies and another on the films of Martin Scorsese. Through his career he has worked in TV, radio, print and the web. John has interviewed everyone in the industry (more than 300 interviews) except Jack Nicholson, he says sadly. Highlights include Martin Scorsese, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda, Francis Ford Coppola and Kathryn Bigelow.
