Oscar’s – Care and Not Care
Hi Folks,
The next round of Oscar Foreign Film categories were announced and of course Eklavya did not make it:
Here is the list that did make it to Phase 2:
The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:
Austria, “The Counterfeiters,” Stefan Ruzowitzky, director
Brazil, “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation,” Cao
Hamburger, director
Canada, “Days of Darkness,” Denys Arcand, director
Israel, “Beaufort,” Joseph Cedar, director
Italy, “The Unknown,” Giuseppe Tornatore, director
Kazakhstan, “Mongol,” Sergei Bodrov, director
Poland, “Katyn,” Andrzej Wajda, director
Russia, “12,” Nikita Mikhalkov, director
Serbia, “The Trap,” Srdan Golubovic, director
Foreign Language Film nominations for 2007 are being determined in two phases.
The Phase I committee, consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based members, screened the 63 eligible films and their ballots determined the above shortlist.
A Phase II committee, made up of ten randomly selected members from the Phase I group, joined by specially invited ten-member contingents in New York and Los Angeles, will view the shortlisted films and select the five nominees for the category.
Phase II screenings will take place from Friday, January 18, through Sunday, January 20, in both Hollywood and New York City.
So now all that controversy about voting and VVC and Ek Lavya, etc can take a back seat.
Brings to the question should we care about Oscar’s.
Personally I don’t care about either the Oscar or the Filmfare or the film critics or anything else. I care about ROI. But Oscar’s do have a business connection as does Filmfare, etc. They all add up to the “$’s”. Which is why . Amir “I am glorious and above it all” Khan, says I don’t care about awards and then spends a great deal of moolaah and time in LA, hoping his film Lagaan, get’s the “I couldn’t care” Oscar AWARD (so he does care!!).
Clearly the Filmfare and all those countless awards in India, copy the Oscar’s carpet for carpet, than you speech for thank you speech, heroes wearing shoulder pads for shoulder pads, etc.
What they don’t copy, and what they should be copying is the VOTING METHODOLOGY.
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Here is how the voting for the Oscar is done by the accounting firm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (source Variety):
“We’re not trying to find one winner,” says Rick Rosas who counts the ballots along with Brad Oltmanns. Both work for PricewaterhouseCoopers. “We’re trying to find the five nominees who have the broadest support in that particular branch of the Academy.”
This is why they use what’s called a preferential voting system or — if you’d like to sound smart and fancy — single transferable voting. The process was selected in 1936 and has been in use ever since.
It starts when the members of each branch select their five favorite performances or pieces of work in order of preference for their category. When these ballots arrive at PricewaterhouseCoopers, they’re sorted by hand according to everyone’s first choice.
In order to be deemed nominated, an artist or movie must receive a qualifying number of first-preference votes. The number of votes it takes to lock up a nomination is determined by taking the total tally of votes cast in a particular category and dividing it by the number of nominee slots available plus one. So that’s six for categories like best actor (five noms allowed) and four for categories like visual effects (where there are only three nominees).
“We divide by that number because it means there’s significant support among the voters for that nominee if they get that number of votes,” says Rosas.
Still, this process doesn’t always produce nominees right away.
“It’s often the case that on the first pass, no one gets nominated,” Rosas says. “You’re talking about people, so everyone has their own opinion, and what we’re trying to do is tease out which five have the most support amongst the broadest number of voters.”
When the first count produces no nominees, the accountants start eliminating from the bottom up. They take the candidates who had the fewest amounts of first-place votes and remove them from further consideration.
Even though those people or films are taken out of consideration, their ballots are redistributed individually according to the person or film selected as the second-preference nominee by the voter. So, for example, if you voted for “Film A” as your first-choice nominee and “Film B” as your second choice nominee, should “Film A” be eliminated, your vote would be re-allocated to “Film B.”
At that point, the accountants re-tally and see where everybody stands after the redistribution of votes. This process of elimination and redistribution continues with second (or third, fourth or even fifth) choice if necessary until there are six stacks of votes. The five with the most votes are the nominees.
Keep breathing. The good news is the rest of the voting process — choosing winners from the nominees — is completely straightforward.
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This I can tell right away, I am almost certain none of our Bollywood awards follow this methodology.
Hell the only time our filmmaker and industry uses Chartered Accountants, is to be the one’s who wash their dirty laundry aka “you tell them there is no money in the bank,e tc” when some deserving actor or director or crew needs to be paid, etc.
But going back to the original premise of this article. The awards. The Oscar/National Award/Sundance, etc don’t necessarily make a film a hit or a flop and don’t necessarily mean more than an audience reaction, but what they do bring is the “monetary gains associated with a film/an actor/a director, etc” being termed “Oscar nominated,” and hence increases their royalty factor. I guess ditto for the bigger Bollywood awards.
Vivek’s definition of filmi terms:
Oscar & National Award: aka a struggling actor getting a break in a RGV film. No money will be paid, but the recognition that follows will correlate to paisa.
Folks Who Discuss Films In Cafe’s: Real world business people who become unreal and stop adding any “business or bottom line” value to the film
Film Critics: Heyna’s, who will tell the Tiger to hunt, the deer to be killed and then will step into the spoils, to add their value, or percived value.
The Paying Audience and the Investing Folks: Really the only folks who matter, the others, who gives a damn.
Sincerely,
Vivek “whether it is films or life in current day India, why do we only ape the bad of the west and ignore the good” Kumar
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Thnaks goodness, Eklavya didn’t make it! Izzat to bach gaya re, mamu!
Just to make it clear…aamir khan feels that film festivals in “india” have lost their value for him..
he feels that the process is flawed …unlike the oscars,which happen to be of value to him
My article and my reference to Aamir was not on film FESTIVALS in india or anywhere, it was to film AWARDS (as distinct from festivals). Aamir had said he does not care about AWARDS (not sure or care about what he feels about FESTIVALS) and the Oscars are AWARDS (not a FESTIVAL).
I think the “Foreign Film Category” is one of the toughest draws. And integrity in film-making is the first step to get there.
Damn well written, succinct and funny! quite a rarity in here these days! loved the dig at Aamir Khan and the ‘definition’ for Critics!
great article Vivek, and great info:)
Vivek, please give me this info, this is Phase 2, where 20 films are selected from 63 shortlisted films or 9? and also phase one was the selction of 63 films from how many films in total?
Was Eklavya there in the 63 ‘eligible’ films?
Suchita, Phase 1 one was when all the countries sent in their official entries. This was 63 in total and yes Eklavya was one of them. Then in Phase 2,this list is down to 9. This is what concluded last night and the results were announced this morning, which is when i posted. Now from this 9, the 4 or 5 (not sure how many), will make it to the final nomination (Phase 3), when the winner will be announced on the opening of the envelope at the Oscar ceremony. Hope that helps
Vivek thanks, can you send that Variety link.. if its not asking for too much:)
Winning an Oscar also depends a lot upon the hype machine… check out how Miramax hypes up its films to the academy… and their consequent success…
@Vivek…Big Hello !
@Suchita,…whats Movietime ?…and can I get more World Cinema DVDs there ?
Suchita – sent you all the info to your email.
Hi Playback.
Agreed Papai, although merit does come through sometimes. Like in the year Lagaan was in the running, it made some noise, but not organized noise unfortunately. We desis don’t delegate very well and tend to do everything ourselves, this costs us.
This year VVC had camped in LA, last year Ronnie was here, but unless they make it a team, organized, effort nothing will happen.
On the other hand sometime non publicized and non marketed films also win the award, so it depends.
Play back are you new in Mumbai????? looks like, Movie time is a dvd library in Oshiwara and JUHU and other branches, it has world cinema yes and there is Sarvodaya, Shemaroo and also another dvd library the current fav, Movie magic, i think in that hdfc lane in lokhanwala. That would be 10,000 for the info.:d
Thanx Vivek!!
@ Suchita,…yes I am relatively new here ! It would be a great favour if you could suggest which is the best one or two and give more specific directions thru an email at playback2007@gmail.com…thanx !
Ok Play back… will mail you in a while….waise I doubt that you are new in Mumbai, never mind:d
@ Suchita…I AM !!! :O Pls do mail
Ok don’t scream will mail you :((
Awww ! Dont cry,…I wasnt screaming !
oh sorry its not movie magic..its movie mirchi….
Vivek,
You have done a good job explaining why Aamir gives a rats arse about the Oscars and not Filmfare etc. So why take potshots at him?
Even though I cant stand the cheeky git; I don’t fault him for not turning up and dancing at the Screen/Filmfare/Manikchand/Lux/Luzy awards.
And you should empathize with critics. Have you been forced to watch (and pay attention) to a movie you had no interest in? Sartre’s hell!!
And your discounting Godard and Truffaut. Not everyone is an octogenarian fantasist.
Rajesh