The Oscars- Some Ramblings
Having been a regular watcher of the Academy Awards ceremony since 1984, on a grainy B&W TV, i just loved the ceremony. The first time i saw the Oscars, i had no clue about any of the movies nominated. My Hollywood movie experience was mostly limited to big budget blockbusters like Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Where Eagles Dare to name a few. Yet i still loved the grandeur, the music, the settings and most of all that moment, when the presenter opens the envelope and utters those magic words “And the Oscar goes to”.
In later years, of course as i discovered more and more Cinema, i had a more realistic picture of the Oscars, the bloopers they made, the deserving personalities left out. The fact that Citizen Kane never ever won an Oscar, nor did Alfred Hitchcock in his illustrious career. So as a long time follower of the Academy Awards or Oscars, just wanted to share some thoughts here.
Who cares about Oscar movies? Most of them are flops.
Take a look at some of the Best Picture winners down the years, Gone With the Wind, Ben Hur, Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Forrest Gump, Titanic, Gladiator to name a few. These movies are some of the biggest commercial hits, in the history of cinema. And Oscars or not, most of the Indian audiences are familiar with Ben Hur or Sound of Music or Titanic. Even if the Oscars award movies that have not been a commercial success at the box office, is that not something to be proud of. Unlike our “Phillum Farce” or the numerous award ceremonies which are a total joke. In fact it is the Oscar that made movies like No Country For Old Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to be more noticed in the public. The Oscar is guilty of bloopers at times getting swayed by the public mood ( Titanic), or at times awarding undeserving movies over more deserving movies. But those bloopers are nowhere as embarassing as watching a Kaho na Pyaar Hai get a Best Movie Award, or a Dhoom 2 get nominated for one. The Oscars would never make the egregious blunder of awarding Salman Khan over Manoj Bajpai.
The Oscars are biased against Indian mainstream cinema
The Oscars not biased just against Indian mainstream cinema, they are biased against any kind of mainstream cinema. You won’t find Star Wars or Harry Potter series or Terminator or Independence Day being nominated for Best Picture, even though they might be huge hits. The Oscars generally look at movies, that have a strong dramatic content, or epic kind or based on real life events or comedies. Yeah you might not like it, but thats their criteria for choosing a movie, the Academy is not obliged to select a movie, because you are a fan of it on Facebook or because it is the biggest hit of that year . Fans of sci fi, horror and action flicks, did not sit around moping that the Oscar does not select their genre of movies, they went and created something called the Saturn Awards. George Lucas does not write angtsy blogs because Star Wars was not selected for Best Movie, neither does Tim Burton, come on prime time, moping around that the Oscars dont reward him . And Fernando Meirelles, did not go into a breast beating mode, saying that Oscars are biased against Brazilian cinema, when his City of God, was not even nominated.
The Oscars dont take Indian cinema seriously
We send movies like Jeans, Devdas for nomination, and then we expect them to take us seriously. Please remember that your movie, however brilliant it might be, is not going to get nominated just because you sent it. Its like expecting that you go to the Olympics, and win the race, because you are running in it. To get your movie nominated is hard work, you need to market it, lobby for it, promote it. Its like you go for a interview, you sell yourself, in the best possible way, to make the recruiter feel you are worth a selection. Barring Lagaan, i have not seen in recent past, Indian movie makers, going and marketing their movies. And what support did Ashutosh, Aamir get from the industry, sniggers about how they have sold themselves to the West. Damn man, we dont do anything, and some one does something, we pull them down.
And if we are so good, that we dont really need the West’s stamp of approval, do we like the Chinese, Koreans and Iranians make movies reflecting our milieu. Oh no, we just make a habit of ripping off Hollywood DVD’s or setting our movies in some exotic locations, whether the story demands it or not. For a change, please grow up, get rid of that big chip we have on our shoulders, and accept the bitter reality, that before we demand the world take us seriously, we better take ourselves seriously first. We have great movies, we have great movie makers, we have great actors, but the fact is we consciously choose to promote rubbish of the first kind to audiences in the West, and then crib that our movies are not taken seriously.
Why should we care about the Oscars?
For the simple fact that like the Nobel Prize, these awards have a certain aura, a certain stature to them. Not getting an Oscar might not degrade your movie, but getting an Oscar does not downgrade its status either. Please remember that the Oscars have a certain intrinsic worth to them. It is something which movie persons over the world aspire for, the way an athlete aspires to win a Gold at the Olympics or a scientist aspires for the Nobel Prize. Good or bad, the Oscars are seen as a kind of benchmark, and people strive to achieve it. Of course there are people who could hardly care for it, but that does not give us the right to demean and make fun of the people who strive for it. And as for people from the West caring about our award functions, the fact is that most of our desi award functions are a big joke, and an apology, and no sensible rational person could actually take them seriously, whether from the West or not.
Comming to the final point, there has been considerable amount of hand wringing and heart burning over Taare Zameen Pe, not getting the Oscars. Reactions have either been of “No the movie is not worth it for Oscars” to “Its a Great movie, the goras hate us”. Well i still like Taare Zameen Pe, Oscar or no Oscar, i believe it is one of the best Indian movies i have seen in recent times. For that matter i love many movies, that are not Academy Award winners or nominess too. But just because TZP, has not been nominated for an award lets not get into a breast beating mode, accusing the Bad West of being biased against us. and behaving like sour pusses, damning the Academy, calling the Oscars as rubbish. These are awards with an illustrious history, a tradition, a culture, give them some due respect please. Come on we claim we are a superpower( highly doubtful), a rising nation( maybe), and boast of our 60 years of independence, so why can’t we behave in a mature manner? Why is that we need to behave like a bunch of high school kids, going overboard whether we win or lose. For heaven’s sake, grow up please.
Tags: Academy Awards
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
I have immense faith in Oscars, but if Slumdog Millionaire gets award for a Best Picture, my years of faith in Oscars will be shattered. And I wish, it won’t get nominated at all except for its music and photography.
And yes we should try to send our best movies from hindi & regional cinema to Oscars instead of popular or handpicked movies like Paheli.
And also movies which got an universal appeal unlike Rang De Basanti (yes it was good movie) should be sent and aggressively marketed as Fox is doing for Slumdog.
Naren, yes even i feel SDM is way too overrated. Its getting a buzz only because of the hype and the India angle. But the Academy in recent times has been prone to getting swayed by hype( Titanic, Chicago). And i think it wud be nominated. But one thing, is generally GG winners dont win at the Oscars. So lets see on that count. We honestly need to send better movies and look beyond Bollywood.
@ ratnakar
oscars or no oscars, TZP is one of the better movies to come out in recent times. I agree with what you say. and yes, if a film does win the award, then it certainly enhances its value. This past weekend, I happened to visit a multiplex in boston and 2 shows of gran torino were full – because of the exposure it got during Golden globes and also 3 other shows for slumdog were full. If the globes can do that , then imagine what would happen in the weekend following oscar nominations….
I agree, we should send regional movies too,in case we dont have a hindi movie ( better not to not send any , instead of jeans or paheli, for that matter).
Bipin, yeah i still say TZP is one of the best Indian movies this decade. Getting an award does however enhance its brand appeal. There have been many movies, i wud have left unnoticed, had it not been for the fact that they were Oscar nominated or winners.
@Narendra
I fully endorse your view !!!
GK
@Ratnakar
Correction dear, City of God inspite being a foreign film was nominated for Best Director,Best Screenplay,Best Cinematography and Best Editing Academy awards 2004 but sadly didnt win any and i strongly feel Slumdog Millionaire is nowhere near to City of God and forget winning it is not even worth of being nominated !!!
GK
GK, lets not even talk about SDM and City of God, in the same breath. SDM for me was more like one of those 70’s, 80’s masala flicks, where you had the poor hero growing up in a slum, and then making it in life.
my gut told me that TZp stood a much better chance at the oscars than any other indian movie
clearly my gut was wrong
but anyways i think oscars do command a lot of stature and blah blah but theire criteria for giving best actor is VERY whimsical and quite often undeserving actors win oscars and deservign actors end up loosing
Venkat, i feel TZP cud have made it, if the marketing and lobbying was a bit more aggresive. Also while TZP is certainly a new experience for Indian movie goers, for the Academy it would have been standard stuff, considering there are so many movies on disability that have been nominated( Rainman, A Beautiful Mind) in the past.
Also i dont think their Best Actor choice is whimsical, while more often than not, i rarely agree with their Best Picture award, the Best Actor awards have been given to right persons most of the time. Of course at times, they ignore an actor’s Best Performance and give it for his lesser ones. Denzel Washington for Training Day over Hurricane, Russel Crowe for Gladiator over A Beautiful Mind. Even Pacino’s rivetting performances in Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, An Justice for All were overlooked, and he got it for Scent of a Woman, not his best movie by any shot.
I completely agree with author here.But I feel the Indian media gives over attention to Oscars when compared to National awards which I feel is equally prestigious but hardly gets any attention
The National Awards of late too has been doling out some real undeserving ones, Saif for Hum Tum, the prime example. But any day far better than the other desi awards. Sharath, well the National awards dont have item numbers or Kareena paying tribute to Didi neither do they offer photo ops of Bohu, wiping her tears, when her Saasu Maa gets an award, so the media does not find it fit to cover them.
Also the reason why Oscars will continue to get more coverage, is their unpredictability, ur not sure who the winner is, till the envelope is opened. National Awards are something which are already announced way before.
yes as far as Indian awards are concerned, National awards are the best, they rarely surprise you and give credit to the ones who deserve it.
if you make a list of deserving people who never won an Oscar-Stanley Kubrick is the name that comes to my mind before anyone else’s…also Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa whose movies have been copied like anything even by someone like Sergio Leone…
just imagine not awarding Scorsese for Raging Bull or Taxi Driver,but Scorsese used to attend the ceremonies with great humility all this while(something which creative people all across the world should try to incorporate)…
and i agree with you that Oscars don’t take Indian cinema seriously because we haven’t given them enough reasons to…
Hmm Ahmad, if we get into Oscar bloopers that wud take up a separate post by itself. Marty always respected the Oscars, and i could see how overjoyed he was when he got it for Departed. But thats coz most of the movie makers, there, give respect to the awards, and accept the decision. Unlike our ego maniac stars and movie makers, who consider themselves to be bigger than everything else. When they lose too, they just take it in the right spirit, and applaud the winner.
‘Grapes are sour’(if you do not win or get nominated). ‘Oh, fuck I love grapes’ (if you win) and ‘Grapes aren’t that bad’ (if you get nominated)… Oscars matter… Why do you think Swearing-In ceremony of Obama was everywhere be it TV or net? No links to Oscars.. the point is Uncle Sam farts and the world has to smell it.
@GK, Wait and watch.
Oxy, i think the Grapes analogy perfectly explains our attitude. Well coz what the guy in the White House does, affects the rest of the world? Right now the US has a presence all over the world, good or bad, we better accept it.
@ Papaji- Well i think thats why the Saturn Awards came into the picture. I guess it has to do with its founding days, when Sci Fi, Superhero flicks were taken as B movie stuff. Hmm Oscars biased against Family movies??? Dont think so. The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Gandhi, Forrest Gump were all perfect family movies.
I only wish the Academy Awards were not biased against Sci Fi, Superhero and Family movies. A good movie is a good movie and it can be from any genre. They think some types of movies are “silly fun” while others belong to the “higher stature” or the “serious art” category. This is why The Dark Knight will never get any awards except for one for Heath Ledger.
Sometime, the Academy does screw up badly..like
Kevin Costner winning for Dances with the Wolves,instead of Marty Scorsese for Goodfellas.Or like Ordinary People winning instead of Raging Bull for the Best Picture in 1980.
Award shows are a farce in India ,we all know that ,except for the national awards no one really cares about any other trophy.
Akshey kumar has gone on record saying that many organisers offer him awards if he dances for a lesser fee on the stage.
As for Oscars going mainstream sometimes ,that’s acceptable and necessary as well coz movies are ultimately made for people not for the critics.
It’s the mainstream movies which ultimately keep the business going and give the phillum industry it’s flavour ,without the usual Karan Johar or YRF movie we wouldn’t understand the value of a Farhan or Ashutosh or Rakeysh’s movie.
Great post…
The Oscars have its problems…so do the Olympics or the Nobel Prize…heck, even Democracy has room for improvement…
But I still believe they are the most commendable systems in their respective fields…they might not get it right all the time but they have better track records than their alternatives.
Thanks for such a well-thought out post.
@ Bhune Murg….
You the same person with that Kanda Poha Layer with Triple Falooda id?
Well the Oscars are like any award, they have their own bloopers, but they have a certain standard also.
Best part of any award ceremonies is the list of nominated movies.. Many times these movies are either highly rated or universally accepted as better movies.. Some times award ceremonies fuck things up and some time they get it right.. Just like each of us, have different choice, award juries are same.. I respect Oscar and Golden Globe but its hard to respect Filmfare, where commercialism rules over critical appreciations..
Its kind of weird to see Slumdog winning the Golden Globe and movies like Doubt not even nominated for any categories.. Revolutionary Road is far better than Slumdog.. As you said earliar, Slumdog is a flavor of the month and who knows, it might win just like Titanic..
Nik
Nik, nice to see ya here, one thing is that quite a number of times, the GG and Oscar choices have differed. Eg In 2006 it was Babel for GG, and Departed for Oscars, in 2007 it was Atonement in GG and No Country for Old Men in Oscars, so lets see which way things will go.
The nominations will be known by tomorrow, so i guess you should be able to get a first hand update of it. Doubt, RR, Milk, Gran Torino are really better movies. As for the “Phillum Farce” and other desi awards, stopped taking them seriously, just sheer waste of time.
Yeah me too felt SDM was just a well made masala flick, thats it. Nowhere even close to Satya or Black Friday.
And, I did found slumdog little bit overrated.. nice story and uplifting story but overall experience to win best Golden Globe is too much.. Compare to movies like Satya or Black Friday, Slumdog seems highly overrated..
Nik
@15 Ratnakar
U r BANG-ON,absolutely right !!!
GK
Ratnakar, i love your posts, and the way you simply put across your point and yet make a statement.
National Awards for the past 4 years have become sell outs…Page 3 ..Hum Tum..
Oscars have been biased against action flicks..Is Dark Knoght nominated for best picture?I am not quite sure.
Sourav, the Oscar nominations will be known tomorrow at 5:30 AM US time.
Well expecting Oscars to award action flicks, is like expecting the Nobel Prize for Literature be given to Robert Ludlum or Dan Brown.
Though there have been exceptions like The French Connection though.
And for lovers of action, sci fi, horror flicks there is always the Saturn Awards.
@Ratnakar,
I agree with you. Oscars do have an aura and yes, they do goof up. Which is why I fear they may goof up again this year by honoring Slumdog, a terribly overrated movie in my opinion. Slumdog just happens to be the flavor of the season. If it weren’t for the hype, I would have thought it’s an okay movie. But the hype is so damn strong with some people declaring it a modern classic, that I have begun to pick flaws in it. For instance, i see no reason for the scene showing a kid covered in shit seeking AB’s autograph. Or the police torturing a game show participant. Or the game show host being a mean SOB. Even the BGM, i feel is no great shakes. AR has done much better stuff before.
As for TZP not making it to the list, i’m not surprised. Though i loved the movie (got a lump in my throat) and i feel Aamir’s picturisation of the songs were brilliant (paint dropping on Darsheel’s face as music reaches a crescendo, for example), it wasn’t perfect in every sense. For me, an area where Aamir didn’t do justice was the characterisation of some the male teachers at the boarding school. They came across as cardboard cut-outs, or if I may say so, caricatures.
These things matter at the Oscars. There will always be exceptions, of course. That’s when we realise the Oscars have goofed up. Hope they don’t this year. And a truly great movie like ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ wins. Or ‘Milk’. Or ‘Frost/Nixon’. Hell, I won’t even mind ‘Changeling’ winning despite Angelina Jolie being in it.
SDM is in no way a classic, just a decent movie. Nowhere even close to Danny’s other works like Trainspotting or 28 Days Later. SDM is standard 70’s, 80’s masala, in a more realistic manner, thats it. No way wud i place SDM in the league of movies like Satya or Black Friday or Mumbai Meri Jaan, which showed reality as is. Well the nominations will be out tomorrow, and let’s see. And one thing i do hope for, is that neither Dev Patel or Freda Pinto or Anil Kapoor get even nominated for Oscars. The performances were plain mediocre. Comparing this to City of God is just not done.
@Ratnakar nice article
I was thinking which Indian films could have got Oscar
May be
Do aankhe barah hath , Satyakam , Anand , Pyasa, Kanoon , Pathar Panchali , Do bigha zamin , Nayakan , Aashirwad , sadama
Absolutely spot on Ratnakar. Whatever bloopers the Academy commits in choosing say a less deserving winner over a more deserving one, we can at least agree on the fact that the nominated films are some of the better Hollywood movies of the year if not the best.
Ordinary People may have beaten a classic like Raging Bull to the oscars, but then Ordinary People itself is also a damn good movie….Also many such movies are not instanteneous classics, they take time to become one…and a movie released in December may not become a classic by next February….so maybe 20 years from now it may seem like a cardinal sin that There Will Be Blood did not sweep the oscars last year. Movies need to age like wine to be fully understood and appreciated…at least some definitely do.
And while we may continue to argue over TZP, did anyone really check out the other films that really made to the foreign Oscar category. TZP may be the best Indian film of last year, but do we really know anything about the other films.
Speaking of Oscars, Slumdog, however good it may be is nowhere in the league of Milk or Wrestler. So if it wins Best Picture, the academy will again be committing a blooper …
it is true oscar messes up the awards at times, but its success rate is far better than indian movie awards at least….
No country for old man winning best picture was one of the most deserving in recent years, and they nominated a clockwork orange in the 70’s and actually gave midnight cowboy the best picture, is spite of being an X-rated film. Yes, I hated titanic, gladiator, shakespear in love and crash as there were more desrving candidates, but they also awarded midnight cowboy, deer hunter, amadeus, one flew over cuckoos nest, rainman,chicago(yeah, it worked for me),no man’s land, the lives of others, all about my mother, the barbarian invasions which is quite commendable IMO.
True
GK
For me, the Oscars have more credibility just because:
1)They have not awarded an actor like Tom Cruise 15 oscars (in differant categories like Oscar Power Award, Best Critics Award when they have to give some other actor the award forthe year).
2)They do not feature actors and actresses doing item dances and the same people winning some award in some arbit category. They have song peformances from the nominees of that year’s Best Song which is simple though effective.
3)The hosts there are professional standup artists and/or genuine comic artists who take no hostages and roast everyone and every topic in sight including politics, racism, fellow actors, etc. They do not feature no talent, insulting, hypocritic gasbags who target a few individuals only.
4) The nomination process there is so rigourous that being nominated is supposed to be a huge career boost in Hollywood. Besides, does anyone take a “nominated for Filmfare award” seriously? A “nominated for National Award” maybe but after seeing the likes of Raveena Tandon get one and Madhur Bhandarkar winning for Traffic Signal, the level of seriousness goes down.
The Oscars have numerous faults which can be a subject of a separate post. However I would prefer an Oscar like award system to our Indian award show anytime.
Slumdog nominated for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Music, Sound Mixing, Best song(2), Cinematography, Editing… 10 Nominantions