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Jane Clark Blog - Oscar Voting
Jane Clark talks about Oscar Voting Oscar is looming and everyone is talking awards so I'm gonna join the crowd and yap a little about the coming event. First let me relay a little about Oscar voting. The Academy is very coy about the details, but this is the best I know... The first round of voting, to whittle down the list to the nominations, is segregated into the categories and voted on by the members of the Academy that work in the individual fields. For instance costume designers vote on costumes. Then the five nominations for each category are voted on by the entire Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.(You either have to win an academy award or be nominated by another member, work in the industry and be selected by a committee to become part of the academy). In the initial round of each race voters are able to list up to five choices. Their first choice weighs heavier than their fifth choice. I'm not sure exactly how, but basically 100 number one votes can be worth more than 1000 number fives. How does this add up? Let's take "Dreamgirls" vs. "Letters from Iwo Jima." "Dreamgirls" could have been voted consistently in the top five but those votes could have all been fours and fives, but without any number one votes. If "Iwo Jima" wasn't consistently in the top five, but got enough number one votes from a small but passionate group of voters it could out rank "Dreamgirls" despite the fact that "Dreamgirls" might have been a more consistently and generally liked film. Jane Clark loves Dreamgirls Why do I use this as an example? Because I LOVVVVVVED "Dreamgirls" and felt that "Letters" was a average film at best. It is not even in my list of top ten. And it really annoys me. Look, we all know Clint Eastwood has turned out some very impressive films. And was it a risk to make a film in Japanese with subtitles that was compassionate to "enemy," and put that film into theaters and asked the general public to turn out? Yes. Of course it was. But the film still needs to be judged on its worthiness by the sum of all of its elements. And those elements include story(which was repetitive), dialogue (which was quite poorly written), and acting (which was, most of the time, like a bad student film) as well as the direction (which was fine.) and the production values (which were adequate)
The fact that "Dreamgirls" was brilliantly written(and scored), very well acted (and in the case of Eddie Murphy, transcendant), well sung, stunningly directed and edited, with fantastic production values is born out by the 8 nominations the film received. So it is especially striking that we don't see a best picture nomination and/or best director. The Oscar pundits have cited this snub as being because either a) the academy is racist, b) the academy is a majority male and men don't like musicals (unless it's gay men!) c) Dreamworks over hyped the film and turned the voters off (and they did really hard sell it for over a year). But perhaps it all comes down to addition. The points just didn't add up, despite a general agreement that the film was good. Who knows. Jane Clark and her hands down best film of the year Either way I want to go on record as saying that I think "Dreamgirls" was hands down the best film of the year. Since it isn't in the running however here is my list of hopeful wins in most of the categories. Starting with best picture, my heart is with "Little Miss Sunshine." (with special mention to "Pan's Labyrinth. If you haven't seen that film - GO!) Jane Clark and her Oscar Picks Actor in a leading role: Forest Whitaker - "The Last
King of Scotland" (wonderful, focused performance) Happy Oscar viewing to you and yours!
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