Showbiz History: Super Remake, Early Franchise, and A Barrymore

10 random things that happened on this day in history (Aug 15th) as it relates to showbiz...

I am a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes...

1483 The Sistine Chapel is consecrated and holds its first mass at the Vatican. Remember that "anecdote" in Six Degrees of Separation (1993) about slapping the hand of god? What a fantastic play/film. Stockard Channing's nomination that year was so well-earned. In many years that performance would have been my gold medalist, but what a stellar Best Actress year 1993 was. Hunter, Bassett, Channing, etc...

1879 Future Oscar winner Ethel Barrymore (None but the Lonely Heart) born in Philadephia. She is one of only nine women to have ever been nominated for 4 Supporting Actress Oscars. We're discussing that list right now actually ...

1912 Amazing actress Wendy Hiller born in England on this day. She would go on to 3 Oscar nominations and a win (Separate Tables, 1958). On the same day in Pasadena...

Click to read more ...

Tues Top 10: Oscar's All Time Favorite Supporting Actresses

Let's discuss Oscar hiearchies. This one is ultra specific and could be argued that it doesn't exist since actors can be nominated in leading categories, too. But we love ultra niche rankings and trivial Oscar Trivia, and you do too! So who are Oscar's 10 favorite supporting actresses of all time? We'll work the ranking like so: Supporting nominations count most, and wins act like half a nomination to help determine rank. The tiebreaker is the spread of time of nominations which can denote either long term fandom on the Academy's part or more shortlived enthusiasms. If a final tiebreaker is still required (and it is in the case of the second place ranking on this list), that's the only time activity in the Leading Actress category is factored in. READY?

The Ten Most Oscar-Lauded Supporting Women

RUNNER UP: 
AMY ADAMS (4 nominations across a 7 year period)
Her leading miss for Arrival (2016) despite its Best Picture nomination could mean her Oscar time is up (it ends for most performers at some point, no matter how beloved they are). On the other hand that might have just been the actors branch bias against science fiction throwing a tight race. If she's nominated for the political drama Backseat this year, she might be impossible to beat given the decade plus of momentum. Currently in Sharp Objects on HBO.

Click to read more ...

Oscar Myth-Busting: The Academy Doesn't Like Popular Films

by Nathaniel R

The 10 biggest hits of all time when adjusted for inflation. All but one of them was nominated for Best Picture and three of them won.

We hear it every year: "The Oscars only nominate films that no one has heard of!" Every year this untruth is spread by people who a) don't pay attention to movies and are thus not the target audience of the Oscars anyway and b) don't think things through before proclaiming them and c) haven't worked out that in our increasingly niche world MANY people haven't heard of tv shows, albums, movies, or plays that are of utmost importance to a whole other group of people.

Somehow this myth of "obscure taste" has sunk deep into the Academy's own mindset and they've bought in to it. This week's catastrophic announcement suggests that they've bought into this myth that they don't like popular things to the point of self-loathing. So, here's a quick bit of factual history to bust this myth once again. Our work is never done!

Box office history is harder to suss out prior to 1980 when box office reporting became a more regular occurrence. But most historical indications suggest that the nominees for Best Picture before then were often sizeable hits. Part of the divide that's happened in the past 38 years, which people are never honest about when they complain about Oscar's "relevancy," is that audiences became progressively less interested in human drama (Oscar's bread and butter from 1928 onward), which they mostly sought out on TV, and more interested in visual effects spectacle, cartoons, and mega-sequels. The former is an Oscar interest, the second one has its own category so they mostly ignore it, and the third is not an Oscar interest for which we are grateful because if you want the same things to win prizes every year, look to the Emmys!

So is there any kind of truth to the notion that Oscar doesn't like popular films and only embraces obscure ones? Let's look at the evidence from 1980 onwards...

Click to read more ...

New Academy Rulings = Catastrophe

Oh dear.

Whatever goodwill Oscar has gained recently with their commendable efforts to diversify their membership appears to have not appeased their naked NEED to more popular with people who they'll never be popular with. Three new changes have been announced two of which are potentially catastrophic.

Let's take them in order of least to most upsetting.

The Oscars will be earlier after this year. 
The 2019 Oscars will be held on February 9th, 2020. The benefit of rushing the Oscars is that it also helps alleviate (in theory) the December glut as well as the ever-tacky "one week qualifier" release tactic that feel like cheating even though it's technically just fine with the rulebooks...

Click to read more ...

Supporting Actress Smackdowns, All Episodes

by Nathaniel R

The Supporting Actress Smackdown began at StinkyLulu's dearly departed blogspot many years ago. We revived the series here for summertime airings with his blessing a few years ago, and get this, there are only 25 years that haven't been visited. If you axe the years that are too recent for retrospectives and remove the years that have a missing film (neither streaming nor available on DVD) than we're down to only 12 years that we can visit!

In total 56 years have been reviewed. In those Smackdowns, the rotating panel has agreed with Oscar 48% of the time (if you count ties that included the Oscar winner as agreement. Though Oscar has never had a tie in a Supporting category there have been six ties at the Smackdown.) Herewith an index of where we've been and where we might go next...

Click to read more ...