Okay, the oscar nominations came out today and as per usual there's the "HOW DID THIS GET IN?!?!?" and "HOW DID THIS MISS OUT?!?!?" comments left and right. Any award ceremony ostensibly is there to reward the films and performances with the most artistic merit. Now of course when you have the average age of an Oscar voter being approaching retirement then once you realise the oscars don't speak for you it's a lot easier just to enjoy them. But I thought I'd take this opportunity on nomination day to show how my thoughts on what was the best of last year gets distilled by going through the oscar process.

At the moment (as these things always change the more films you see) my top 5s from 2007 in the main 6 categories are as follows :

Picture : The Hottest State, Ratatouille, Les Témoins, Control and Once.
Actor : Nebojsa Glogovac - Klopka, Benicio Del Toro - Things We Lost in the Fire, Casey Affleck & Brad Pitt - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Casey Affleck - Gone Baby Gone.
Actress : Jeon Do-yeon - Secret Sunshine, Park Ji-a - Soom, Jodie Foster - The Brave One, Belén Rueda - The Orphanage and Tang Wei - Lust, Caution.
Supp. Actor : Philip Seymour Hoffman - Charlie Wilson's War, Sami Bouajila - Les Témoins, Tony Kebbell - Control, Peter O'Toole - Ratatouille, Steve Zahn - Rescue Dawn.
Supp. Actress : Vanessa Redgrave - Atonement, Natasa Ninkovic & Anica Dobra - Klopka, Charlotte Gainsbourg - I'm Not There, Laura Linney - The Hottest State.
Director : Andrew Dominik - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Srdjan Golubovic - Klopka, Werner Herzog - Rescue Dawn, André Téchiné - Les Témoins, Danny Boyle - Sunshine.

Now, that is 30 nominations. All of the blue ones (so 9 of the 30) were not eligible for the oscars because they weren't released in America and on the reminder list of eligible releases so if I were an oscar voter I wouldn't be able to vote for them. Now, also, if I were the average oscar voter, I wouldn't be going to the cinema all the time and I'd be relying on dvd screeners at the end of the year to see the relevant films. Were I an oscar voter, I would not have received the films in purple and probably wouldn't have seen those either, that's another 6 out of the 30. Then consider you can only nom a performer once in one category and that is over half of my nominations which AMPAS could not or would not go for. So you can see, there isn't one category where my opinion wouldn't be shaped by the system and it decimates my choices. So what would my ballot look like if I only chose from those films actually screenered for AMPAS?

Picture : Ratatouille, Control, Once, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and The Orphanage.
Actor :  Benicio Del Toro - Things We Lost in the Fire, Casey Affleck & Brad Pitt - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Sam Riley - Control and Gordon Pinsent - Away From Her.
Actress : Belén Rueda - The Orphanage, Tang Wei - Lust, Caution, Anamaria Marinca - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Ashley Judd - Bug and Helena Bonham Carter - Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Supp. Actor : Philip Seymour Hoffman - Charlie Wilson's War, Tony Kebbell - Control, Peter O'Toole - Ratatouille, Hal Holbrook - Into the Wild and Sasha Baron Cohen - Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Supp. Actress : Vanessa Redgrave - Atonement, Charlotte Gainsbourg - I'm Not There, Amy Ryan - Gone Baby Gone, Adrienne Shelly - Waitress and Cate Blanchett - I'm Not There.
Director : Andrew Dominik - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Anton Corbijn - Control, Juan Antonio Bayona - The Orphanage, Michael WInterbottom - A Mighty Heart and Brad Bird - Ratatouille.

So immediately my Best Picture, Actor and Actress are all unavailable, it's almost impossible to care after that. You also see films and performances I've not been *that* praising of (e.g. Blanchett, the Sweeney people, etc.) getting in the top 5s that way and films like The Orphanage getting BP/Director when I don't think they should. The system would make me reward the less deserving (everything in red) and it can't be good when you're supposedly trying to reward the best in the year. Not really, you're rewarding the best in the year that the producers bothered to fill in the paperwork and could afford to send us the film. The oscars are basically a glorified free-dvd club and that's why today there was almost nothing I really got behind and wanted to win.

So why do I care? Because I love films and I like to see what different people in different parts of the world think the best films are. I actually think the Cannes Film Festival does the absolute worst job with the films they take into consideration, year in, year out and I seldom agree with them but every year (except this year for reasons of Wongness ) I check out all the reviews and it sets what I'm looking forward to for the rest of the year. I probably wasn't going to check out In the Valley of Elah this week when it comes out but now with Tommy Lee Jones's nom I probably will find the time and make the effort - on the other hand I was always going to see The Savages whether Laura Linney got nominated or not so they're not the be-all and end-all.

So now that's over how have I done prediction wise?
BP - I never waivered over Atonement but I succumbed to the guild love for Into the Wild over the commercial success of Juno. That won't happen again.
Actor - I had Jones until  the SAG, note to self go with gut instinct. Did not believe in Depp at all.
Actress - For Linney see Jones. Lesson learned. Worth shouting out that I had Page getting nominated in my first set of predictions in early October and always had her in. Check me out...
S. Actor - Had all 5 in early december.
S. Actress - FInally dumped Rednose (that was a heartbreaker) but did so for Keener, again belief in Into the Wild over Dee, who is surely the worst nominee of the last 30 years. I don't know what they were thinking.
Director - Called Schnabel as the lone nom from the first round of critics, always said Penn wouldn't get in for ITW (thank Christ) but didn't count on Juno and the BP and had Wright instead (although I'm pleased he didn't get in, his direction, coupled with the script, stopped the film being as good as it could have been)

So a terrible year results in some very predictable (I had 24/30 noms in place after the Globe nominations) choices and a poor collection of films that don't represent the best of the year. But then the latter part was never what the oscars are about and the system, as shown, is utterly to blame for that. The rich get richer, we only see it if you can pay for it, in a town where everything is about money the awards (even when they choose the "little" films too) almost naturally follow suit.