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It's no secret that the Academy is very distanced from what the general public wants to see, and it's even less of a secret that they prefer to give their little golden men to whatever studios had the best campaign strategy over which ones actually deserved to win.
Now here's the thing, if the Academy did go ahead and hand their awards out to the objectively best of the 400 something films that had their premiere in a Los Angeles movie theater within the calendar year, then a majority of those nominees would be foreign and indie films the average person would never have even heard of. You can't draw viewers in to watch the ceremony if it's full of something they can't relate to. On the other end, if the Academy was like the People's Choice Awards, and only awarded popular movies for the sake of their popularity, then we won't be giving out awards based on artistic merit, just pandering to audiences. That's why Black Panther and Green Book each won as many as three Oscars, none of which were deserved. Thus, I propose that the Academy finds a compromise between the two, so that they're awarding films that both deserve the honor and are widely well-known. With a *better* version of the most recent nominees created, I set some guidelines so that the popular films are guaranteed representation, such as the film must have grossed over $25,000,000, and that at least half the total nominees must have grossed over $100,000,000. As it turns out, the compromise is indeed possible! |
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 Wow, can't believe the ceremony is only a week away! This has been quite the show leading up to the big show, with at least four negative decisions the Academy made to alter the show, until public response triggered them to change their plan. Now, we will see all 24 categories presented live, all but one of the nominated songs performed, all of last year's award recipients for acting give out this year's awards, and no BEST POPULAR FILM category!
We could very well see the strangest, most bizarre Oscar ceremony yet this Sunday, but like any year, I will still give you what I think will wind up winning the big prizes. They are:  Every leader has the responsibility of guiding by example to decide the best decisions for all parties, a well-intended theme Marvel attempts to address in the first superhero film ever to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. But Black Panther still forgets a core detail: no matter how pure and innocent the people of Wakanda call themselves, anything done without Jesus only goes to waste.
First off, there’s the treatment of religious deities that starts with their mythological backstory… which in their reality is fact, not mythology. T’Challa not only can step into the ancestral place, but even has a choice whether to stay. His ritual of entering the other side- burying himself under sand after drinking a certain herb, resembles ancient pagan practices where people perform various routines to meet a deity face-to-face. Amongst all the world religions that have false gods whom require works to earn blessing from, Christianity rather teaches about unconditional love that starts with Jesus taking our place on the cross. God’s final sacrifice proves that we have no need to follow rituals such as animal slaughter to earn our way into Heaven, it’s our hearts, not our actions, that the Lord is most concerned about. (1 Corinthians 10:31, James 2:14-26) Warning: Spoilers ahead!
 This has been a pretty rocky year for the movies (and an even worse year for awards) so I now would like to take the time to share with you the best of the movies I saw this year. In total, the number of 2018 releases I have seen and assessed up to now is 55.
But first, a few notes on some of these categories: I considered the animated films for all the categories except for makeup and costume design, since there are technicians behind the editing, cinematography, and set design that deserve every bit as much recognition as those who work on live action films. So it's virtually free for all in everything. I also consider all films that feature visual effects shots a chance in Best Visual Effects. I say that it should be the goal of any VFX artists to make the effects invisible, so that's what I've been judging this year. I'm not following the same judgment as the Oscars, who like to judge based on technical achievement. While that's important to acknowledge to make sure the artistry of filmmaking continues to grow with its discoveries, my focus is on how the practical elements contribute to the film's unique needs, so you may find nominees in some of these categories you'd never expect to find in any other awards show lineup. I'm not saying I'm better than any of them, but rather this is my two cents on what's important in filmmaking. So now without further ado, here's my nominees, starting with... Wow. It happened. I don't know how, but it happened. A superhero movie finally got nominated for Best Picture... and it's Black Panther. What a travesty. But that's not even the surface of the incredible angst I feel right now against the Academy of Motion Pictures. This morning, the nominations for the 91st Annual Academy Awards were announced, and what do you know? They went with exactly the horrible picks all other awards shows and critic circles went with.
But before I get on with my thoughts (and I have a lot of them), here's the official Oscar nominees this year:
 Okay, here it is finally! I worked hard all year to analyze the recent patterns the Oscars took while voting for the nominees in each category. That included looking at this five-year period (2014-2018) to see where the Academy is now in selecting their nominees, breaking the year up into trimesters (Jan-Apr/May-Aug/Sept-Dec), and analyzing which movies of which categories were recognized based on box office performance and RottenTomatoes rating. Coupled with that, I checked to see whether if the movie would be a likely candidate for Best Picture, which would qualify it for most other categories... if not, then one usually has to be a previous nominee to be eligible for a nomination. Not to mention I also took time to analyze each category to see what types of films got nominated. For instance, you'll never see a movie within 45 years before or after today nominated for Costume Design (unless it's a musical), and a critically panned movie will not be up for Best Makeup unless it's also eligible for Best Visual Effects, in which only Sci-fi, Fantasy, Big-scale Biopics, and future setting films that made at least $25 million at the box office are eligible.
Yes, I certainly worked very hard at this, and hopefully my final predictions prove to be more successful than the past. Especially since this awards season has been extraordinarily unpredictable in the way they are awarding the wrong movies. But that's why if this system doesn't work and my predictions here are no better than my previous years' predictions, then things must change on my end! Just full disclaimer: this is not what I personally think are the artistically best of the year, just what I realistically think the Academy will go for once their nominees are announced a week from today. Then, we'll do a check-in that Tuesday morning, including my full thoughts on the results, and in about a month before the big host-less ceremony, I'll present the 2nd Annual TVOH Awards! But for now, here are my final predictions:
 I seriously can't believe it, 2018 is over already?! It seriously feels like to me that it should still be February of 2017! This whole year has been full of plenty of lows for me, both personally and on this website, but far more highs. As a general breakdown, 2018 was the year when I...
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AuthorI am an author who loves to talk about movies. I enjoy Seattle, cats, cookie dough ice cream, and photography. Subscribe to my site for autism lessons in your favorite movies! Subscribe for Movie Suggestions:Categories
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