POLL: Is the Academy Wrong?

Alright...I mentioned this as one of my gripes in the "What Ticks You Off?" thread in the Intermission forum, but here it is in poll form for all of you:

Is the Academy wrong for only nominating drama flicks for Best Picture and most such awards? I think they are, which is why I'm going to vote for "Heck Yeah!" as soon as I post this poll.

Jurassic Park was a well done movie. It was emotional, scary, exciting, cool, and exhilirating all at once. And since I read the book, I can honestly say that it brought the story to life quite well.

So: should action flicks, and other such movies that tend to win a lot of Golden Gloves, be nominated for Academy Awards?

What an interesting question. Hmm.. maybe they should have catagories like Best Action Pic, Best Comedy, Best Sci-fi etc.. Don't they have Best Animated Film or something?

Are you sure that only dramas get nominated for Best Picture?

What about:

1934 It Happened One Night (Comedy)
1938 You Can't Take it With You (Comedy)
1964 My Fair Lady (Musical)
1965 The Sound of Music (Musical)
1968 Oliver! (Musical)
1971 The French Connection (Suspense/Crime)
1973 The Sting (Crime/Comedy)
1976 Rocky (Sports)
1977 Annie Hall (Comedy)
1991 Silence of the Lambs (Thriller/Mystery)
1992 Unforgiven (Western)

And that's just me browsing the list. BTW, I got the genre's from another site. I didn't make them up.

The other site listed Braveheart as historical drama, but it was pretty action oriented.

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Beep Beep!

While Unforgiven was a Western, it was still a drama. Same with Rocky, it's a sports-themed drama.

Things seem to have changed in the early '80s. These days, the Academy often holds a film's popularity against it. And the films that are nominated are often thought to have to be "important" films in some way. This is not always the case (for example, Titanic won, and it was a very popular film), but it seems to happen more often than it did prior to about 1982.

So noting that "It Happened One Night" won an Academy Award is not so much relevant to today. The Academy in those days generally picked the most popular films of the day as nominees for Best Picture, etc. (Of course, under the studio system, there were far fewer "obscure, arty" films being made in the coutry).

My mistake - not just drama, but other such films that Joe Schmoe won't likely take too much interest in them. You rarely see those nominated. There are exceptions - The Sixth Sense, for example, but overall we see a lot of films that your average football fan would fall asleep during.

It seems as if they go out of their way to try to nominate something "powerful" and emotional, when I think films like Jurassic Park or Terminator 2 are very well done, and deserve more recognition.

I agree that Terminator2 and Jurrasic park should have received more recognition, but they did receive a ton already. But you have to keep a number of things in mind when fims are being nominated. Think about cinematography, acting, screenplay, etc. Most action movies don't have the best acting performances. Also, it has to be an all-around excellent film. Who says the movie HAS to have action in it. I feel that the people who only watch movies for action, just don't have what it takes to appreciate a film for what it is/what it does. A very good film should make the viewer think as well as entertain.

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I watch movies, I eat, I lift weights, I eat again.

Kind of like what Sean Connery said when he accepted the lifetime achievement award from the Golden Globes a few years back. He said, "I like my audiences stirred not shaken."

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I'd never heard that! LOL - that's one heckuva great line. Sometimes I start to think Connery is getting senile, but then he goes and says something like that. The guy is a legend already.

It was a fabulous line and garnered a standing ovation from Hollywood's elite.