Oscars

The Oscars for 2009 are over. Who won? Who lost? Did their Web site work?

Copyright

The Oscar is copyright of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and their Web site is www.oscars.org. The various movies are copyrighted by the movie makers. Actors may have copyright over their images. Assume everything to do with the Oscars is copyrighted by someone.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Web site, www.oscars.org, uses jQuery, a completely free and open javascript library but jQuery still has a copyright.

Eligibility

The Oscars presented this year are often referred to as the Oscars for 2010 but they are actually presented for movies released in 2009. to make things more confusing, a movie may be released in Australia in 2009 then in America in 2010 and not be counted.

There are special awards for short films. To be eligible for the main prizes, a movie must be at least 40 minutes. The original District 9 was only 20 minutes. The movie version is considerably longer and eligible for best movie. A really interesting Oscar result would be to have District 9 win both best short film and best movie.

A movie must be displayed as 35mm or 70mm film, or in a 24- or 48-frame progressive scan Digital Cinema format with a minimum projector resolution of 2048 by 1080 pixels. There goes the chance to use something modern. The rule is clearly aimed at America and their pathetic NTSC television. Outside of America you would use 50 frames per second for PAL television or 100 frames for the next generation of television. Converting down to the American standard produces mushy images the same as you get when you take American video and run it through a program that tries to fake a PAL video using interpolation, extrapolation, and other rubbish.

So to win you really want to use a very high resolution then downscale to the American standard for the version you submit to the Oscars.

The movie must have the first public screening in a theatre and a run of at least seven nights in a commercial theatre in the County of Los Angelese. From the first public screening until the awards, you have to keep the same movie or risk disqualification. After the awards, you can do what you like with the movie.

The seven day run in the County of Los Angelese must be in 2009.

If you are nominated twice, you are reduced to one nomination. Assume you are an actor and nominated for two films. The best actor award is announced as five nominations. You might be voted into third and fourth places. Your fourth place nomination will be thrown away and the fifth place moved up to fourth. Your third and fourth places might have, collectively, more votes than the winner but that does not count. The best actor award is really an award for the best performance by an actor, not their total output for the year.

Voting

Directors vote for directors. Actors vote for actors. You have to be a member of the Academy to vote. That membership rule is one reason why so many non American films have American stars or crew members.

The success of a film is based on sales but sales are often based on good marketing tricks. We buy our tickets on opening weekend because of all the advertising and fake online revues, we hate the movie, but the movie is already a success because we purchased millions of tickets during the opening weekend. We need a vote after we see the film. Change the Oscars Web site to let us vote.

Timing

Although it is not a requirement of the rules, most Oscar winners are running in theatres during the voting period. All the major actors and members of the crew get a vote towards the scars plus a share in the profits from their movies. They vote for movies that will get a boost in sales from the Oscars and that means movies released toward the end of the year.

Web site

The home page of their Web site contains at least 29 errors including syntax, standards compliance, and accessibility errors. The site is spoilt by using Flash where Flash is not needed then it is further spoilt by stuffing up their inclusion of Flash.

There is no facility for the public to vote for movies. If we could vote based on all movies released during 2009 in our home town, Hollywood would suddenly discover how much time they waste on movies we do not want.

The voting would have to ensure one login per person. For a true representation of life, you should be able to nominate every movie as worth watching or rubbish then order the good movies based on preference.

There should be an option to indicate if you have read the book the movie is based on. Many Hollywood movies are based on a Hollywood formula script then are given the name of a book plus a few characters are renamed to fit the book. We should have a chance to vote them off the screen.

Comedy

The Academy awards have long history of producing comedy the way the concrete industry produces espresso. They do not. They start by choosing actors to present comedy and very few can. They almost consistently choose actors that do not understand comedy. The 82nd awards, in 2010 for movies from 2009, used Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, with neither able to present stand up comedy. Steve Martin is America's attempt at producing a John Cleese but Steve Martin just did not cut it at the awards and had to resort to insults to fill out his time on stage. Alec Baldwin could have improved his appearance by not appearing and instead showing cuts from his movies.

Best movie

The nominees are:

• Avatar
• The Blind Side
• District 9
• An Education
• The Hurt Locker
• Inglourious Basterds
• Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire
• A Serious Man
• Up
• Up in the Air

District 9 and The Hurt Locker are the only two nominations worth considering for a best movie award. District 9 was too political. The Hurt Locker is about war and Americans are comfortable with movies about Americans invading foreign countries.

Avatar is a cartoon with scraps of poor acting in between. Unfortunately people were voting for Avatar despite Avatar being too long, boring, and lacking a significant story line. the fact that Avatar was nominated shows that big budgets are more important in Hollywood than producing interesting movies.

The Blind Side would bee a good movie if it featured the important character, Michael Oher. Instead it appears to be just another Hollywood movie where a name star gets to dabble in drama. All the previews focus on Sandra Bullock playing an acceptable but not very interesting supporting role. One indication of the weird Oscar results is that Sandra Bullock was nominated for best female actor and actually won!

The rest of the list show there was not much of interest released by Hollywood during 2009. There were some entertaining movies among the rest but they should only be in the top 100 or the top 40, not the top 10.

Best male actor

Some old guy won for doing a bad imitation of Kris Kristofferson acting in an old bad movie.

Best female actor

Do not bother. There is nothing here. Go see the Best movie.

The nominations for best performance by a female actor and best performance by a female supporting actor lack interest and drama. the nominations are:

• Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side
• Helen Mirren in The Last Station
• Carey Mulligan in An Education
• Gabourey Sidibe in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
• Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia
• Penélope Cruz in Nine
• Vera Farmiga in Up in the Air
• Maggie Gyllenhaal in Crazy Heart
• Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air
• Mo’Nique in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

The Last Station could be good if it were not a Russian story

Conclusion

The best movie award should be split the way we separate Rock from pop. Split best movie into best drama and best formulaic Hollywood light entertainment movie. The Hurt Locker and District 9 could compete for best drama while the others compete for the popcorn movie award. The Oscars should let us vote through their Web site.