- Just 23 selections would stay the same, meaning the Academy gets 26% of its selections correct.
- Last year would have seen Selma selected, rather than Birdman.
- We would have three foreign winners of the award (Grand Illusion, Z and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) rather than our current zero.
- We would have two animated winners (in back to back years from Up and Toy Story 3) rather than our current zero.
- 1994’s hotly debated win by Forrest Gump is now awarded to either of its highly touted competition, Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption, but rather Robert Redford’sQuiz Show.
- Martin Scorsese would lose his only awarded Best Picture from The Departed, but he would win his nominations from Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.
- Cinematic giants Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, West Side Story, The Godfather Part IIand Titanic all lose their awards.
Certainly under this system, the Academy have a spotty record. No decade saw more than four correct selections, and the 2000s saw just one award stay with its winner (Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). My research even caused me to contact Rotten Tomatoes themselves to enquire about their ‘Certified Fresh’ rating, meaning Mary Poppins may be squeezing its way onto the list to replace Dr. Strangelove.
Is Rotten Tomatoes’ rating system the ‘be all and end all’? No, but considering it measures the approval of film’s top critics over the world, it may just be the best option. It also, passively, attempts to measure how relevant a film stays following its release. Consider how many films from the 1920s and 30s will have reviews tabulated by Rotten Tomatoes. The greater amount of people who have gone back to review an old film surely shows a greater cultural relevance from it.
7 comments:
I saw something called "Anomalisa" that was pretty good. An animated film. Actually tugged at my heart strings and I though I didn't have any heart strings left. Very touching film. But not sentimental glop. Actually pretty bleak. Recommended.
You might like "Brooklyn."
All though it is about a shiksa.
Presuming that death is not an option, I would rather see Calvacade again than sit through Little Women. The song Twentieth Century Blues was introduced in that picture. The song, if not the movie, has aged well........The Great Ziegfeld is also fun to watch. Fanny Brice achieved more fame post mortem than she did in life, but you can catch her singing and acting in that movie. Sadly for her, Streisand was much better at being Fanny Brice than she was.
Gravity? That movie was horrible. The characters were laughably unrealistic. While I understand people who rarely are interested in space think the cinematography looked good, but if you actually watched Shuttle missions, the Earth was pathetically fake looking. It looked more like the stylized Universal Logo than anything like the real Earth. The best I can say about the movie is the interior of the space craft had some accuracy. The story itself reminded me of 2012 for its scientific accuracy.
Pretty much any movie is an improvement over "Driving Miss Daisy" or "The Life of Emil Zola"
Most people react as if Oscars were handed down from the gods on Olympus. They're all movie insiders voting on this stuff. You have a friend nominated for best best boy, you vote for him.
I don't see where critics are good judges of movies either. After Ebert went all Hollywood he was giving thumbs up to all sorts of Hollywood crap.
There were two critics I liked to read ,John Simon and Dave Kehr. Simon hated everything and Kehr seemed to despise everything made by his contemporaries.
Best bet is to read the reviews on IMDB, particularly the bad ones. However I think studios flood the board with glowing reviews for newly released movies ,good or bad.
I'm seeing that Rotten Tomatoes is likely just as bad as the Oscars in picking good movies. Looking through the changes, with movies I have knowledge about, I picked the times I complete agreed with one or the other:
Agree with Academy:
Grand Hotel
Mutiny on the Bounty
From Here to Eternity
The Godfather Part II (What's wrong with you Rotten Tomatoes!)
Unforgiven
Gladiator
Agree with Rotten Tomatoes:
Citizen Kane
Miracle on 34th Street
The Last Picture Show
The Right Stuff
Field of Dreams
Saving Private Ryan (What's wrong with you Academy?)
Up! (If the movie was made a short of the first 15 minutes)
1995 (1994 Movie Year), Shawshank Redemption was better than Forrest Gump or Quiz Show. I could even give credit to Pulp Fiction over Quiz Show and could flip a coin in regards to Pulp Fiction/Forrest Gump.
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