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I just like that "Meg 2: The Trench" submitted itself for Best Picture. We should all possess such unearned confidence

The real travesty about Academy is that they don't include Best Stunt Coordination in their categories.

I hate the fact that The Boy and the Heron and Across the Spider-Verse were ignored completely outside of Best Animated Feature, yet mediocre flicks like Napolean and Maestro got so much love.

All Oscar campaigns should only be like David Lynch's

One thing that frustrated me this year was that three of the animated movies this year (Across the Spider-Verse, The Boy and the Heron, and Elemental) had the potential to be nominated in other categories, most notably Original Score, and there was just…nothing. It was Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio all over again. Two years in a row where animation wasn’t seen worth recognizing anywhere. Sure there were some years where animation didn’t get recognition, but two in a row?? The last time that happened was in the 80s, and since then animation has been blessed with: Disney’s Renaissance and Revival eras, Pixar’s 3D animation, increase of competitive studios and voices with DreamWorks, Illumination, Laika, etc., foreign studios such as Ghibli, Aardman, and Cartoon Saloon finding American audiences, independent animation finding a wider reach, the founding of the Annie Awards, and of course the actual creation of the Best Animated Film Oscar. Animation has been a major part of the most financially successful, critically-acclaimed, and audience-beloved movies ever made. And it’s tiring that the film industry as a whole hasn’t caught on to that.

One weird trick to win Best Picture every time: cast John Cazale in your movie.

‘Anatomy of the academy’ is now my favorite combination of words.

I'm wondering if you could make a brief explanation video of these; IMDB, Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic of how they make the database of movie criticizing and aggregates reviews. Would love to see the next video on this topic.

One thing that the Academy can do that would benefit a lot of cinephiles and ultimately lead to increased viewership and interest in the awards , is to get the previous winners of technical awards to do breakdowns and analysis of either current nominees or famous/ all time great movies. The acting, directing and Best Picture nominations are easy to decipher for the general public. But the average moviegoer is not familiar with the technical aspects of filmmaking and the nominees in those categories. This would help the audience appreciate the movie more. Also, making it compulsory for a movie to be eligible to be nominated being the release of home media would go a very long way in helping the industry.

just watched the iron claw and its fucking baffling that people were upset that Barbie got “snubbed” for two awards, meanwhile everybody who worked on The Iron Claw didn’t get ANYTHINGGGGGG tf is wrong with y’all

"Best" is a misnomer "Favorite" is more apt. Truer still, "Preferred" or "Most liked" by the Academy. "The Best" just sounds....sexier AND marketable..

4:11 my brain did a record skip at this footage of Cary Grant presenting an Oscar to Jean Simmons, which goes to show how much of a hyperfixation classic film is for me. Simmons unfortunately never won any Oscars (nor did Grant), and I had to look up what this footage was actually depicting. It was the 1958 Oscars where Alec Guinness won Best Actor for Bridge on the River Kwai, but couldn't attend so Simmons accepted on his behalf.

Speaking of Driving Miss Daisy: it won best picture (for whatever reason) but its director, Bruce Beresford, wasn't nominated. Billy Crystal referred to it as "a film that apparently directed itself".

I don't understand why it can't be complicated. Peer review in academic conferences is also completely volunteer driven but they make sure every submitted research paper gets a review from a qualified scientist. Only after the list is whittled down is a "best paper" awarded. I don't see why a similar two stage filter can't work here.

The practice of the December release is particularly annoying for those of us who live overseas, with those December releases in the USA mean the films are often released in Australia the next year. So when critics lists come out, most of the films listed aren't even available to be seen here.

The campaign for the Bradley Cooper film Maestro was particularly egregious to me

I think the year Frozen one the Oscar (I don't remember if it was that specifically) was where I really lost a lot of respect for the Oscars. Not for the film, but because I had read somewhere that the animated nominations had barely been seen by those voting, and the only reason they were voting for the Disney one was because it's what their kids had watched. That's what I'd heard anyways. I'm particularly aware of how little animated films are considered for awards, so even without many oscars, the fact that Spiderverse has been sweeping awards across the country is quite satisfying.

Academy Awards (which has been heavily advertised) is ultimately just a reference to pick a "good" movie. Then it's up to us to decide which film to watch.

Glenn Close said that Gwyneth Paltrow winning the Oscar instead of Fernanda Montenegro (Central do Brasil) was absurd that she still doesn't understand to this day

Saving Private Ryan was robbed. I remember watching the Oscars that year and the entire family sat silent, in shock.

I think this is especially emphasised in animation where everything is so studio based. I mean the same handful of American studios are nominated every year that the animation branch of the academy is probably so heavily skewed in a super commercial direction. So often animated films that win actually important animation festivals like Annecy aren’t even shortlisted.

Some further insight here: Most working professionals, in at least LA, are a part of a union or organization for their trade (composers, editors, etc.) these organizations get screenings (free with membership to the org) with Q+A’s with cast and crew all around LA. This is how the majority of working crews get to see these films. They cost money for marketing and venue, which is paid from the movies marketing budget. If there isn’t a screening for a movie, it most likely won’t be seen, due to time constraints of the job. Then there are the marketing items sent to members homes. Some of which are done with care, and some not. You might receive a dvd screener, a streaming code to watch at home, or a shot composition, a letter from a nominee, sheet music (signed and unsigned by musicians), magazines, posters, postcards, the list goes on and on. Since being subject to this, it even furthers what is being said in the video. It’s all about the marketing budget, but obviously having a decent or better film as well.

The year Shakespeare in Love won, the other movie it was up against was 'Elizabeth', arguably a much better movie - if only for Cate Blanchett's breakthrough role. The irony of the fact that both were set in the same period only highlighted that, no, Paltrow winning over Blanchett and her movie over Elizabeth and Saving Private Ryan, was not a vote on quality. That was highly recognizable even then.

I think Oscars are still necessary cause most of the times good films get recognised & are rewarded(even if they don't perform great box office)and such talents continue to get funding to make more unconditional offbeat great films that masses (busy riding big budget themeparks) may not watch

It just baffles me how Charles Melton did not get nominated for supporting actor this year. He was easily my pick to win given how devastating and haunting his performance was in a movie that had Julianne Moore AND Natalie Portman in it. Same goes for Celine Song for Past Lives as best director. Now Barbie was a massive favourite of mine from last year but NO, it did NOT get snubbed for director and actress, in my opinion, no matter what white girls on the internet with Taylor Swift as their only personality trait scream about--it rightfully got best picture and best screenplay nods. But Past Lives was such a brilliantly directed movie and Charles Melton was so harrowing in May December that their snubs feel like the Oscars this year were like, "We gave all the awards to Everything Everywhere last year, that's enough Asians for this decade." The Iron Claw and Zac Efron's snubs were also acutely felt by me. Brilliant performance in a brilliant movie.

I will say, this year it feels like all the major categories are very competitive, and whoever wins for Best Actress, for example, absolutely deserves that (I personally would give it to Sandra Hüller for Anatomy). Best Picture is also very nicely arranged, and so on

I've always thought of the Oscars as the "SuperBowl for movie nerds", meaning it creates a lot of fun discussion and is fun to watch in a competition sense, but at the end of the day the results should not be seen as that historically important, because it almost always comes down to popularity in the moment over any kind of artistic merit.

The shade towards Maestro 😂😂

there's a comment from 15 hours ago but this was uploaded 40 seconds ago so i can't tell if i'm early or if i've found a warp in spacetime

I know its very popular to hate the Academy Awards right now, but I do think there's an inherent positive aspect to the way it serves as a historical time-capsule, because movie lists of every year are damn long, but Oscars can serve as an anchor for what sort of films had major buzz, what was talked about back then by movie fans, but also what interesting, risky films were there I might not have watched. Sure, there's many snubs, but its not as if the Oscars are made up of completely unknown dogshit films every year, they still serve to immortalise really good films, and especially pre-2000s the Oscars can be really great as a historical record. Also the way that the Oscars can help increase viewership for more challenging/risky/experimental/weird films is also great, I think Poor Things is a good example of that, and as mentioned in this video The Deer Hunter. In this super chaotic world of constant information-exchanges, Oscars are a sort of consistent, sometimes frustration, annoying, presence throughout it all. People might watch it less but hell most people know what it is, they hear of it somehow, its a global phenomenon and part of pop-culture even just a tiny bit. If someone hears a movie got an Oscar it means something.

Thanks for the video. Just a reminder, Louis B. Mayer created the Oscars to stop actors from unionizing back in 1920s. He, and rightly so, realized the actors and so many in the field , in that time, would relish getting an award over, say, important things, like health insurance, fair working hours, and so forth. And thus the Oscars were born, not to celebrate art, but to market films to the masses. And fair enough. However, so many self-declared pundits (especially on You Tube today) have zero, repeat zero, idea how the "town" Hollywood (both the physical location and the industry) really work. Many think that Academy voters choose "what is the best". And that's for the most part, not the case. In many ways, it's favoritism, it's an axe to grind, it's checking off the box, unfortunately, because they are too busy to pay attention. Here's the reality. Many, many great films, performances, contributions, were never, repeat, never nominated for an Oscar. And yet we celebrate them more than most Oscar winners. Here's the question any filmmaker should ask themselves. Would you rather spend a million dollars on a film that earned no Oscar nominations but was revered for all time or one that earned 10 Oscars but was forgotten within a year?

Great analysis. Excited to see you approaching a million subscribers.

I've been kinda/sorta following the Oscars for years, and I learned alot from this. Thank you!

Your videos are so “feel good” videos to me. They’re informative, cosy, beautiful.

It seems as though a more thorough change would be to the way academy membership is created. As you said, the membership now is for industry people who have busy lives. My thinking is that membership should be given to academics in photography, acting, creative writing and such, who have an understanding of the way film language has changed over the last century as well as an understanding of the evolving social value and impact film has, who would theoretically be a more broad cross-section of the American public.

I loved this. You brought in some great case studies. Great work!

the greatest snub in recent memory has been either Best Animated Film is continuingly giving it to movies that apeals to the kids most & Ship of Thesus not getting nomination for either Best Picture or Best Foreign Film because it was an Indian film with English dialogue...

This is a really brave and informative video essay! Thanks for making this.

I have a family friend who is in the academy and every year they give me all the for consideration scripts the studios send out to each member. Thinking about it now, no way in hell are all these people reading all these scripts to judge which one is the best!

Excellent essay, thank you.

Past Lives for best picture as I've never seen anything like it and it captured that sense of longing, or The Holdovers which was very charming and funny; a great piece of work. Though I imagine Oppenheimer will get it.

Love the videos, man. Keep it up!!!

Thank for your high quality videos good stuff sir!

Really interesting having you demystify the Oscars process!

The 'Shakespeare in Love' campaign also likely sabotaged Cate Blanchett's win for Best Actress (Elizabeth I) - a snub that I take more personally than needed

Great articulation my friend.

The timing of this is sort of funny. Joel Haver, the youtuber known for his animations and Sketch comedy has hosted an event where he asks people to film a movie DURING the Oscars. He announced a day or two ago that he was cancelling the planned awards show because he had recieved too many submissions for him to conceivably watch so he decided to cancel that aspect of the show. I didn't really piece together that he just illustrated in microchosm the biggest issue with the ACTUAL oscars.

How about their bias towards acting performances in heavy dramas and biopics? Like, some of those performances should only be considered great impressions instead of great acting.

One of the biggest snubs was Joyland being shortlisted and then not being nominated... And then All Quiet on the Western Front won? 😬

Thank you for sharing your video. I learned a lot of new things about the Oscars which I always wanted to know. Your latest subscriber.

Is it a great video or is Tom’s voice just ridiculously soothing? Both… it’s both.

Cutting in that clip of the guy puking over the side of the landing craft from SPR… chef’s kiss.

One of my high school teachers husband got a vote in the Oscar's. We got to watch movies with the "for your consideration" watermark.

Really concise video. And I agree with your points. Ultimately though art cannot truly be, or should be seen as competitive. It cannot be.

Are you sure that Oscar bait was already a popular phrase back in the mid 70's? I certainly never heard it before the 90s and I'm nearly 60 years old.

The Deer Hunter is a very good film, though.

Oscars are hardly about performance but how well actors campaigned themselves, their narratives, and with current political landscape. Oscars are not arbiter of merit, or quality of performance.

Next video: Why is life like this. I sm serious

It's sad that America Ferrera couldn't even be excited about her Oscar Nomination, since she had to comfort Margot Robbie over not being nominated herself.

a fun thing to do is just going to the wikipedia article for a random year's Academy Awards. Pretty much every time you're gonna find snubs or bad decisions. Take the 39th Academy Awards, 1967. A movie called Born Free won best original score. I haven't heard of it but in hindsight it's of course easy to say that none other than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly should have won that year's Best Original Score Category. you can do that for every year. Recency bias is a thing, which is also what oscar bait movies are exploiting, and completely overlooking movies is also a thing

I aim to see every nominated film every year. Obviously most of the time, that‘s not possible. Most of the time we‘re talking about over 50 movies per year, over 35 feature length movies. So, it‘s hard to expect people to see EVERY movie. HOWEVER: If you get to vote in a category, it should be MANDATORY that you‘ve seen the movies nominated in these categories! If I can do it for most movies in the entire list, then industry people with easy access to all these movies should DEFINITIVELY be able to do so for the categories they have the privilege to vote in!

And that's why horror movies almost always get snubbed, especially beyond the more "technical" categories. No matter how much they even advertise them, most people still simply don't want to watch them. Best example: Hereditary. "Oh no, that's too heavy for me! I'd rather watch Green Book or Bohemian Rhapsody - there I know what I get..." So it's really just a popularity contest and not about actual quality, particularly in Best Picture category...

Best score needs to recognise the scores of animated films more often.

My buddy had an idea that I think the academy should pursue. Instead of giving the award to one person and creating so many opportunities for snubs, we should start to award Oscars as a Class system. What that means is instead of the best actor of 2024, it would be "The Class of 2024" . If you still wanted to make it an exclusive club you could award it to only 3 out of the 6 nominations, so you still retain the exclusivity aspect.

08:07 watching this part literally makes me feel physical pain😶

As always, very well thought-out and done properly. 👍👍. By the way hows your migraines now?

Of the last ten Best Picture winners, only three were directed by white males(including one Asian-American/Jewish-American collaboration). Two were directed by Mexicans, two by directors of African descent, and one by a Korean. Two were directed by women(20%, despite only 14.6% of US film directors being women), and one of those women is of Asian descent. Of the last eleven winners for Best Director, only two were white males: Damien Chazelle and Daniel Scheinert(albeit with Scheinert in collaboration with Asian-American Daniel Kwan). Two others went to a Asian male directors(including Ang Lee winning his second award). Two were directed by women, including Asian-American Chloe Zhao, which means that three out of the last fourteen winners of Best Director were women(over 20%). Five of the last ten awards went to Mexicans. So far in the 21st century(2001-2022), there have been 16 Oscars for Acting that have gone to Black performers which, out of 88 awards given, is just shy of 20%, while the actual percentage of Americans who are of African descent is only around 14%. This year, 25% of Oscar nominees for acting are of African-American heritage. Over the last seven years, nearly 40% of Academy Award wins for acting have gone to a visible minority: Mahershala Ali(twice), Viola Davis, Rami Malek, Regina King, Daniel Kaluuya, Youn Yuh-jung, Will Smith, Ariane DeBose, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan(and that doesn't include Troy Kotsur, who is deaf). ...and I haven't even gotten to the percentage of screenwriting awards since 2009 that were written or co-written by visible minorities(Jordan Peele, Spike Lee, Taika Waititi, etc), with half of the writing Oscars in the 2020's going to women. Is there a problem with diversity in our culture? Of course, but this criticism as applied toward the 21st century Academy Awards is overstated(in least in the top categories).

In Australia, a lot of films don't get released here until after the oscars so they can use it as marketing.

The worship of numbers in box office performance is only an indication of how effective its marketing was.

The Thin Red Line also split the Saving Private Ryan vote to some extent.

Now explain the never ending snub of horror and comedy.

I don't really care about the oscars but we can't deny the fact that it's important for the industry in some form.

I live in Europe and if even 20 years ago the Oscars were very popular, today practically no one cares. I don't even know if as any TV station rebroadcasts the event.

I think that voting is difficult, across all awards as you've perfectly summed up. Filmmakers and Academy members cannot watch everything, I'm not sure how you fix that. The Ballon d'Or in football is actually voted on by journalists not football players (though the captain of a country's international team also votes, I may have some of this wrong but it is journalist driven). I'm not sure if that would help the academy, making their membership larger. Giving more people an opinion. As I said this is an award-wide issue. I'm eligible to vote in the Eisner Awards (comic book Oscars essentially) due to being a published comic book writer, and every year I only vote on a handful of categories. Because I can't vote in a category that I haven't read everything in, I would love to read every nominate piece but as you said people who make art are often busy making art. I'm busy writing, or reading stuff to assist my own writing. I'm trying to get better at reading more nominated stuff because it always feels weird filling out a small amount of the ballot. Just wanted to give my own perspective as someone who has eligiblilty to vote on awards even if it isn't the Oscars. Great video as always.

Remember Green Book? CODA? Spotlight? Those won Best Picture lol.

It feels like the Oscars exist for the sole purpose of being a "production" within itself rather than celebrating movies.

Just from the clips you showed of Do the Right Thing and Driving Me Daisy - Driving Ms. daisy looks professionally shot.

brilliant videoooo

The total snub of All of Us Strangers was unforgivable

An additional point about box office influence is that the international market is often only tapped into after the nominations or even the award ceremony. Oscar (nominations) thus even partly influence the selection of films in cinemas.

Ultimately, the Oscars have always been a popularity contest and subject to industry politics; they have always skewed to conservative tastes, and the dynamics of team "A" versus team "B" has occasionally resulted in the surprise of a win for team "C". They are a lot of fun if you don't take them too seriously, and not much fun when they take themselves too seriously.

Or you get journalists (movie critics), whose job it actually is to watch 300 films a year, at least to do the first part of the skimming, and then when you have your nominees, the peers come in and award or not award the remaining films they can reasonably be expected to have seen.

Would be interesting if you could do a similar video about Canne film festival

Ever since Argo won thr best picture, I stopped watching the Academy Awards and started paying more attention to individual movie critic's choices

One of the most hack eyed talking points among cineasts is how awful the Oscars are. I used to be one of those, but as I get older I find my heart is no longer in that kind of complaining. I take the controversial point of view that the Oscars really are not that bad. Yes, several times the picked demonstrably mediocre films as best picture (Chicago, Coda), something they picked indisputable masterpieces for the ages (The Godfather, Parasite) most of the time they picked perfectly fine films that were relevant, well made and still worth rewatching several years later (A Man For All Seasons, Amadeus The Departed). Case in point: Ordinary People won best picture in the year Raging Bull and The Elephant didn’t. You could argue that Raging Bull and The Elephant Man have had a more lasting impact. They are definitely films that are easier to point at and say, wow, that’s great. But does that make Ordinary People a bad choice per se? Does it mean that someone who actually believes that it is the better film is a tasteless, middle-of-the-road geriatric? Of course not. In the end it’s all subjective. That being said, something in me always rejoices when by lucky circumstances a small, challenging and unusual film without a big marketing budget wins best picture, because it that means more people will see it. That is perhaps the greatest thing the Oscars - or indeed any movie award - can achieve.

thanks for saying it out loud. Meanwhile, what happened to 'Cinema of Meaning'?

Would’ve loved a breakdown on how movies are chosen to be included on that list of 200+ films to vote on.

4:14 I think worth remembering is that the oversights can seem obvious as they're happening but what seems obvious does not actually turn out to necessarily be correct. One very high-profile snub I remember was Crash beating Brokeback Mountain in 2006. Brokeback Mountain was a huge point of conversation at the time due to its relatively (at the time) explicit depiction of a gay relationship while Crash was considered to be bland Oscar bait faire. But in the time since, Brokeback Mountain has also kind of fallen out of mainstream attention and is not really a film that is still widely talked about much or that influential, even though at the time it seemed to most people unhappy with the result that it would be. Similar story in 2019 when Green Book won over Roma, which has also not had that big an impact 5 years later. Thats not to say Green Book or Crash were great choices either, just that the "obvious" better choice didn't really turn out to be the correct one.

The music starting at 14:57 seems to be Just So Happens by Sensitive Detective.

Ferrari got totally ignored this year, it should have had a few nominations

What an interesting video!

A big marketing Oscars campaign is not guarantee to get a bunch of nominations (ie Saltburn). I would have included ‘Power and influence in Hollywood’ as a big driving factor (like in the Weisentein example, it was not because his campaigns had money but because he was feared in the industry), and also on the other spectrum you have outcasts like Parasite that create a buzz among viewers that even while old male academy members can’t ignore. Today movie marketing starts waaay before the Oscar’s, with viewers more engaged with the results of film festivals and the conversation happening in social media and KZfaq channels like this one. There’s so much more than those magazine ads!

Seems like you have the metrics to do a quantitative analysis. Compare the marketing budget of winners and nominees over the last 20 years. Could be a good thesis project for a graduate student.

A good companion video to this is Dan Murell's If I Ran the Oscars. He talks mostly about how he would improve the ceremony itself, but he does talk about how to fix the Academy member problems as well as marketing budget restrictions in For Your Consideration campaigns. I love awards season and watching the Oscars, but the Academy needs an overhaul or they are going to lose it's core audience of cinephiles.

I will never understand how "Shakespeare in love" won any Oscar! Much less beat "Saving private Ryan" for picture of the year?!

Another aspect is also how hard it is to get your movie into the theatres. I can't say how many movies I see at festivals that are excellent movies but the never get a theatrical release simply because it's that difficult. The big budget movies make so much that the cinemas will gladly screen them for months (I believe EEAAO was screened for 6 months in my city) while others get a couple days or a week if they're lucky.

Shouldve called the video: Anatomy of a Snub

Another great video Thomas. I'm still disappointed (but not surprised) that Laura Dern didn't get a nod for Inland Empire too.

Isn’t it also true that some favorites to win didn’t because voters thought that others would vote for them, and then enough of them thought the same thing and it didn’t get enough votes and caused upsets?