Why the Oscars are a flawed process

The Oscars are generally seen as the cream of the crop, winning a Golden Globe or a BAFTA is nothing to be sniffed at in the world of film but it's the Academy Awards that are always seen as the ultimate mark for a film-maker, actor or actress. Much weight is put behind who the winners are but in general are they representative of what the best films were in the last year? The obvious answer is of course no.

Last years main acting winners

The selection process is the best place to start and has seen many films fall short of the requirements laid out by the Academy. Hoops Dreams was one film that notoriously fell short in the Best Documentary category, a film which is still on my list to see, although a change to the process has taken place since 1995 the film wasn't shown till the end because so many voters weren't interested in following it all the way though so it was turned off after ten mins. In more recent time documentaries have struggled because voters have to attend an Academy branded screening which means taking time out of presumably busy schedules to watch a film you've probably seen more than once just to register one vote, this is the reason that great docs like Senna and The Imposter missed out in recent years.

The further problem with the selection process with the bigger films is that its generally accepted that to be an Oscar contender you have to release your film near the end of the year and then campaign for it if it is nominated, campaigning basically meaning pandering to a bunch of stuffed shirts presumably with money to entice them to vote for you. But even then if you look at the nominations for the Golden Globes and then the Oscars you'll notice they are incredibly similar. A lot of Oscar voters can't be bothered to trawl through a hundred movies over the past year to decide what to vote for, so they look at what the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have chosen and start there. In short meaning the press help decide what is nominated at the Oscars by default and of course the press are completely unbiased in who they choose.

Now we are past the issue of qualifying and being nominated for an award, the problem of actually winning one comes down to a lot of things other than how good the film was or the acting was in said film. If your film has a lot of violence in it or is generally a sci-fi movie then you might as well take January off to practice your gracious loser face. The Dark Knight was the last straw for movie fans as they campaigned vigorously after it was omitted in 2009 so the academy increased the Best Picture nomination from 5 to 10 mainly to include to help push up viewing figures.

The winners are generally quite predictable far out in advance, certain films come along that aren't particularly great as films but fit a set of criteria that the Academy loves. Films like Lincoln and The Kings Speech fall into this category, Lincoln especially as it was a mess of a film and Daniel Day-Lewis aside should never have been near the awards. But politics always rears its ugly head around the Oscars to decide that Shakespeare in Love, truly awful film, should win Best Picture rather than Saving Private Ryan because Miramax pulled out a huge ad campaign.

It also gives the voters a chance to stroke their own ego by promoting small independent films meaning their director and actors get a huge chunk of the limelight, then they can sit back and watch their career hopefully flourish safe in the knowledge it was down to them, Beasts of the Southern Wild being this years small film despite it being one of the most tedious 90mins of cinema ever.

So next time you get annoyed that a film you loved didn't get nominated like Drive in 2012, remember this.