Originally Posted By mawnck TL;DR: The "smaller" movies are hosed. <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thewrap.com/academys-overhauls-animated-nominations-but-who-will-benefit/">http://www.thewrap.com/academy...benefit/</a> >>Under new rules, the (nominating) committee will be expanded beyond the usual 100, and members will be allowed to vote if they view the films on screeners rather than attending the special Sunday-night screenings in Beverly Hills, which will still take place. In addition, their votes will count if they see 66 percent of the entries, not 80 percent.<< Translation: The small guys will now HAVE to send out screener copies to have any chance, which they won't be able to afford. And since committee members only need to see 2/3 of the entries instead of 4/5, there's no incentive to watch any of the non-mainstream flicks. They're celebratin' tonight over at Disney and Dreamworks. G-kids? Notsomuch. More about the potential eligibles list, and other related stuff, at the link. I know for a fact that "Khumba" is in (its qualifier run is already scheduled for December), and "Wolf Children" and "Silver Circle", not mentioned in the article, will both be eligible by this time next week.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I wonder what instigated this change. Yes, it's nice to be able to have a slightly broader base for nominations, but it's also kind of important to have everybody see all of the films before they try and decide which ones are good enough to nominate. And are these new rules similarly applied to the other categories as well? The animation category has always screwey ways of nominating, so it sounds like the saga continues And are there any changes for the requirements of the films themselves, like runtime or amount of animation/live action?
Originally Posted By mawnck >>I wonder what instigated this change.<< An educated guess, using last year as an example: #1 You had to actually attend specific scheduled screenings, in Hollywood, of 80% of 21 movies, shown one right after the other. So you'd be sittin' in a theater for a very long time, and wouldn't have a lot of choice as to which of the movies you were seeing. If the movie on the schedule was "Hey Krishna", then you either watched "Hey Krishna" or went and did something else for 90 minutes waiting for the next one. I'm sure participation in this committee was lousy because of this. #2 Assuming your schedule was wide open and you got to choose every movie you saw, you still had to see 17 of them. There were 10 major releases, which means you, oh bewildered Academy member, are left choosing SEVEN of the following that you've never heard of: Adventures in Zambezia Delhi Safari From Up on Poppy Hill Hey Krishna A Liar's Autobiography The Mystical Laws The Painting The Rabbi's Cat Tinker Bell - Secret of the Wings Walter and Tandoori's Christmas Zarafa There aren't seven there that a normal adult would want to sit through. If you had a copy of last year's Mawnckscars to sagely guide your choices, you'd STILL be forced to watch "Hey Krishna", which was at #17. Under the new rule, you could shave off three of these, which, again using the Mawnckscars, means you could stop after From Up on Poppy Hill (and, since you're at home, could fast forward through the talky parts of Rise of the Guardians without telling anyone). In other words, the Real Problem is the same Real Problem that this category as always had ... the nomination slots rule. It encourages movie companies to submit their garbage to get more slots, and then the nominating committee is forced to watch said garbage. So while I'm very disappointed to see this rule go into effect, I can understand why it might be considered necessary. I just wish they'd have a set number of nominees LIKE EVERY OTHER CATEGORY and be done with it. AFAIK, there are no other significant rule changes in this category, but of course I'll post if I find any.
Originally Posted By schnebs I propose a new system for Academy animated feature and short nominations: mawnck chooses them. No muss, no fuss.
