And the Oscar Questions Begin Rolling In....
Question: I'm confused about the nomination of
Water in this year's best-foreign-film category. I thought that for a movie to be considered in that category, it had to be in the language of the country where it was made.
Water is set in India and acted in Hindi, but it's Canada's submission. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a great movie. I just don't get how the rules work. - Greg
FlickChick: Certain rules governing the foreign-language-film category have changed: It used to be that a film's dialogue had to be primarily in the majority language of the country submitting it in order to be eligible for Oscar consideration in the foreign-language category. Hindi is clearly not even a primary language in Canada, but the guidelines were changed this year. While foreign-language submissions must still be in a language other than English (duh), they don't have to be in the language of the country of origin. Instead, "the submitting country must certify that creative talent of that country exercised artistic control of the film.
Water writer and director
Deepa Mehta was born in Amritsar, India, but has lived in Toronto for more than 30 years and is a Canadian citizen, thus qualifying as Canadian "creative talent."
Question: How many people vote in the Academy Awards? - Peter
FlickChick: This year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a voting membership of 5,830, divided into 16 branches, including writers, makeup artists, art directors, animators, producers and publicists. Membership is usually somewhere around 6,000, and the largest branch is actors, with 1,251.
Current Academy members propose new candidates for membership; generally at least two people must recommend an individual before he or she is considered. Academy Award nominees who aren't already members are automatically considered but are not guaranteed membership, which has to be voted on. Last year, 120 new members were admitted, while 76 died, including actors
Jack Palance,
Darren McGavin,
Jane Wyatt,
Glenn Ford,
Don Knotts,
Maureen Stapleton and
Peter Boyle, director
Robert Altman, producer
Carlo Ponti, writers
Gordon Parks,
Betty Comden and Joseph Stefano (
Psycho), and cinematographer
Sven Nykvist.
Branches nominate in their own categories - so directors nominate other directors, and so on - and the entire membership vote on the final ballot.
Question: How is it possible that
Volver isn't nominated in the best foreign-language-film category? - Marisol
FlickChick: Beats me. Nine times out of 10 when someone asks me this question, the answer is that the film wasn't submitted. The foreign-language film has special rules, one of which is that it must be submitted by an "organization, jury or committee that should include artists and/or craftspeople from the field of motion pictures" in the country of origin (as defined in the question about
Water). Each country can submit only one film, and it's not necessarily the same film that played best to U.S. critics and/or audiences. In fact, the film doesn't have to have played in the U.S. at all.
But this is not the case with
Pedro Almodóvar's
Volver: It was indeed Spain's official Oscar submission. In order to ensure a level playing field for all submissions, the films are screened by all members of the Academy's Foreign Language Film Award Committee, who then nominate five titles for the final ballot.
Volver didn't make the cut, whereas Denmark's
After the Wedding, Algeria's
Days of Glory, Germany's
The Lives of Others, Mexico's
Pan's Labyrinth and Canada's
Water did. Those are the breaks. At least
Volver isn't completely unrepresented:
Penélope Cruz got a best-actress nomination for her performance.
Question: Do animated movies have to be completely animated - no live actors at all - in order to get an Oscar? - Toon fan
FlickChick: No, they have to be 75 percent animated, which is why prolific French director
Luc Besson's
Arthur and the Invisibles was disqualified this year. There doesn't have to be a best-animated-film category every year: At least eight films have to be eligible for nomination, and if there aren't enough candidates the award isn't given.
Apparently there have to be five eligible movies for every one nominated, so in order to fill a full slate of five animated features, 25 have to have met the requirements for submission. I infer this from the fact that eliminating
Arthur reduced the number of eligible films to 15, and therefore there could be only three nominees. Since the category was introduced in 2001, there have only been five nominees once, in 2002.
Animated films must also meet the same requirements as live-action films: They must be feature-length; they have to have played for at least a week at a Los Angeles theater open to the public and where tickets were purchased (as opposed to given away); and they may not have been shown on TV or any other nontheatrical forum prior to their theatrical release in theaters. This last was the rule that sparked the
Croupier flap in 1999.
Croupier, which starred
Clive Owen and made the 10-best lists of many critics' groups, was disqualified for having been broadcast on Dutch television before it opened in theaters.
