A few weeks ago, LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein wrote a scathing attack on the wave of movie bloggers who spend too much time handicapping the Oscar race, which is going on in earnest as the end of the year nears. Smaller organizations and critics groups are on the verge of announcing their picks for the best in this year's films, "For Your Consideration" ads litter Hollywood trade publications, and people who can vote in various races (including myself, as a member of the Las Vegas Film Critics Society) are being inundated with promotional screeners and screenings.
The Oscar race has become a mini-industry unto itself within Hollywood, so it's no surprise that reporting on it should have become a mini-industry among people who write about film. For some, it's merely a passing interest; for others, it's an obsession and even a primary subject for reporting, as on the Oscar-focused blogs launched recently by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. The LA Times has an entire Oscar website called The Envelope, featuring blogs by awards pundits Tom O'Neil (who's also covering the Grammys and other nonfilm awards shows) and Steve Pond. O'Neil has built a career on his quippy awards show analysis, showing up on E!'s red-carpet coverage and other programs to offer his thoughts on award odds.
Neither O'Neil nor Pond, nor the New York Times' David Carr, whose own Oscar blog started last week, are film critics (Carr even warns that "they didn't turn me loose for my refined cinematic taste"), and that's partly what's got Goldstein upset. These blogs, both those sponsored by the big newspapers and independent movie blogs that cover the Oscars along with other Hollywood news, are often less concerned with a film's quality than with its chances at awards, based on statistics about what past films have won awards, what kind of promotional push the film is getting and other predictors that have little or nothing to do with whether the movie is any good.
Of course it's unfortunate that any art form has to be brought low by crass competition. But to pretend to some high-minded ideal, as Goldstein does in his column, is hypocritical when such competition is an inherent part of commenting on cinema, from the highest of brows to the lowest. Publications from Film Comment to Us Weekly publish wrap-ups of the year's best, and if their picks diverge wildly, the impetus is the same. Goldstein even notes that he himself writes an Oscar-prediction column each year, and may do an Oscar podcast as well. Somehow this is more dignified than blogging about the Oscars.
Goldstein is worried that all the attention to Oscar minutiae takes away from serious considerations about "what our movies say about America today." What he doesn't acknowledge is that the Oscars are a prime indicator of that very question. Goldstein and others may be more interested in serious, difficult and obscure art films than they are in the glossy, simplistic studio productions that often attract Oscar buzz, and that's wonderful. Those films deserve every bit of attention they can get. But if you're wondering what movies say about America today, looking to the Oscars (or to the box office tally, another obsession that Goldstein derides) is a great way to start finding out.
For better or worse, the Academy Awards are a reflection of popular taste and industry trends, and those are far greater forces in what movies say about America than critical favorites that no one in America has actually seen. And tracking every detail of Oscar campaigns and show preparations is as much a reflection of what the public is interested in—spectacle over substance, competition over quality—as are actual films themselves. As Goldstein rightly notes, film critics care about movies because they say something important about the world we live in. He may not want to acknowledge it, but the Oscars do, too.
Josh Bell may occasionally blog about the Oscars at
http://signalbleed.blogspot.com.