The announcement of nominees for the Academy Awards, the American film industry’s highest honor, took place in Los Angeles early this morning. The riches were spread among a mere handful of pictures, with Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and The Grand Budapest Hotel nabbing nine nominations apiece. The Imitation Game scored eight nods, and Boyhood and American Sniper each tallied six.
Those five titles—notably, three of them independent films, and one British—are in the running for Best Picture, along with Selma (one of only two studio productions, the other being American Sniper), The Theory of Everything (also from England), and another indie and the biggest surprise in this category, Whiplash.
Only two of the Best Picture nominees were released before Labor Day last year, confirming the thinking moviegoer’s perception that Hollywood essentially ignores adults for seven months of the year. (January is a special case, with American Sniper and Selma now receiving national releases and the other nominees opportunistically opening wider.)
But today’s nominations also serve as a smokescreen. The Hollywood studios will spend every minute until ABC’s Oscar telecast on Feb. 22 toasting “quality” and “art,” but their bread and butter—and allegiance and attention—is in blockbusters propelled by brand-name recognition (i.e., sequels) and special effects. This is not a new development in American cinema, but it’s fascinating this time of year to observe the deftness with which the industry masks its usual priorities.
The bluff and bluster also will obscure the fact that the number of movie tickets sold last year was down five percent from 2013, and in fact marked its lowest level in 20 years (even as the average ticket price remained unchanged and the overall economy improved slightly). From an existential standpoint, the big screen is steadily being overtaken by smaller screens, with long-form television gradually replacing film as the benchmark for quality adult entertainment.
