Awards Season Blues

When did “awards season” become a phrase? It is certainly an accurate descriptor – the avalanche of end-of-the-year movie awards has become as interminable and seemingly unending as a Northeast winter (which has actually been rather mild this year in Jersey) – but has this time of year always been flooded with so much self-congratulatory nonsense? The Oscars have long been a staple of the industry’s love for itself but now we also have the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice Awards, the People’s Choice Awards, the SAG Awards, etc., ad nauseam. The airwaves are positively saturated with three-plus hour broadcasts praising the Hollywood elite!

There is nothing wrong with recognizing the year’s best films and performances, and I understand these shows’ appeal. They are fun. Today’s media does not paint a flattering picture of celebrity and these red carpet spectacles offer a certain image of Hollywood glitz and glamour that has otherwise been long lost to paparazzi photos.

Maybe you enjoy seeing who Michelle Williams is wearing or watching Ryan Seacrest pretend to care about how honored Jonah Hill is to be there (Mr. Seacrest has made an art out of vapid celebrity chit-chat). I have no beef with any of that. What frustrates me is how repetitive the actual awards have become.

Each award show's nominees are culled from the same small batch of films and we hear their titles repeated again and again – The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo, The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo – until they are ingrained in our heads as the Chosen Films for this year. Rather than using the end of the year as an opportunity to praise different styles or recommend lesser seen films, December through February has become a time when a select few movies battle for entry into the contemporary cinematic canon whether they deserve it or not.

Awards season begins a little earlier than this though and many of the nominated films are released in the last quarter of the year. Beginning in the fall and chugging along into the early winter, a new batch of historical biopics and stuffy dramas reach theaters, each trying to generate some buzz. Studios do not want their Oscar prospects to be forgotten when the nominees are chosen so they release them as close to the telecast as possible.

This scheduling choice has a wearying effect on audiences. A handful of movies you have only just heard about are being praised as the must-sees of the season and even though the movies range in their subjects, there is a feeling of sameness to them. They all arrive with the label, “Oscar-worthy,” which can have a damaging effect on them. The Artist, The Descendants, and Hugo are all interesting films worth seeing but when these award shows lump them together and pit them against one another, they suddenly feel a lot less interesting. And it can be difficult to give each one a fair shake when their releases are piled on top of each other.

I argue that this idea of seasons is hurting movies on a whole. Is awards season really the only time when thoughtful, well-acted movies can be released? Can’t we see something besides action blockbusters and raunchy comedies in the summertime? The most common complaint I hear about movies today is that they’re all the same. There are no new ideas left, people say. Surely this can’t be true but evidence that suggests otherwise is hard to find.

The reason for this is that studios all have the same goals in mind. Superheroes and men trapped in their adolescence are popular. They’re safe bets. Studios can rest easy knowing they’ll turn a profit as long as the marketing is relentless. A similar business model applies to the “Oscar-worthy.” They are often made on lower budgets and appeal to smaller demographics but studios still want to make money off them. So they wait until awards season to release them and hope that critics and Academy voters will usher them through the various award shows leading up to Oscar night.

So are the nine movies nominated for Best Picture truly representative of the best that 2011 had to offer? Of course not. The Academy has specific (and pretentious) tastes and this year’s nominees run the gamut of typical Oscar fare. You have your sentimental weepies (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help), some cinephile pandering (The Artist, Hugo), and the requisite period drama from Steven Spielberg (War Horse).

The remaining four (The Descendants, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life) are harder to label and, perhaps not coincidentally, are my favorites of the bunch. These are the films I predict will survive the season and maybe even get better with time. The other five, I’m not so convinced about (though I did like Hugo and War Horse). Years from now, which film had a strong showing during awards season will not matter. The Oscars’ history is full of misplaced praise and overlooked classics; they hardly have the final word.

Tomorrow and Friday, in preparation for and as an alternative to the Academy Awards, I’m going to discuss my favorite performances of the year and my personal Top 10 favorite movies of 2011. Will they stand the test of time? I think they will but, of course, who can say for sure? This is later than most critics release their picks for the year’s best but anytime is a good time to talk about great movies. Not just one season.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/22/12