February 20, 2017
EP. 167 — Cracked’s 2017 Fake Oscar Awards
Who can forget the classic Oscars showdown between ‘The Artist’ and, uh, ‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’? Most of us can and did, in fact. Great job, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! Way to keep your fingers on the pulse of American filmmaking by giving gold out to the 1930s-style silent film. Trailblazing.
The Oscars have proven year after year that they’re not the best barometer for judging the best or even the most popular films from a given year. Often they’re really only judging movies on the criteria of being appealing to a group of old, white men with film industry jobs. Look at three of the last five best picture winners and their subject matter: ‘Birdman’– an aging actor known for playing superheroes strives for artistic legitimacy; ‘Argo’– Hollywood producers save hostages in Iran; ‘The Artist’– Remember silent films? And let’s pencil ‘La La Land’ into that list– an struggling actress and a struggling musician fall in love, become successful. Hollywood obviously has a problem being objective about movies wherein the subject matter is itself.
So this week we’re being objective for Hollywood. Jack O’Brien welcomes Cracked’s David Bell, Adam Ganser and Brett Rader to discuss 2016’s Best Picture nominees and award movies in some made-up categories that we’d like to see incorporated into the Oscar broadcast. Later they took a look back at the 2012 Oscars in which ‘The Artist’ won best picture and redistribute the awards with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
Footnotes:
Cracked Podcast: Why We Should Wait 5 Years to Award the Oscars: https://goo.gl/COc0zQ
Article: Cracked: 5 Problems Haunting The Oscars (Besides Lack of Diversity): https://goo.gl/mMgAQG
Article: Cracked: 5 Reasons the Oscars Matter Even Less Than You Thought: https://goo.gl/bql0
This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: CRACKED), Lincoln In the Bardo, and Away (www.awaytravel.com/cracked).
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