Post by webhead817 on Feb 3, 2006 10:51:49 GMT -5
Believe it or not, this is Star Wars related, especially this year...
I have an issue with the Movie Awards. But, I think it's because of the way I view the movie industry.
When I was in high school, I played water polo. Now, if you played water polo, you were also on the swim team in the off season to stay in shape.
Now, one of the events at a meet was diving, which was really a seperate sport, but was run as part of the larger pool experience, like having a dance competition in the middle of a track meet. Diving to be sure is a sport, but much different than swimming. See, in swimming, you are judged only on your clinically measured performance, ie, your speed, as measured by an electronic clock device. Now, in diving, your judged by human judges, with their own biases and ideas. And thats the way it needs to be, and it works just fine.
Now, back to movies. Movie awards like the oscars are judged by human judges, just like a diving competition. Thus, you get movies like Crash (or is it Crush) and Brokeback Mountain getting tons of nominations because they are "arty" or "edgy", while movies like our beloved Star Wars, which is ironically "mainstream" now, gets nods for "technical direction" or whatever foo foo category it's in this year.
Now, my point is this...unlike diving, where there is no concrete way to judge performance, movies do have a hard and fast way they can be compared without relying on "judges". I'm talking of course about ticket sales.
Ticket sales are like votes for a movie. And, because the come at a significant cost (greater than zero), each vote carries weight, even if the same person casts more than one vote.
So why is it that we judge movies like diving by judging them in the abstract, instead of like swimming, and going with hard numbers?
I have an issue with the Movie Awards. But, I think it's because of the way I view the movie industry.
When I was in high school, I played water polo. Now, if you played water polo, you were also on the swim team in the off season to stay in shape.
Now, one of the events at a meet was diving, which was really a seperate sport, but was run as part of the larger pool experience, like having a dance competition in the middle of a track meet. Diving to be sure is a sport, but much different than swimming. See, in swimming, you are judged only on your clinically measured performance, ie, your speed, as measured by an electronic clock device. Now, in diving, your judged by human judges, with their own biases and ideas. And thats the way it needs to be, and it works just fine.
Now, back to movies. Movie awards like the oscars are judged by human judges, just like a diving competition. Thus, you get movies like Crash (or is it Crush) and Brokeback Mountain getting tons of nominations because they are "arty" or "edgy", while movies like our beloved Star Wars, which is ironically "mainstream" now, gets nods for "technical direction" or whatever foo foo category it's in this year.
Now, my point is this...unlike diving, where there is no concrete way to judge performance, movies do have a hard and fast way they can be compared without relying on "judges". I'm talking of course about ticket sales.
Ticket sales are like votes for a movie. And, because the come at a significant cost (greater than zero), each vote carries weight, even if the same person casts more than one vote.
So why is it that we judge movies like diving by judging them in the abstract, instead of like swimming, and going with hard numbers?
