CineCola's 2016 Oscar picks
Whining about the Academy Awards every year is just as much a part of the award season tradition as the Oscar ceremony itself. However, it is plain to see that this year's nominations are particularly underwhelming, misguided, predictable and sometimes downright boring.
To top it off, the whole affair is surrounded by understandable outrage and controversy due to its lack of representation of so-called ethnical minorities (which in itself is a politically incorrect term.) This very fact exposes many flaws in the industry. Are all ethnicities represented in mainstream American cinema? But most importantly, who votes for the films that will be nominated, and what films do they watch, and how many films do they watch? Because it doesn't seem like, from these dull and standard nominations, they are actually paying attention that whatever is going on.
One could argue that the role of the Academy Awards exist to simply to showcase excellence in cinema. But cinephiles know better than to think that. The winner of the Best Picture award has rarely ever actually been the best picture of the year, and more than that, the best picture of any year is rarely even nominated - most likely because it is usually a subtitled film. This consideration alone automatically lessens the Academy and their impact as an authority able to speak and set a canon of cinematic excellence.
Despite this, no one can deny that the Oscars indeed do attract a lot of attention upon themselves, despite being an overglorified variety show. Therefore, it should use its exposure to spread useful, positive, social messages to a community marred by hate and intolerance, right? Furthermore, with the U.S. elections approaching, wouldn't it simply make sense to be a little more careful? Anyways, reluctantly, CineCola can't ignore the fact that the Oscars are a landmark event of the year, kind of like the Superbowl or Wrestlemania.
So, we have decided to pick our winners out of every feature film category, for fun but also to try to make sense of a ceremony that should probably simply be suspended.