Monday, February 10, 2020

OK, Time for an Either an Oscar Consolidation or an Oscar Exclusion

Last night, Parasite became the first non-English-language film to win the "Best Picture" Academy Award.

It also won several other Oscars, including "Best International Feature Film," the award for "a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States with a predominantly non-English dialogue track." That Oscar used to be called "Best Foreign Language Film."

The awards should either be consolidated or exclude each other.

That is, now that it's been established that a foreign-language and/or foreign-produced film can win "Best Picture," the academy could get rid of the "Best International Feature Film" category as redundant.

Or, if Parasite is consider an outlier and it really isn't time to get rid of a special category for "foreign films," it could allow a film to be nominated for one or the other, but not both.

I haven't seen Parasite, so I don't know if it really was the best picture in either category. But if e.g. The Irishman and Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood weren't eligible for both categories, Parasite shouldn't have been either.

No comments: