Saturday, March 24, 2018

Alternate Oscars: Vote For The Best Picture Of 1942

Posted by at
Labels: , ,

4 comments:

Eric S Beck said...

Thought you would include Casablanca here since it was released in November of 1942 though it didn't get an Oscar eligible L.A. release until February of 1943.

But where, where, where, where is Sullivan's Travels, my number one film of the year? How is it not here?

March 25, 2018 at 6:36 AM
Mythical Monkey said...

I'm nothing if not inconsistent. I suspect Casablanca will sweep all the categories its nominated in (picture, actor, actress, supporting actor, maybe director). 1943 is a weak year without it, a strong year like 1942 gets wiped out with it. So 1943 I put it in 1943, the year it was Oscar eligible.

Whereas Sullivan's Travels is in 1941 because as with most of the movies, that's the year imdb.com lists it.

Think of these polls as Oscar theater rather than any sort of systematic examination of Oscar history ...

March 25, 2018 at 8:33 AM
Mythical Monkey said...

Eventually I'm going to set up separate pages like I did for the 1920s alternate Oscars -- what I may do is have the American films in their year of Oscar eligibility but the foreign films in their year of release.

I'll think about it. You're right, it would be great to have Sullivan's Travels set up in 1942 ...

March 25, 2018 at 2:51 PM
Mythical Monkey said...

I sort of arrived at my list of nominees by blending together several lists -- yours, one from a site called Top Movies (https://topmovies.wordpress.com/), a guy named Robert Horton's annual top ten lists (https://roberthorton.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/1942-ten-best-movies/), my own Kate-Bar-The-Door Awards, imdb's top vote getters and imdb's top rated films for a given year. Movies that make all the lists are in, and then it gets a bit trickier from there. It's a way of sort through my own biases.

The imdb isn't going to be much use for films from the last 25 years or so, by the way. For films from, say, the 1950s, there's a strong correlation between number of votes and quality of the movies -- people are seeking out movies based on reputation. But for more recent movies, the number of votes is based mostly on studio marketing campaigns. So the latest unwatable Transformers will have ten times as many votes as an Oscar-worthy film.

But I'll cross that bridge if I ever reach it ...

March 25, 2018 at 8:03 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)