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[Big Magilla]

Let's say we'd be doing song for me and the few others who are interested.

I agree with Original BJ, of course - but if you REALLY need to do Best Song, it should be in parallel with the Screenplay polls (absurd, I know, but it's the only solution at this point).

That's what I said we would do. Anyone who has a problem with song needn't participate in the song polls but can participate in the simultaneously run screenplay polls.

[FilmFan720]

I like the backwards screenplay idea!!

[ITALIANO]

Let's say we'd be doing song for me and the few others who are interested.

No, sorry. If this is an example of American democracy, I still don't like it. Why did you start this poll if your intention was to do Best Song anyway? I can't accept it. And when was Best Song voted before, and by whom? I don't care if you have interesting anedoctes - I or someone else may have interesting anedoctes on Best Screenplay, what do you know?

And I don't see what's wrong about voting for Original Story - if the Academy could do it, why not us?!

I don't care if you and your friends want Best Song. I voted for THIS poll, which you started by the way, and THIS poll and its results must be respected. I don't know if you are joking - if so, I am sorry and it's admittedly funny - or if, well, your lapse into senility has happened already.

I agree with Original BJ, of course - but if you REALLY need to do Best Song, it should be in parallel with the Screenplay polls (absurd, I know, but it's the only solution at this point).

Another possibility is to start the Screenplay polls in reverse order - from 2013 to 1927 - so that we can have time to find the older nominees that we still haven't seen.

[Big Magilla]

Let's say we'd be doing song for me and the few others who are interested. It's not something I would have chosen - Cinematography, Editing and Score would have been my picks for the next three, but song is the category we previously voted to do. I put a lot of thought into how I was going to do it, did quite a bit of research which unearthed some interesting anecdotes to keep it interesting. I really wanted to share them before I lapse into senility.

The writing categories are an unwieldy mess until 1957 when they finally did away with Best Original Story which is the most confusing category ever, but one that had been around since the first awards, although it was comatose at the second and third awards. It was basically the treatment, a synopsis or outline of the film, not a fully written screenplay that was being awarded. Original Screenplay did not become a category until 1940. As late as 1939 a film could be nominated for both Original Story and Screenplay, which in essence was Adapted Screenplay. Films that were written directly for the screen with no treatment were simply not acknowledged. The Original Story generally had a different writer than the Screenplay. In short, the writing awards pre-1957 are a different animal than the awards from 1957 on. In essence we will be voting for something we can't really comprehend when we vote for Story. We're basically voting for an idea or ideas that may or may not have been carried out in the fully realized screenplay - no dialogue, no stage direction, just an outline albeit some very fascinating ones.

[The Original BJ]

I don't mean to harp on this, but what is this obsession with doing multiple categories at one time? Screenplay and song concurrently? Why is that something we would do? Screenplay alone will have us ping-ponging back and forth between categories each year as it is, why add another category to that?

Not trying to be grouchy, I just don't understand how doing both at the same time is the take away from this poll.

[Big Magilla]

It looks like Screenplay is winning 7 to 6 for Song (3 for just Song; 3 for Song and Score). We can do Screenplay and Song concurrently, starting with Screenplay in 1927/28 and adding a separate poll for Song beginning with 1934.

The song choices in the 1930s and 40s when the great songwriters of their day were writing songs for films are certainly worthy of discussion even if in most years voters made the right choice. Good songs continued to be written for films sporadically throughout the 1950s and 60s and sputtered through the 1970s. It wasn't until the 1980s that the category became dull and for the most part past its time. In recent years it's become a joke hardly worthy of mention, but we can still vote in those years even though it won't be very enthusiastically for most of us.

Cinematography; Editing and Score by itself are all looming prospects for future polls. Foreign film is difficult for the reason discussed by Precious and Italiano. Too many of the nominees are obscure. We can, however, do polls on the winners including those that were given special awards prior to the establishment of the category. We could get into some lively discussions about whether The Bicycle Thief; Rashomon or something else was the best of that era.

In the meantime we will close out the top six category polls with polls in each category by Oscar decade based on our picks for the best of each year culminating in an overall pick of the best of all time in each category. That's 10 polls for each category or a total of 60 polls which should take us a few weeks to go through. The first is coming up.

[ITALIANO]

I don't know who on Earth - or even in the separate universe that this board is - can find Best Song even remotely interesting I mean, it's the least important Oscar category ever, let's face it. Best Score would make more sense - but here it's perversely tied to Song, so it's impossible for me to vote for anything else than Best Screenplay. I would love to know who are those two who have no interest for Screenplay - I mean, it's not exactly a minor element in a movie.

It's true that Best Foreign Film would be the logical next step, but I've checked, and I must admit that, while in every year I've seen at least two or three nominees, there are too many years where I haven't seen all five, which would make it impossible for me to vote. Still, there could have been other options, like Cinematography or Editing or, if one wanted something lighter, Costume Design or Art Direction.

Screenplay is a great category and, again, the only choice one can make from these three. Still - it will be frustrating. One of the reasons why this category is great is that some extremely good, but not always mainstream movies have been nominated here. Several important foreign movies, too. And that's where this category actually differs from Best Picture. But will the, let's call it Color Purple contingent, have seen these "alternative" movies? And if not, will they admit it and abstain from voting? Because otherwise we'll have some dreadful outcomes, I know it already.

[Precious Doll]

Screenplays are the next logical steps.

Most of the songs along with their respective films are too obscure and frankly not worth discussing.

For the record, whilst I think Foreign Language Film would be great I doubt there is a single person on the board who has even seen less then 30 of all the nominees, therefore making a poll this category, apart from recent years (say 20 to 30) even plausible.

[dws1982]

I won't participate if we do song. There's just nothing of interest in the category for me, and I don't have any interest in seeing discussion on this category, especially since they're usually unable to come up with even one or two decent songs per year. I know I don't participate a great deal here, but I do always read the polls, and they're one thing that holds my interest, even during the lulls between Oscar seasons. If there's not an interesting poll to come and read, I don't know that I'll come back much at all.

[Big Magilla]

Song and score would be done concurrently, i.e. at the same time as one another, albeit in separate polls. There are some years we couldn't combine if we wanted to. The maximum number of choices in a poll is 20. 1942, for example, has 10 nominees for Best Song; 18 for Best Dramatic Score and 8for scoring of a musical. Some of the nominees are pretty obscure especially n the years when each studio, large and small, was allowed a nomination whether they had something that was worthy of a nomination or not. I would say track down what you can, but don't worry about not being able to see or hear everything in these categories.

[The Original BJ]

I don't really have a terribly strong preference for what we do next, but I would pretty strongly argue against doing Song and Score TOGETHER. For one thing, there's no real need to -- unlike Picture & Director, where a ton of overlap historically made it easy to tackle both at the same time, Song and Score are completely different categories, with almost entirely different slates in each year. That's A LOT of films to talk about each poll, and I would imagine it would make people less likely to participate just because there are so many films to discuss, and finding the time to discuss so many year in and year out could prove daunting. (Especially in some of those early years -- when those nominee lists were LONG in each category.)

[Big Magilla]

I know we've done before but lets do it again to capture as much of a consensus as we can before we get into something and find there are even fewer participants than there were before.

Please make three choices, one for each of Best Song; Best Song and Score together and Best Screenplay indicating which is your first; second and third choice or if you have no interest in that category at all. If you make a mistake or change your mind you can vote again and your initial vote will be voided.