Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Andrew Garfield sounds like a cunty little diva.

http://pagesix.com/2014/03/05/andrew-ga ... at-oscars/

The Norbit effect lost Murphy the Oscar because his performance in Dreamgirls wasn't spectacular enough for the Academy to unconditionally vote for him. His initial buzz was originally centred around the gimmick that it would be cool to give Murphy an Oscar and they had permission to do so because the performance was uncharacteristically dramatic for him.

It is also important to note that Dreamgirls severely under-performed with the Academy in terms of both nominations (Picture, Director, Editing etc) and wins (Supporting Actor, Costume Design, Song were all widely expected) whereas the films you are using to disprove the Norbit effect, Black Swan (Picture, Director nominations) and 12 Years a Slave (Best Picture winner) all performed very well within the Academy.

It would have applied logic to the otherwise ridiculous hero montages. It they had to cut something at the last minute, it would have made more sense to cut the nonsense with the pizza guy.

anonymous1980 wrote:"Batkid", the Make-a-Wish foundation cancer survivor kid was supposed to make an appearance but was pulled at the last minute..

That would have been a nice moment.

Well, maybe it makes me hard-hearted, but, bad as I feel for the kid being disappointed, I think it would have been a cringe-worthy, exploitive moment in the show, and I'm not sorry it was cut.

"Batkid", the Make-a-Wish foundation cancer survivor kid was supposed to make an appearance but was pulled at the last minute..

That would have been a nice moment.

I had no idea so many people here believed the Norbit Effect was a real thing. I thought everyone viewed it as ridiculous as the Marissa Tomei myth. My mistake.

Tripp is exactly right. Until someone started posting last week about Nyong'o being in Non-Stop, I had absolutely no idea she was even in it. I had seen the trailer and she didn't make an impression on me, nor did the advertisements use her as a selling point. They could have used Mary Crowley (the actress who plays her escapes my mind at the moment) in the trailers more heavily, but they didn't. This was a Liam Neeson film and was sold entirely on his face and recognition. Julianne Moore would have been the only other person to have any impact based on trailers.

What FilmFan said. Very well stated, Tripp.

I think the difference is that the three actors everyone has named are three very different cases.

I doubt most voters (especially three weeks ago) even knew that Lupita Nyong'o was in that new Liam Neeson movie. She has a minor part, is brand-new to Hollywood and in no way will that film affect her career.

For Natalie Portman, No Strings Attached was a poorly received romantic comedy that did well at the box office. Most everyone in Hollywood in their career has made exactly this movie. It is nothing out of the ordinary, and in no way brings down the "value" of Portman. Who can blame her for taking a role like that to make some money, especially when her career is generally filled with much more interesting fare.

Murphy was in a very tight race, and having giant billboards of him in a movie that just on the surface looked like a disaster dressed as a caricature of a heavy-set Black woman didn't help him in the least. Furthermore, it was just another reminder that Dreamgirls was the abberation in Murphy's career. These are the kinds of films Murphy has built his career on, and having Norbit out and successful during Awards season was just a reminder to many that he is not the kind of actor they normally like to honor. Norbit didn't lose him the Oscar, but it probably lost him some votes that in such a wide-open slate didn't help him in the least.

The problem with the Norbit Effect is that it is not as common of a problem as people try to make it. What Norbit did was remind voters of the kind of non-Award-worthy awards a nominee usually makes, and the career they may have been endorsing. After all, how many actors have won Oscars after years of making schlock only to turn out a single performance in a major Oscar contender? Would McConaughey have won this year if it wasn't for the wide-spread McConaissence of the past few years (proving that this performance wasn't a one-time thing)?

flipp525 wrote:It's not a non-sequitur; it's just a revision of your posts which, as I've pointed out twice now, have contained inaccuracies.

What in the ever loving hell are you talking about?

Let us recap.

I mentioned how there are certain Oscar myths I hate:
splits
someone being due
the Norbit effect
Marissa Tomei won by accident

I offered Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong'o as recent examples of Oscar winning actors that had advertisements for their shitty winter films being shown during Oscar voting period. You mentioned Lupita's film was number one at the box-office as if this somehow made it less shitty. It being number one at the box-office the same weekend as the Oscar ceremony does nothing to mitigate how stupid it looked in the ads shown throughout January and February. Then I simply pointed this out by saying Natalie's film was also number one at the box-office, but it still looked shitty. Eddie's film (which started all this) was also number one at the box-office, but it still looked shitty.

You then said Natalie's film was #14 at the box-office when she won the Oscar. What does this have to do with anything? You know perfectly well the voting was done long before that. I did not say anything about Oscar weekend, so why are you pointing this out? That is what I meant by non-sequitur. You are the only person who cares where the film was on Oscar weekend. You are the only person who seems to think the box-office is of any importance. I offered the information for Natalie and Eddie simply to counter your point about Lupita.

It's not a non-sequitur; it's just a revision of your posts which, as I've pointed out twice now, have contained inaccuracies.

flipp525 wrote:

rolotomasi99 wrote:Well NO STRINGS ATTACHED was also the number one movie at the box-office, and yet people (including the New York Times) still called it Natalie's NORBIT (I get they might have been joking, but it was still something people thought).

Not to quibble, but not when Portman won the Oscar, it wasn't. It was #14.

That is not even a quibble. It is a complete non sequitur. I would point out that NORBIT was also number 1 at the box-office and made $95 million. I am just curious why you are so certain the Academy would hold that movie against Murphy, but not NO STRINGS ATTACHED and NON-STOP against Portman and Nyong'o. If anything, I would think they would want to reward Murphy for making a great career choice to keep him from going back to these types of films. It just seems so cruel to poor Eddie Murphy to have this legacy attached to him. Poor Marissa Tomei can relate, I am sure.

rolotomasi99 wrote:Well NO STRINGS ATTACHED was also the number one movie at the box-office, and yet people (including the New York Times) still called it Natalie's NORBIT (I get they might have been joking, but it was still something people thought).

Not to quibble, but not when Portman won the Oscar, it wasn't. It was #14.

flipp525 wrote:

rolotomasi99 wrote:

Greg wrote:Lupita Nyong'o could survive NON-STOP, then it clearly is not something Academy voters care about. Eddie Murphy did not lose because of NORBIT.

Non-Stop is the #1 movie at the box office. It was nothing that Lupita needed to "survive" in order to win the Oscar. She's barely in it anyway. (Also, weren't ballots due well before its opening last Friday?) The movie is not a disaster, by the way. It's a pretty unobjectionable thriller in the, I'd say, second tier of Liam Neeson's new action hero oeuvre.

Besides that, I think Norbit absolutely affected Eddie Murphy's chances at a win that year. Whenever anyone wanted to look at Murphy's performance in Dreamgirls and view it as some kind of harbinger of better acting to come, all they had to do was look at the ads for Norbit to be reminded of how much schlocky shit he produces.

Well NO STRINGS ATTACHED was also the number one movie at the box-office, and yet people (including the New York Times) still called it Natalie's NORBIT (I get they might have been joking, but it was still something people thought).

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... Oscar-Odds

It is not the movie itself, since I doubt most Academy voters see these types of movies, but the advertisements that hurt the Oscar contenders. Ads for NON-STOP were everywhere particularly during the Olympics. Obviously Natlaie and Luptia's wins prove I am right that this type of thing does not hurt Oscar chances. I guess I just have to give in to the fact that "the NORBIT effect" has entered the general lexicon for Oscar enthusiasts.

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,2031193 ... 02,00.html

rolotomasi99 wrote:

Greg wrote:There is one instance where I can see a split happening, and, it would only be for the acting and song categories. There could be two or more nominees for the same film, and, the voters who saw and liked that film could split their votes among the multiple nominees and allow another nominee to squeak ahead. Of course, this type of split is impossible for Best Picture.

Except those double nominees often have a winner.

Exactly. The ultimate proof that splits don't exist is that even in the only case when OBJECTIVELY two or more nominees have something in common (the movie they were nominated for), one of them often wins. It's simple. But on those OTHER boards nobody ever points out this - even in the comments.