ITR champion writes:
> . . . major awards going to art-house movies that no one watches . . .
The winners since 2000 are these:
Gladiator
A Beautiful Mind
Chicago
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Million Dollar Baby
Crash
The Departed
No Country for Old Men
Slumdog Millionaire
The Hurt Locker
The King’s Speech
The Artist
Argo
12 Years a Slave
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Spotlight
Moonlight
The Shape of Water
These are not art house movies. (If you’re going to claim that you couldn’t see them at any theater within 30 miles of you, then I pity how poor your area is for movies.) These aren’t generally blockbusters either, although a few of them are. They are middle-brow films. Oscar winners tend not to be either blockbusters or obscure critical favorites that have shown in very few theaters. The Oscar voters tend to vote for moderately well-known films that are neither standard action or comedy summer blockbusters nor for little-known films. Incidentally, I’m not claiming that the Oscar winners were my favorite films in those years. In general, they weren’t.