"Critics of the phrase Oscar bait

"Critics of the phrase Oscar bait might tell you that making movies is already too difficult to do well without adding the pressure of having an awards-worthy product," concedes VanAiresdale.^[1] He nevertheless defended use of the term. "The takeaway from Weinstein and the rest shouldn't be that Oscar bait is a reductive concept that's bad for movies," he wrote. "Rather, bad movies are bad for movies." Since the race for awards did generate some good movies, he felt, moviegoers should not be so dismissive. "Oscar bait is the only reason that grown-ups have anything at all to watch in a movie theater anymore, with four months of awards season compensating for the other eight months of craven superhero franchises, anemic romantic comedies, and whatever Adam Sandler wipes off his shoe."^[1]

The fact that the concept existed and had a name showed how important film still was to American culture, VanAirsdale said.

For all the media hand-wringing about television usurping film's grip on our culture's imagination, no one complains about Breaking Bad losing an Emmy to Homeland the way they still yelp on and on about Crash thwarting Brokeback Mountain for a Best Picture Oscar ... Movie lovers want to believe that the academy shares our tastes. We want to believe that Oscar history reflects an objective sense of aesthetic justice rather than ritual orgies of self-congratulation. We want to believe every autumn that our cinemas are more than just clearinghouses for expressions of ego and grandiosity. Mostly we want to believe that a phrase like Oscar bait is somehow beneath a film culture so obsessed with anointing the best and greatest and top 10 of everything and handing out Academy Awards in the first place. We can't have it both ways, and anyway, why would we want to? As the oldest surviving tradition connecting Hollywood to its audience, Oscar bait is all the movies have left to insulate them from the dull, encroaching disposability of the culture around us. The only empty foolishness I can see is to not enjoy it—to not cherish it—while we still can.^[1]

Other critics have complained about the effect on the yearly release calendar, by which grouping most prospective Oscar winners in the last months of the year, usually in limited release, along with holiday season tentpole movies results in January and February becoming the winter dump months, when new releases are generally low in quality and/or limited in their appeal. A similar period, from mid-August through September, also precedes the end of the year.^[52]

"This clustering of quality films in the post–Toronto Film Festival weeks of fall and winter frustrates critics, publicists, movie exhibitors, studios, and award voters," Adam Sternbergh wrote in a 2015 Vulture post. "[B]ut, most crucially, it alienates the movie audience." At the time that year's nominations were announced, he observed, it was expected that either Boyhood or Selma would win, yet the latter film had not yet gone into wide release, and another top contender, American Sniper, only went into wide release the day after nominations were announced. "Of all the side effects of this silly awards-show pileup, this one seems like the silliest: People are expected to care about the awards prospects of films they won't get to see until long after the awards are awarded."^[53]

While acknowledging the dump months are a result of other factors besides the Oscars and beyond the studios' control, such as the weather, the economy and competition from other entertainment such as (especially) football season, Paul Shirey at JoBlo.com nevertheless calls on Hollywood to spread out its Oscar-quality releases throughout the year:

What is to stop Hollywood from releasing some of their better fare during these "off" months? Rather than saving them to win statues, why not put them out to reap some box office and fill an otherwise dead month with something worth seeing? And the argument that "Academy voters" may forget about films released early on is bogus, as the majority of them get screeners. And even with that in their court, many have confessed to never seeing most of the films up for an award. How bogus is that? ... Hollywood needs to slow its roll and give us an even spread of choices. There's no predicting the box office; absolutely no science to back it up. So, take some risks. There's no reason we can't swap an Argo for The Last Stand in January or any number of combinations out there. Give the audience a chance to see the goods year-round, rather than cramming for them all at once like homework.^[52]

Sternbergh suggests this could be facilitated by emulating the playoff formats of professional sports leagues, which divide their teams into conferences to ensure wide interest in postseason elimination contests. The Academy, he proposes, should return to five nominations for Best Picture and picking one nominee from each three-month quarter of the year, with the best second-place finisher getting the remaining wild card berth.^[53]

In popular culture[edit]

In the British comedy series Extras, actress Kate Winslet plays a caricature of herself desperate for an Oscar. During the episode, Winslet tells the character Andy Millman (portrayed by Ricky Gervais) that she took the role in the unnamed Holocaust film, claiming that films such as Schindler's List and The Pianist have "Oscars coming out of the arse".^[54] Later in the episode, Winslet also muses that "playing a mental" also guarantees an Oscar win.^[55] Winslet would later win her first Academy Award, Best Actress, for her role as an illiterate former Nazi in The Reader (2008).^[56][57]

In the film Tropic Thunder (2008), characters Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) discuss the concept regarding Speedman's former role in the fictional film Simple Jack, in which Lazarus notes that "you never go full retard", contrasting the Oscar successes of Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man, 1988) and Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, 1994) with Sean Penn's failure to win an award for his role in I Am Sam (2001). Tropic Thunder received protests from disability rights organisations due to its constant use of the word "retard"; Stiller defended the scene as being intended to lampoon actors who use such subjects as a way to win awards.^[58]

During the week before the 2017 Academy Awards telecast, NBC talk show host Seth Meyers ran a parody trailer for Oscar Bait, "a film that is shamelessly timed for awards season" on his show. It featured clips of Meyers and others involved with his show as actors crying frequently, with scenes featuring racial tension and latent homosexuality along with "pretentiously artistic shots of a man's hand grazing wheat". Intertitles quoted purported reviews from real publications, such as "If you like films where a character is forced to overcome a rare disease, then this, my friends, is your film" and comparing the parody film favorably with The King's Speech.^[59]

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In Germany, there are two kinds of universities

In Germany, there are two kinds of universities: Universitäten and Fachhochschulen (which are also called University of Applied Sciences). Universitäten and Fachhochschulen – both also called Hochschulen - are legally equal, but Fachhochschulen have the reputation of being more related to practice and have no legal right to offer PhD programmes.

The BSc in Germany is equivalent to the BSc(Hons) in the United Kingdom. Many universities in German-speaking countries are changing their systems to the BA/MA system and in doing so also offering the full equivalent of a BSc.

In Germany the BA normally lasts between three and four years (six to eight semesters) and between 180 and 240 ECTS must be earned.

India[edit]

Bachelor of Science(B.Sc) is usually a three year graduate program in India offered by state and central universities. Some independent private colleges can also offer BS degrees albeit minimum changes in curriculum. B.Sc is different from Bachelor of Engineering(B.E) or Bachelor of Technology(B.Tech). Two exceptions are the B.Sc (Research) course offered by the Indian Institute of Science which lasts four years and the BS-MS course offered by the IISERs, both of which provide more research and interdisciplinary emphasis.^[14]

North America[edit]

In Canada, Mexico, and the United States, it is most often a four-year^[15] undergraduate degree, typically in engineering, computer science, mathematics, economics, finance, business, or the natural sciences.

There are, however, some colleges and universities, notably in the province of Quebec,^[16] that offer three-year degree programs.

Typical completion period[edit]

  Three years

  Four years

  Five years

  Six years

Three years[edit]

Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina (mostly three years, sometimes four), Cameroon, Canada (specifically Quebec), Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia (mostly three years, sometimes four), Czech Republic (mostly three years, sometimes four), Denmark, England (three or four years with a one-year placement in industry), Estonia, Finland, France, Germany (mostly three years, but can be up to four years), Hungary, Iceland, India (three-year BSc in arts and pure sciences excluding engineering, Agriculture and medicine, four years for engineering program "Bachelor of Engineering" Four year for Agriculture program "Bachelor of Agriculture"and five years for medicine program "Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery"), Ireland (Ordinary), Israel (for most subjects), Italy, Jamaica (three or four years), Latvia (three or four years), Lebanon (three or four years, five years for Bachelor of Engineering), Malaysia, New Zealand, the Netherlands (three years for research universities, four years for universities of applied sciences), Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Scotland (Ordinary), Singapore (honours degree takes 4 years), Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa (honours degree takes 4 years), Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda (mostly three years, sometimes four), United Arab Emirates, Wales, and Zimbabwe.

Four years[edit]

Afghanistan, Albania (four or five years), Armenia (four or five years), Australia (honours degree), Azerbaijan (four or five years), Bahrain, Bangladesh (four or five years), Belarus, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil (four to five years), Brunei (three or four years), Bulgaria, Canada (except Quebec), China, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Egypt (four or five years), Ethiopia (engineering, five years), Finland (engineering, practice in industry not included), Georgia, Ghana (three or four years), Greece (four or five years), Guatemala, Haiti (three or four years), Hong Kong (starting from 2012, three years originally), India (four-year BS, Bsc (hons.) Agriculture, Engineering), Indonesia, Iran (four or five years), Iraq, Ireland (Honours Degree), Israel (engineering degree), Japan, Jordan (four to five years), Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Libya, Lithuania, North Macedonia (three, four or five years), Malawi (four or five years), Malta, Mexico, Montenegro (three or four years), Myanmar, Nepal (previously three, now four years), the Netherlands (three years for research universities, four years for universities of applied sciences), New Zealand (honours degree), Nigeria, Pakistan (four or five years), the Philippines (four or five years), Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland (Honours Degree), Serbia (three or four years), Spain, South Africa (fourth year is elective — to obtain an Honours degree, which is normally a requirement for selection into a master's degree program), South Korea, Sri Lanka (three, four, or five (specialized) years), Taiwan, Tajikistan (four or five years), Thailand, Romania, Tunisia (only a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration is available, solely awarded by Tunis Business School), Turkey, Ukraine, the United States, Uruguay (four, five, six, or seven years),^[17] Yemen, and Zambia (four or five years).

Five years

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A study by Gabriel Rossman and Oliver Schilke

Statistical analyses[edit]

A study by Gabriel Rossman and Oliver Schilke, two sociologists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), reviewed data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), such as genres and plot keywords, for 3,000 movies released between 1985 and 2009 to see what elements were likeliest to draw Oscar nominations. The researchers found that war movies, historical epics, and biographies earned the most. Plot elements of political intrigue, disabilities, war crimes and show business were also very common elements of nominated films. A release during Oscar season, or by an independent division of a major studio were also strong indicators.^[44][45] The study found that some keywords had a strongly negative correlation with Oscar nominations, such as "zombie", "breast implant" and "black independent film".^[9]

According to the study, the movie that scored the highest and thus was the most blatant Oscar bait among the films surveyed was Alan Parker's 1990 Come See the Paradise, released by 20th Century Fox.^[9] It received that score for the previous Oscar nominations of Parker, its setting in Hollywood (star Dennis Quaid plays a projectionist) and its depiction of a tragic historical event (his Japanese American wife and children are interned) against the background of war and racism. It was only released in a few cities during the last week of that year to make it eligible for the awards. However, it was not nominated for any.^[9][21]

Second and third were The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the 2003 Best Picture winner, and The People vs. Larry Flynt, released in 1996.^[21] At the low end, as the movie in that period which least qualified as Oscar bait, was the 2006 remake of When a Stranger Calls, which indeed was not nominated for any Oscars. It was followed by 2009's Hotel for Dogs and Barbershop 2: Back in Business, from 2004.^[9]

Rossman and Schilke used their data to develop an algorithm that could predict how many Oscar nominations a film would get, based on its similarities to other recent Oscar nominees. It did not take sophisticated statistical analysis, they noted—Entertainment Weekly had for many years correctly predicted the Oscar nominees. Using data on how much the films had cost to make, they treated the system of nominating as a Tullock lottery to determine the studios' rate of return on their investments. They found that while Oscar-nominated films do indeed get at least a small bonus in ticket sales, directly proportional to the number of nominations, films with what they called "Oscar appeal" took a loss when they did not get any nominations.^[45]

"We've found that audiences don't like the kinds of aesthetics that are characteristic of Oscar-worthy movies," Rossman said. "The movies tend to be serious and depressing, and audiences don't like that, so making Oscar-y movies is a riskier strategy than the average moviegoer might appreciate." As for the payoff a movie gets when it receives nominations, "[a]udiences don't like the kind of movies that get Oscars, but they do like the Oscars," he said. It was the economic bonus from getting nominations or winning that made the losses of not doing so worth it.^[45]

A year earlier, Ira Kalb, a professor of marketing at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, had done research into how big the Oscar payoff could be for a victorious film. "When used in marketing campaigns, this validation stamp increases the desire of moviegoers to see the films and the talent being honored," he wrote in a Business Insider article. "It also keeps the movies in theaters longer boosting box office receipts. And it substantially increases DVD, streaming, download, and cable TV revenues."^[5]

He used the 2010 Best Picture winner, The King's Speech, as his primary example. Before being nominated, it was expected to make about $30 million in worldwide box office receipts. After it received 12 nominations that year, the most of any film in contention, that estimate was revised upward to $200 million. "[A]n Academy Award nomination can boost ticket sales by one-third and cause a jump in the DVD sales of movies no longer in theaters," wrote Kalb. Winning increases the reward even further. As a result of its win, The King's Speech was expected to bring in revenues of almost half a billion dollars.^[5] (As of 2014, it has grossed $414 million.^[46])

Some films, Kalb says, can only be profitable if they are nominated for Oscars. For that reason studios plan their Oscar promotional campaigns long before the movie is even released. It has been estimated that The Weinstein Company spent $15 million on its Oscar campaign for The King's Speech, almost as much as was spent on the Oscar campaign of Weinstein-produced 1998 Best Picture Winner Shakespeare in Love.^[5]

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