MADness—the Blog

Hendrik Hertzberg has this week’s Comment at the New Yorker with an interesting piece on the new voting procedures for Best Picture.

To forestall a victory for some cinematic George Wallace or Ross Perot, the Academy switched to a different system. Members—there are around fifty-eight hundred of them—are being asked to rank their choices from one to ten. In the unlikely event that a picture gets an outright majority of first-choice votes, the counting’s over. If not, the last-place finisher is dropped and its voters’ second choices are distributed among the movies still in the running. If there’s still no majority, the second-to-last-place finisher gets eliminated, and its voters’ second (or third) choices are counted. And so on, until one of the nominees goes over fifty per cent.

What’s it all mean?  It means we need to bring back the Electoral College!  (Oops.  That’s a different sort of voting.)  It means the Academy system now favors a consensus pick for Best Picture and with Avatar a more polarizing film than The Hurt Locker, the Iraq War drama should have at least one edge to counter the many other advantages the sci-fi flick has going for it.  That’s what Hertzberg thinks. 

Me?  I dunno, really, but I’m willing to believe anything that gives the advantage to what I think is the movie of the year.  I don’t get to vote, but because of the mighty clout this website has with thousands of Academy members, I’m throwing my full support behind the Kathryn Bigelow film.  C’mon, folks, vote The Hurt Locker!  Even if you don’t make it your first choice, make it your second.  That ain’t so hard, is it?