(If you’d like to watch Gregory J. Smalley and Giles Edwards reveal this year’s nominees on YouTube first, click here. Otherwise, proceed with your reading.)
This year, Poor Things (and Emma Stone, Poor Things) mark the only overlap between the Weirdcademy Awards and Hollywood’s lipstick-on-a-pig hootenanny, the Most Conventional Movie Awards. Other than Lanthimos‘ fantasy, weird movies got about as far with the Academy as they normally do: nothing at all. Even an Academy suck-up like Wes Anderson can’t buy a single nomination for Asteroid City—not even a “Best Original Song” nod for the year’s best filmed hoedown, “Dear Alien, Who Art in Heaven.”
Instead, we get to choose between the usual brace of biopics, an estrogenic advertisement for a kids’ toy, Jonathan Glazer‘s attempt to remake Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles as a Nazi movie, and an indie comedy thatmade such an impression in the public consciousness that Bing is still calling it “Untitled Erasure adaptation.”
The Oscars are a joke, and everyone knows it. But you, my friend, you aren’t content with the same-old same-old. You want weird in your movies. The Weirdcademy Awards are for you, the moviegoer whose friends roll their eyes and sigh loudly when you suggest movie night should feature a black and white flick about alien bounty hunters who kidnap a corporate mogul who has developed an immortality serum with side effects that turn him into, uh, kind of a dick.
Although the editors of 366 Weird Movies select the nominees from the pool of available movies, the Awards themselves are a naked popularity contest, and do not necessarily reflect either the artistic merit or intrinsic weirdness of the films involved. The Weirdcademy Awards are tongue-in-cheek and for fun only. Ballot-stuffing is a frequent occurrence. Please, no wagering.
The Weirdcademy Awards are given to the Weirdest Movie, Actor, Actress and Scene of the previous year, as voted by the members of the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness.
Who makes up the Weirdcademy? Membership is open to all readers of 366 Weird Movies. If you can figure out how to vote in the poll, you are qualified to join. You can not be turned down because of your age, sex, religious affiliation, pronouns, vaccination status, or the fact that you only watched the Superbowl to see what Taylor Swift was wearning. There is no requirement that you’ve have to actually see any of the movies listed before voting. You can vote for any or all categories.
You can only vote once—so choose carefully. We’ll keep voting open until March 9, so we can announce our results before the Academy Awards and steal their thunder.
We are using new poll software this year, which allows for a much cooler-looking ballot, but gives us less control of some aspects of the voting and which may have yet-unforeseen drawbacks. Please be patient.
Be sure to also vote for Weirdest Short Film of the Year. To watch all five nominees and to cast your vote, please click here.
Here is your ballot for the 2023 edition of the Weirdcademy Awards:
Can’t thank y’all enough for the nomination it really means a lot 🙏
Love the new ballot!
Not to sound like a complainer, but I really don’t like the dismissive tone when talking about the Oscars. Yes the event is dumb, but all the movies mentioned were good at worst, and it just felt like it was needlessly putting them down.
You could interpret it as self-parody. The reverse-snobbery is laid on a little thick.
Sorry about that, I have a hard time interpreting jokes.
No need for apology, your comment made me think about whether these types of jokes affect the audience as intended, or come across as arrogant and dismissive. Everyone has a different reaction.