Fanning the flames

A few other responses:

1. The idea of using profits instead of gross revenue was about looking at the "best picture" concept from a wider perspective beyond simply how good a movie was as a piece of art and thinking about how good it was from an economic viewpoint. Aren't profits what drive the industry for the most part anyway?

2. If only some people get a certain movie or reference or whatever, then maybe it's not the "best" movie for the general public. There are plenty of niche markets, as well there should be, but the idea here was for the masses.

3. This paragraph is classic condescension/wanting to make a funny:

The above two symptoms hint at the gangrene that infects Rich's entire premise: when we say "Best Picture of 2008" we are not trying to approximate "The movie released in 2008 that provided the most total pleasure to movie watchers". Proof: even if a re-release of Star Wars killed the game in terms of clitoral stimulation, we wouldn't want to give it "Best Picture" since it was made 30 years ago.

You are putting words in my blog post that aren't there and making false assumptions about what I wrote. I never explicitly said "only new releases" because I didn't realize that I had to be so rigorous in a blog post to avoid ridicule. I'm (sincerely) happy to hear your take on this stuff, but I would prefer to hear substantive disagreements.

4. In conclusion (emphasis mine):

There's a plausible case that experts do a better job here since they have a good intuitive understanding of what makes a "Best Picture" (though comedies tend to get the short shrift -- and what am I saying; they're all idiots; whatever.).

That said, if you could define what makes a "Best Picture" (in the same way that you can define what makes a good encyclopedia article -- Wikipedia has a tome of guidelines), I think you could also effectively crowdsource its selection.

Thank you.