10 Thoughts on the Academy Awards

This Sunday is Oscar night and naturally I'll be watching. There are 10 nominees for Best Picture this year and I thought I'd give 10 thoughts on the Academy Awards.

1. There is nothing that will ever make the Academy Awards a big hit with ratings. Having Beyonce sing all the Best Original Song nominees, having interpretive dance numbers, lengthy and unnecessary opening skits, cutting off non-celebrities from making acceptance speeches, changing the hosts, nothing works. No matter what the Academy Awards telecast producers do, the next day people that I can't imagine being interested in the Oscars in the first place will blab on about how long and boring it was.

2. If the Academy Awards telecast producers are so concerned with ratings, they should move to another network, a cable network where that would be glad to have the Oscars as a broadcast. If given the choice between broadcasting the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Oscars, I think I know which awards show TNT would choose to air.

3. Even if it's true, it's a cliche to say that the Oscars are easy to predict.

4. I hate the red carpet and the people that work it. To paraphrase comedian Brain Posehn, I wish I could travel back in time and punch the first person that asked "who are you wearing?" in the face. One year Roger Ebert was on the red carpet with Billy Bush. Billy Bush was asking the dopey, softball questions and Roger Ebert would ask serious (by comparison) questions. Example: Billy Bush asked P. Diddy standard "who are you wearing?" questions and Roger Ebert asked him if he'd seen and what he thought about the documentary Tupac: Resurrection. I wish the celebrities would get asked real questions like that.

5. I miss Ebert and Roeper going on the Tonight Show after the Academy Awards and giving their thoughts. I hope Phillips and Scott do something like that this year.

6. The Academy Awards broadcast doesn't learn from it's mistakes or follow through on anything. To prevent the Original Song nominees from being all from the same movie and cancelling each other out, allowing the one song not from that same movie to win, they declared that there would only be 3 nominees for original song. The next year two song nominees were from same movie. Now they're back to 5 song nominees and 2 songs are from the same movie and by the same musician. Great job guys.

7. I heard that there won't be performances of the Best Original Song nominees this year. That's the only "show" part of the broadcast that I liked (when they're not all sung by Beyonce for no reason). There would be big musical numbers with multiple singers, dancers, and set pieces, and then there would be simpler stripped down numbers, like Elliott Smith with just his guitar. Best of all they were relevant to the show. What do acrobatic dancers have to do with the movies?

8. Even if it's pretty clear who's going to win it's still fun to make predictions and pick who you want to win and you think is going to win.

9. The "smaller" awards are where all the excitement really is. You don't know who's going to win, there usually isn't a front runner for Art Direction and I feel like it's a more fair race, but when there's a big movie like Avatar with nominations in all the smaller, technical categories it tends to win them all. I like the speeches the "unknown" people give for the "uncared" about categories. They've worked hard, done their best, and their work is meant to fit seamlessly into a movie. When one of these people gets recognition and actually gets a chance to say how they feel and thank who they want and actually get to do it on TV, that's a great thing.

10. I keep watching the Academy Awards because I love the movies. It's frustrating to see a movie win just because it's popular and actors win more so for recognition of their body of work rather than performance in a movie. But sometimes the actor or movie that really deserves to win does and sometimes the people that win are legitimately happy to have won and that makes me happy. Still, the main reason I've watched the Academy Awards every year since I was 13 is because it's great to get together with friends and watch a celebration of movies.