re: .

Posted on 2/24/15 at 9:40 am to DelU249

Posted by Baloo

Formerly MDGeaux

Member since Sep 2003

49645 posts

Posted on 2/24/15 at 9:40 am to DelU249

Well, they still had 36.6 million viewers, making it one of the most watched programs of the year. The annual chest beating and gnashing of teeth over the telecast notwithstanding. The Oscars do better ratings than anything except the Super Bowl. Last year's ratings were the highest since 2000, so they were destined to dip. Nothing drives the ratings like the Oscar frontrunner (Titanic, LOTR, Avatar, and 12 Years a Slave were the biggest numbers). This year's box office leader among nominees, American Sniper, apparently failed to drive viewership (or no one thought it was going to win). A battle between Birdman and Boyhood depressed numbers, obviously.

Your advice is a mixture of good and bad:

1. The speeches were by far the best part of the show, and the only thing people will remember of this broadcast, other than the failed briefcase joke. The people upset by the speeches? We call them viewers. Besides, the solution of less spontaniety is a bad one. The speeches are the last reason to tune in. Besides, they won an Oscar, let em say what they want, particularly if its tied into the film.

2. Agreed. No reason this show should ever top 3 hours. There's 24 awards, you should be able to hand out 8 an hour, even with filler.

3. Wow. Make it less boring. No one ever thought of that. They have reduced the patter and NPH's monologue barely existed. He at least kept things moving. That was the best part of his gig, though I think we should go back to Ellen.

4. We should stop honoring good movies because the majority of the audience has shitty taste? That's like arguing if we had food awards to not honor the top restaurants because most people like McDonald's. I do think they should do a better job of honoring big tent movies, which is why they expanded the Best Picture category in the first place. Guardians of the Galaxy should've been nominated (and let's not even get into the Lego Movie's snub in animation). But the Oscars honor mainstream Hollywood movies. Cinephiles get pissed that they aren't honoring more erudite fare, and the masses get pissed that more superhero films aren't nominated. That's raging at the Oscars to honor something different than they do. If you want an award show that honors mainstream mediocrities, regardless of its quality, the Grammys still exist.

In the end, I will defend middlebrow. Most of us ARE middlebrow, and it gets sneered at by the high brow and the low brow. Making quality films that people would actually want to see is hard. I wouldn't be against expanding the categories to include something for stunts or special effects, and put it in the main show. I've heard of the idea of a choreography award for fight sequences, which would be outstanding. That involves more award bloat, but it would be adding very popular films.

But the idea that Linklater made Boyhood or Inarritu made Birdman to win an Oscar is patently absurd. They were both ambitious films that honestly started life with almost no chance of winning an Academy Award. The Oscar bait-y stuff like Imitation Game or the Theory of Everything or American Sniper (nothing like a biopic) didn't take away from the show. And looking at recent Best Picture winning, classic "Oscar Bait" doesn't work anymore.

5. Of course not. But just because they like it, it doesn't make it good, either. I think Guardians should've been nominated. Honestly, Captain America was a tense spy thriller that would've been nominated had it not been a comic book movie (the Academy loves spy thrillers). Every one of the 8 films nominated for Best Picture took home at least one Oscar, so they did spread the wealth. Which was the major problem with the show. Tight races don't get the ratings, historically, coronations do. People want to see Titanic get double digit awards.

Honestly, they could have had more $100 million films nominated. You could honor Boyhood, Birdman, and ugh, Grand Budapest Hotel while still having slots for American Sniper, Interstellar, and Gone Girl. All traditional Oscar-type films, all of which grossed $150 million. That's without getting into genre pics that grossed over $100 million and were actually good movies like Guardians, Captain America, Edge of Tomorrow, and 22 Jump Street.

There is room for both.