Awards Season 2021

[knives]

Well that’s a bummer. I feel like they’re the right sort of personalities to host this. I wonder who else can do well dressed Bugs Bunny?

[Matt]

I assume if they can get it they’ll do the Steven Martin Short Gomez trio.

They’d be good as a group act, but it looks more like they want three solo hosts, one to anchor each hour. Given that it’s ABC/Disney and produced by Will Packer, I’ll guess Lin-Manuel Miranda or Salma Hayek, Tiffany Haddish or Queen Latifah, and, I dunno, Akwafina or Randall Park.

They should throw in Lady Gaga to do an opening number (a brassy medley of “That’s Entertainment” and “Let Me Entertain You”) and an intro so she can rip off Bob Hope’s “Welcome to the Academy Awards, or as it’s known in my house, Passover” bit to great guffaws, gasps, and pity applause.

[colinr0380]

This sounds like a job for Dame Judi Dench!

(By which I mean the lead in the latest live action Spider-Man reboot)

[DarkImbecile]

Looks like the hosts will be Amy Schumer, Regina Hall, and Wanda Sykes

[therewillbeblus]

What kind of focus group conjured those results!

[soundchaser]

This surely isn't a recipe for an insufferable few hours.

[domino harvey]

If that wasn’t bad enough, there will also be a category voted by Twitter users (not a joke— I mean, clearly a joke, but actually happening)

[Matt]

Congratulations to the Oscars for finally coming up with something (Amy Schumer hosting) that will get me to stop watching the Oscars.

[swo17]

I'll say this: Hall was wonderful in Support the Girls

[therewillbeblus]

Oh I think she’s talented in everything I’ve seen her in, including godawful Scary Movie entries- clearly the most inspired choice here

[hearthesilence]

Inside Amy Schumer was hilarious, though that ended six years ago and I'm not familiar with anything else she's done.

[dekadetia]

Inside Amy Schumer was hilarious, though that ended six years ago and I'm not familiar with anything else she's done.

She was excellent in The Humans last year, in a low-key performance well outside her usual wheelhouse.

[Brian C]

Inside Amy Schumer was hilarious, though that ended six years ago and I'm not familiar with anything else she's done.

Agreed, it was a great show. Since then, though, it seems like she’s mostly focused on how big of a fan she is of “The Bachelor”. I tried watching one of her recent-ish Netflix specials and it was unwatchable, in that sad shadow-of-their-former-selves sort of way that happens sometimes to comedians when they lose their edge.

Once upon a time, though, she was awesome.

[domino harvey]

Schumer is the opening host, if you need more insight into how no one at the Academy understands what they’re doing. I don’t have any strong feelings about her (Trainwreck was not a good movie but I thought she showed promise in it, haven’t seen much more of her than a stray skit or two), but I’m certainly aware that many others have strong feelings that could get them to turn it off out of the gate

[domino harvey]

Academy now says nominees have to be vaccinated but presenters and performers don’t have to be. McDormand was confirmed vaccinated for NYFF, so as expected it’s Kaluuya (and Van Morrison, but we already knew that)

[DarkImbecile]

The Academy celebrates Groundhog Day a few weeks late

As always, definitely alienating your committed audience in hopes of possibly enticing a tiny margin of uninterested people to watch = genius

ETA:

Dear Fellow Academy Members,

We’re excited to present a 94th Oscars broadcast that both honors the year’s achievements in motion pictures and provides boundless entertainment for our global audience of movie lovers. After carefully listening to feedback and suggestions from our film community, our network partner, and all those who love the Oscars, it was evident we needed to make some decisions about the broadcast that are in the best interest of the future of our show and our organization.

When deciding how to produce the Oscars, we recognize it’s a live event television show and we must prioritize the television audience to increase viewer engagement and keep the show vital, kinetic, and relevant. This has been an important focus of discussion for quite some time. We do this while also remembering the importance of having our nominees relish a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

In order to provide more time and opportunity for audience entertainment and engagement through comedy, musical numbers, film clip packages and movie tributes, a change in the show’s production will take place. This year’s show producers and Academy leadership with oversight of the Oscars have made the decision, with endorsement from the officers and the Awards Committee, that every awards category must be featured on the television broadcast, though eight awards will initially be presented in the Dolby Theatre in the hour before the live broadcast begins.

They will not be presented in the pre-show nor on the red carpet, as some have speculated. Instead, the in-person ceremony at the Dolby Theatre will begin one hour earlier to present eight awards categories before the live telecast starts. Those presentations will then be edited by our creative and production teams and will be folded seamlessly into the live televised show.

To be clear, all the nominees in ALL awards categories will be identified on air and ALL winners’ acceptance speeches will be featured on the live broadcast. Every awarded filmmaker and artist in every category will still have the celebratory ‘Oscar moment’ they deserve on the stage of the Dolby, facing an enrapt audience.

For the audience at home, the show’s flow does not change, though it will become tighter and more electric with this new cadence, and the live broadcast should end – yes, with the Best Picture category – at the three-hour mark.

This year, those categories presented in the evening’s first hour and seen later in the live broadcast are, alphabetically: Documentary (Short Subject), Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Production Design, Short Film (Animated), Short Film (Live Action), and Sound.

The categories to be presented live on this year’s broadcast are, alphabetically: Actor in a Leading Role, Actor in a Supporting Role, Actress in a Leading Role, Actress in a Supporting Role, Animated Feature Film, Best Picture, Cinematography, Costume Design, Directing, Documentary (Feature), International Feature Film, Music (Original Song), Visual Effects, Writing (Adapted Screenplay), and Writing (Original Screenplay).

We realize these kinds of changes can prompt concern about equity, and we ask you to understand our goal has been to find a balance in which nominees, winners, members, and viewing audience all have a rewarding show experience. Moving forward we will assess this change and will continue to look for additional ways to make our show more entertaining and more thrilling for all involved, inside the Dolby Theatre and watching from home.

Every Academy branch and award category is indispensable to the success of a film and vital to this industry. Both our challenge and our goal is to create an exciting, streamlined Oscars show without sacrificing the long-held fundamentals of our organization. We appreciate your understanding and will be grateful for your unwavering support.

Sincerely,

David Rubin

Academy President

[domino harvey]

You know, I used to think no one hated the Oscars more than the pundits who feel compelled to write thinkpieces every year that fundamentally misunderstand what the awards meant. Now I think the Academy might hate their own awards more. What audience do they think they’ll gain with these elisions to provide what everyone, and I mean everyone, hates during the show: more pointless and endless montages? I’m sure tweens are already blocking off the night in their Sanrio calendar planner

[soundchaser]

If they’re folding them into the broadcast later, what’s the point of presenting them an hour earlier? This is baffling.

[DarkImbecile]

It’s the masturbatory fantasy of a junior ABC executive: “Hi, I’m in my late teens, don’t care about movies, and have never watched the Oscars, but now that I hear they might be five minutes shorter than average — I’M ALL IN BABY”

[movielocke]

If they’re folding them into the broadcast later, what’s the point of presenting them an hour earlier? This is baffling.

Cutting time for walking up to accept so they will probably claim.

The three shorts categories I'm not surprised by, but Editing, production design, makeup, score and especially sound get the shaft. (and sound already cut the number of awards/categories for their branch in half a year ago).

I presume animated film, international film, cinematography, costume design, and VFX are the five categories that will be rotated out next year. (or song, but they would need to also pre-tape the performances at dress rehearsal (which I wouldn't be surprised if they've been doing for years (last year's cool pre-taped songs were great, but obviously an exception))).

[DarkImbecile]

Honestly, the best-case scenario at this point is probably that one of the streamers buys the post-2028 rights to the ceremony (or even takes the current deal off ABC’s hands), hires a big-time producer for 10 years of shows, and lets it be a big, shaggy, absurd celebration of film for 4+ hours every March.

[domino harvey]

Disney+ recently tested its ability to live broadcast, so maybe it’s just an eventuality…

[therewillbeblus]

I feel like they've probably done countless focus groups/polls or something to determine what people want to see vs. don't, but a) I wouldn't be surprised if they're completely inept at coming up with other strategies to find out just what will increase viewership, coming back to the same fruitless tools each time, and b) these outcomes only give a vague idea of what people think they want. I mean, of course the majority of 'average' people are going to say they want "comedy" or expressions of showmanship vs. continued mechanical rotation of smaller categories they might not care about, but the "entertainment" offered by the Oscars is so awful and the musical numbers in particular banal and uninspiring, that if people are thinking in binary either/or they might choose that package and still be unstimulated by the idea or especially with what that broad option yields in "creativity"

Even if the Oscars are asking people to get more and more specific on what they want, I still think this only plays out in theory and in practice a) fails to be interesting to even those people, and/or b) those people decide not to tune in anyways because they've been yawning at the Oscars for years. At some point they need to just return to the die-hards and do it old school. Like, the ratings were always going down- what with streamers, attention span shifts, gravitation towards not watching live TV, etc.- but weren't they higher when the Oscars were sticking to a single host and doing every award, while limiting the concerts of every extended song nominated, than they have been since making more liberal changes to the structure?

I liked Jimmy Kimmel just fine, just go back and do that (minus the 'we're gonna kidnap tourists from an Ava DuVernay movie everyone already forgot and bring them to meet celebrities' bit)

[swo17]

They should just air the new Spider-Man movie in full and periodically announce the winners over a news crawl

[knives]

Disney+ recently tested its ability to live broadcast, so maybe it’s just an eventuality…

I was thinking why not just stream it on Hulu and through in the honorary awards as well? Those were always fun.