Oscar time!
2005-02-17

As we all know, the Oscars are hideously long and boring. Which is why we watch them every year... but I digress. This year there's a new plan to make the Oscars shorter. Some of the Oscars will be presented from the audience - the winner stands up and makes a speech from the middle of the audience. Raise your hand if you're going to watch the winner, instead of watching the background for cases of bitchface. OK, I thought so.

The most wonderful part is that the "craft" awards - the boring ones that nobody cares about - are going to be done elimination style. All the nominees get to stand on stage, then one is picked out of the crowd while the losers file off, rather like an episode of "American Idol" with old people.

Of course, there have always been reaction shots in the past, but this is
1. cheap. If you don't think enough of a person's effort to allow them to walk down the aisle like everybody else, then shunt their award over to that ceremony hosted "the day before" by Sandra Bullock. No reason to make us sit through it.
2. not cheap enough. If you're going to make people uncomfortable, why are you doing it to film editors and costumers and not to, say, the Best Actress nominees? I want to see Annette Bening cry, damn her! Take that for "American Beauty"!

Anyway I for one am upset at this obvious coarsening of American cultural tradition. Just because the producer of the Oscars wants to be like his dream man Mark Burnett, that doesn't mean that I the viewer have to deal with his problems.