There’s more Oscar changes in the air. Sure, the Academy Awards have decided to get all wacky and include 10 Best Picture nominees this year, what the hell, right?
But the first alarm bell to sound is that of length. If the Oscars already runs three hours-plus with five Best Picture nominees, how long will it run with 10? Four hours?
Well, the concern is already on the minds of the Academy committee and they’re already taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen. So something has to go, no?
Yup, and the first things to get jettisoned is what we’ll call the old-timers awards (given out intermittently and not necessarily every year). This is not your daddy’s Academy Awards any longer. The Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award (last given out in 2001), the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (given to Jerry Lewis in 2009) and the Honorary Award (last given out to Robert F. Boyle in 2007) will now be shuffled off to a black tie dinner awards ceremony in November. So remember those great moments when artists like Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, Ennio Morricone, Satyajit Ray, Sidney Lumet and Michelangelo Antonioni among countless others were finally given their Oscar due on television? Yeah, you won’t see those moments again (or at least not until the Academy rules change again).
Changes are on the horizon for the Best Original Song category as well. This section is of course notoriously long because the songs actually have to be performed. Well, the Academy’s Music Branch Executive Committee is doing its best to drop this category and recommending that “if no song achieves a minimum average score of 8.25 in the nominations voting, there will be no nominees and therefore no Oscar in that category for that year,” according to ScreenDaily.
What that means exactly is nebulous, but presumably, that’s on scale of 1-10 and it’ll take at least two songs to reach those scores to have a category. Actually, it’s on a scale of scale of 6 to 10, not bad odds, really.
Last year you’ll recall there were only three songs nominated for Best Original Song, Peter Gabriel’s “Down To Earth” from “Wall-E”; and two A.R. Rahman tracks from “Slumdog Millionaire”; “O Saya” and the ultimate winner “Jai Ho.” Good news for TV audiences who don’t want to sit through long musical segments. Bad news for music lovers. Maybe the Oscar committee should just try nominating interesting artists for a change? (i.e. how the hell did Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” song not score a nomination?
What other changes are in store? Don’t expect the loss of any other categories. Academy prez, Sid Ganis, who is stepping down later this year, told MovieLine that losing a category would be an “impossibility” (then again, he said this before the Music Branch made it easier to drop the Song category).
The 82nd annual Oscar ceremony hits next year on March 7, at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood and the nominations will arrive on Feb. 2.