The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced plans to move the presentation of noncompetitive awards — including honorary Oscars as well as the Irving G. Thalberg and Jean Hersholt humanitarian awards — out of the annual awards telecast, according to Variety. The plan is to present these honorary awards at a separate dinner event in November, at least three months prior to the March awards ceremony.
In addition, the Academy announced a change to the nominating rules for the Original Song category. "If no song achieves a minimum average score of 8.25 in the nominations voting, there will be no nominees and thus no Oscar presented for the category," according to the Academy press release. "If only one song achieves the required minimum, it and the song with the next highest score will be deemed the nominees." Previous rules dictates that there could be no more than five but no fewer than three nominees.
I actually like the honorary awards part of the show when I know who the person is. If they are important enough to recieve and honorary Oscar than tehy should be important enough to broadcast. If they are so worried about rating and ad revenue, then they should learn to cut production costs. How about losing hte lavish gift baskets? Presenters should happy to be honored to be part of the show.
The awarding of the honorary Oscars is a great point for a bathroom break, or putting away leftover food. However, I think the honorees – many of whom should have been nominated for or won Oscars in their heyday – should be given a chance to shine during the broadcast.
Eliminating or curtailing the Best Song category is just stupid. That is often the best part of the telecast. If they are truly concerned about ratings for the show, they should give out the technical awards – sound, editing, cinematography, costumes – during the ceremony, but before the telecast starts. They should also get rid of the stupid self-congratulatory montages and production numbers.
I hope they don’t change the format too much. The Academy Awards is glamorous and legendary, so it would suck if they tweaked it so much that it comes out like the Mtv Movie Awards. I would literally throw up and NEVER watch it again if that happened.
The biggest problem I had with the latest Oscar telecast was that they limited the Best Song category to three… possibly because of Academy rules or because they wanted to bring the time down, I don’t know… and then brought in a big, POINTLESS, dance number. If you ask me, they should cut the pointless non-awards things. I’d watch it.
I have absolutely no idea why they are doing all this rearranging of the Oscars. I of course am on board with taking the Honorarys off the telecast, but why can’t we honor songs??? Soundtracks give an even deeper emotion to already great movies – the two movies that have won best song in the past two years especially, Slumdog Millionaire & Once. I also don’t think it’s necessary to have 10 Best Picture nods…the film that is the favorite will STILL win, and why do commercial favorites have to be nominated? That’s not the point of the Oscars!
extensionally…
http://www.nowgoal.com/21.shtml
Good idea.
I think that this is an ill-conceived idea. The honorary awards actually lend the show a much-needed dose of dignity and historical context. What needs to go are the meaningless film montages, musical numbers, and the inane, unfunny, eye-rolling patter that the presenters are forced to recite.
What the **** is this crap? JUST NOMINATE FIVE SONGS, FOR CRISSAKES! This is not rocket science!!
As for the non-competitive awards being moved off the ceremony, I hope the recipients don’t even bother to show up. Since the Academy won’t respect the recipients, the recipients should spit right back in the Academy’s eye too.
I really think they should keep the presentation of honorary awards. It exposes respected veterans in the acting field to those of us at home and allows us to partake in celebrating their numerous achievements. Also it is their chance to be recognized in front of their peers and proteges, unlike a “special luncheon” which just doesnt seem to do justice to those receiving the honor.
With ten nominees now for Best Picture, some awards were going to have to go to make room for the movie montages of the films. But removing the honorary awards is a mistake in my mind. I wonder what else will go on thia overhaul of the Oscars? Now they’re messing with the Original Song category is unnecessary. I mean three nominees is fine if you can’t find five worthy songs, but to potentially take the category away altogether, um…no.
Another dumb move, it takes the “honor” out of “honorary” by moving these awards off the telecast. I think if they want to improve ratings and save time, they should cut out all those emabarassingly bad production numbers. This isn’t the Tonys. Show more clips of nominated performances and films. Cut out hosts and inane presenter banner. Do the show in two hours, not three. Give away one Sound Award not two. The way it is set up now, they have plenty of time for minor awards and then since they are always running late, they try to cut off the speeches of all the major winners at the end. Dumb. A three year old could produce a better show.
It’s sad that they have to drop showing these honors and potentially add more mediocre movies to best picture just to have ratings. This is the ACADEMY AWARDS this isn’t the MTV Movie Awards! This is about honoring the prestigious it is not a popularity contest. I am not impressed at what they are “improving.”
I feel like the honorary awards help out the ceremony’s ratings a lot with name recognition of those particular recipients. The redoing of the song nominations seem really confusing. Is the song nominating process like the Miss America Pageant? I just want the top five songs comepeting. I wished they would change the rules to state that no cheesy songs can make through the nominating process. Last year was good. I genuinely liked all three. But other years has been bad. Whenever Once won, you knew Once won because it was an amazing song regardless of it being from an indie movie. It did truly go above the medium of cinema and was a great song. Same with Jai Ho, although now I can only think of the Pussycat Dolls instead of Slumdog Millionaire. I just want to see more songs like those two.
Golden Globes you eat at those awards Bill. 10 Best Pictures will be interesting…wonder if only 7 are great/good movies this year???