The Oscars don’t happen for another 13 days.
The awards season began on January 4th, with the Critics Choice Awards. Then came the Golden Globes. Last night we had the SAG Actors Awards.
Now, two more weeks? None of the Oscar movies are in theaters. What’s the point?
Variety asks the same question today.
The Academy Awards used to be the last Sunday in February. That was the latest they should have been. This year the Olympics took up two weeks in February on NBC. But ABC could have easily slotted the show in for the following week. It’s not like they had such great programming.
Also, by now, we know all the movies involved, and who the likely winners are among them. The whole event is “Sinners” (released a year ago) vs. “One Battle After Another” (October). The Best Actor race has been whittled down to Timothee Chalamet vs. Michael B. Jordan. Leonardo DiCaprio is out of the running. Jessie Buckley will take Best Actress for “Hamnet.”
The Academy doesn’t see this, they think it’s 1998. I’m afraid the crowd has moved on this year. They may not realize that the Academy Awards telecast is aimed at a niche crowd. The larger population may think the Oscars already happened.
And then there’s the telecast: only two of the five Best Song nominations will be heard. Ouch! Will there be some other kind of hook entertainment-wise to get people to watch? And what about the real remaining Hollywood stars? We’ve crossed a generational line. Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson are unavailable. Dustin Hoffman is ghosted. Jane Fonda has only recently been on the Oscar stage. Maybe Shirley MacLaine can step in..
So we wait for March 15th, and hope the show on ABC draws some kind of audience. In three years, the production moves to YouTube anyway. By then there will only be a couple of studios left. It’s not a promising thought.
