Seriously. They should broadcast it on a webcam and let the true believers tune in. Let the speeches go on for as long as people want. Martin Landau remembers!

Not enough babes! ... How did we manage to get all those shots of Paul Thomas Anderson and not ONE shot during the show (to the best of my knowledge) of his partner Maya Rudolph. Did ABC not want to highlight an opposing network's star? (p.s. -- this post is 90 percent tongue in cheek, but I would have liked to have seen Maya)

Jeff, don't be an idiot. NFL players are NOT on steroids, they're clearly taking HGH. Once again, do not talk about sports because you reveal your ignorance every time.

Furthermore, you're comparing a year of historical consequences (Patriots going undefeated) against a team with a huge market (New York) in the NFL against a year where no big event movies were nominated for best picture. It's really no surprise. You said yourself how flawed the oscar voting process was, so why does that make NFL fans idiots in comparison to hinging their hopes on what some actor's maid decided to vote for on a ballot?

Look this is innane. An Awards Show is supposed to be captivating television?

The Superbowl is a live event with 100 men who have devoted their lives to be better at something (legally or legally). Violence, grandeur, and passion.

The Oscars have grandeur... little else. Jon Steward cracking jokes for a few hours means nothing. Nor does a bunch of pretty people in pretty clothes.

Wells, thy name is clueless.

Seeing as how there are no good movies coming out, the Super Bowl film is the only dvd I'll be picking up tomorrow.

I didn't realize that to be a 'true movie fan' you were required to watch the Oscars broadcast, Jeff. Shame on me, I was re-watching Zodiac, instead, last night.

Um... maybe the fact that everyone heard for three months that there wouldn't be an Oscar show (and if there was, nobody would be there to write it) had something to do with suppressing interest in the damn thing?

Carla! I am planning to watch Zodiac tonight again too! I honestly don't care who got the little gold dude last night. Zodiac will always be the best film last year for me. Now it is time to leave the computer and revisit Mr. Fincher and the best ensemble group of actors in a long time.

mmmm the greatest athletes in the world versus some douche named Diablo Cody, John Travolta's painted hair, Cameron Diaz's illiteracy, John Stewart's ghastly makeup, a bunch of awful Disney lip synchs and PREDICTABLE results

tough choice

There is no way for me to say this without seeming like I am insulting people so i'll just come out with it.

I just cannot figure out why or how grown and seemingly intelligent people can be so invested in who wins an academy award.

Movies are my life, I always been in love with them, my fondest early memory is of going to the movies for the first time (the first time I was capable of remembering) I love the process of movie making, I can't get enough. But being invested in some high school prom contest??? WHY, My GOD WHY?? HOW do you love movies then reduce them to a fucking prom king and queen contest and say you're a movie lover/connoisseur??

Did the coen's make the BEST film of the year??

Is Marion Cotillard really the BEST actress of last year?

Did Robert Elswit do the BEST photography??

How can a connisouire be that reductive about Johnny Greenwoods score, Rodger Deakins work on Jesse James and No Country, Harris Savides's work on Zodiac and American Gangster Digital Domain's work On Zodiac, ILM's work in Transformers. PTA's script for blood, his directing for blood. How do you reduce Andrew Dominik's direction of Jesse James, so many talented people working together and then you pile them together and ask who's the BEST?

Not every one is great but their too many great and talented people working in movies to boil it down to some charade of a night to hand out and award that usually poisons peoples career.

The Coen did gain so much respect from me though. Not that I didn't respect them before but the fact that brunt of their speech was "Thank you but we gotta get back to work because this is what we've always done, this is all we want to do" means they know where it's at and getting a pat on the back is not it. The work is the thing; thats the obsession not awards not accolades.

New host: Simon Cowell

berkguru: Not that you actually really care about what you're saying, but the Disney songs weren't being lip-synched.

We all know actors refrain from taking PEDs.

True movie fans would only watch this grotesque auto-erotic mugwumpery to size up the dresses. I thought it got the audience it deserved.

Whatever 'mugwumpery' means...

The Academy Awards are of course flawed, but I still think it's a fun event to get everyone together and celebrate our common love for film. The ratings - particularly for a year in which there were so many great films about which evidently most of America couldn't give a shit - are dismaying to me.

For the record, I love the Oscars AND the Super Bowl. I'd be the marketer's dream if I didn't completely shut down my television sensory intake when advertisements appear.

don't worry your little head off Jeff, I'm sure biker-nomad-poets everywhere were tuned in to last night's pageant.

"The Academy Awards are of course flawed, but I still think it's a fun event to get everyone together and celebrate our common love for film."

close the thread.

Yeah, count me as someone who's never understood how grown men care actually care who wins an Oscar. Are you actually sitting in front of the TV rooting for, say, "No Country for Old Men" to win? Really? Why?

Nexr year, even more Disney/ABC celebs will likely show up on the telecast and perhaps Tom Bergeron and Samantha Harris will emcee a segment where people vote on their favorite film, actor and actress of the year.

I always watch the Oscars, but it IS the most lowbrow, culturally empty excercise I do each year. The one time I feel that competitive instinct, as I could care less for sports.

I have to agree with the crowd. My attention to Oscar has waned more and more over the years, so much so that this year I missed the entire opening monologue and more than once sent a text to a friend during the show (I'm such a philistine!) asking "Why do we care about this shit any more?" And I loved a handful of the films that were actually nominated. It truly feels like an event that does not matter, ESPECIALLY in the minds of any kind of so-called "serious" cinema fans.

But during the Super Bowl, I was going batshit crazy watching two teams that I genuinely do not care about (my team didn't even make it close to the playoffs). Why? Because of the history involved in the game and wanting to see the douchebag fans of the biggest douchebag team in history go home with their tails between their legs. Call it schadenfreude (it is), but I loved every single goddamn minute of it and I don't care if that makes me some kind of plebe or neanderthal to you, Wells.

But, honestly, why can't someone exist that simply watches both events? Is this such an abstract concept? You speak so often about being a proud blue-stater, which implies an open-mindedness and a willingness to accept culture and folk of all types. You are also one of those folks who rails against films if things are too black-and-white, too good-and-evil. Yet, here is a case of you wanting it the opposite; a cut and dried way in which to categorize people and put them into a little box of your own designation. You can either watch the Oscars or you can watch the super bowl and never the twain shall meet. Why?

Lastly, I know that it really isn't hip anymore to consider the idea of a communal gathering as something fun to do or relevant (Wells, you usually seem downright appalled by friendly gatherings, especially when it involves grilling of some type), but this is what the Super Bowl encourages and what the Oscars do not, at least anymore, and maybe that has a whole hell of a lot to do with it. Watching the academy awards just isn't fun. It's a chore and, to be brutally honest, it is tearfully boring. The Super Bowl, at least this year, was not. It was a fascinating example of David-and-Goliath in the modern age and that is something people, as a group, could rally around. And that's that.

God forbid people tune in to watch something with real drama...

Here's my take: There is something imprinted on human DNA (I would call it a flaw) that makes us align ourselves with one side of something....doesn't matter if it's Oscars, football, American Idol, the Presidential election or Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD.

That way, when our side 'wins', we can somehow vicariously win too, since our own lives are so empty (for the record, I don't vote and I have never seen American Idol, so, at the very least, I'm not a rube all the time).

As far as the Oscars go, it's still the second biggest event of the year. Even the story that the ratings are at an all time low is still the biggest news of the day.... and at the end of the day, all that matters is ABC and Drudge and the NY Times and Hollywood Elsewhere are drawing viewers.

What the Academy needs to do is follow the NFL's lead and make everyone refer to the Oscars as "the Big Film Awards"

It's simple, really. If ABC and the Academy (not, mind you, the Academy members) produced a product as entertaining and compelling as the NFL and Fox, they would have better numbers.

Plus, I second the sentiments of some of those above. How does being an awards show watcher equate with being a movie lover? Do you hate music if you don't watch the Grammys?

I was too young to understand it at the time, but George C. Scott had it exactly right.

Rich S. has it exactly right. What the F does watching the Oscars have to do with liking movies? The Oscars is like picking up People magazine as opposed to reading the defunct Premiere mag let alone Film Comment.

If the people who run things can make the Oscars less of a circle jerk where everyone swoons over designer clothes and the magnitude of each other's "genius" and something entertaining with a pulse, they will come.

Yes, there are names for people who watch the Oscars but don't go to movies, and watch the Superbowl but don't follow football, and only go to church on Christmas Eve.

They're lemmings and midway rubes, and I'm happy to say I don't know any.

Football replaced my beloved baseball as our national pastime because it televises so well. The Oscar ceremony has never televised well. Movies move. The Oscars sit and fester.

I watched it for a half an hour until the Rock of Love came on.

"Mugwumpery," I believe, is Burroughsian for a bunch of people sitting around sucking each others' dicks.

I love watching the Oscars, mainly for the times when they do get it right - which, incidentally, they did perhaps a record number of times this year. Marion Cotillard's very deserving underdog win, and her completely surprised and honored reaction, is quite possibly the greatest Oscar moment I've ever seen in my lifetime, and I've been watching since the early 90s when I became old enough to care about movies.

I love seeing people who put their hearts and souls into creating valuable art get recognized and rewarded for doing so (acceptance speech for Once, anyone?). It doesn't happen enough in this world. I love seeing a moment of tribute, however brief, for the Ingmar Bergmans and the Deborah Kerrs who are gone forever.

I also love it because it sometimes creates awareness of, and interest in, worthwhile films that otherwise wouldn't get as much attention, it inspires serious discussion and debate among movie fans regardless of who eventually wins the trophy, and - hello? - it provides a great excuse for a party.

Oh, and I didn't watch a minute of the Superbowl, nor care a whit who won it. If I remember that particular evening correctly, I was watching No Country for Old Men for a third time.

I enjoy the Oscars but I certainly can see why they would bore most people to tears.

What I find quite funny is how there is now endless polling and analysis before the ceremonies and then after the Awards some of the same people who worked deligently to make accurate predictions complain there were no surprises.

32 million????

I heard multiple times during the broadcast that the Oscars were being watched by over a billion people. I guess repeating the billion figure over and over doesn't make it a reality. There can't be that many people outside the US who care about this silly event?

If they want more people to watch the Oscars, here are two pieces of advice:

1)Hosted by Howie Mandel
2)Best Picture Nominees: Indiana Jones and the Skull of the Crystal Lagoon, Ironman, and that new Reese Witherspoon/Vince Vaughn movie.

And if you can judge what a nation is thinking by which movie wins best picture, then this year's winner tells us this:

There is an evil presence out there, we don't know who he is or what language he is speaking, but he's coming to get us, there's nothing we can do about it, and most likely, we deserve it for being so stupid and full of hubris. I think NCFOM nailed the American subconscious better than any film this year (doesn't mean it was the best, viz. Zodiac, whose non-nomination and win for best efx tells me a lot about the wonks on the tech side of the biz and how insecure they are about what they're job is really supposed to be, i.e., HELPING the movie tell the story, not BEING the story), and that, to me, explains why more people would rather watch a random episode of American Idol. The mood of this country is veering toward perpetual dread, the same feeling you get when you know you should go to the doctor because your chest is always hurting and it's hard to breathe, but you figure maybe it will just go away when you know it won't. Indeed, something is looming on the horizon for all of us here in the U.S. Don't know what it is, but it ain't very good.

What Alan said. I love how people project their too-vested stake in football as the real drama.
It's one kind but art is another kind. Apples and oranges. Or breads and circuses.

MilkMan, not saying you're wrong per se, but a classic advertising (and political) strategy is to tell us that we're all gonna die...and then sell us salvation. We look at the world through the eyes of the new media. And the new media has no incentive to show us anything but the underside of the rock.

Oh, I agree with you Rich S. I was just translating, for myself, what I think the message is. And these sentiments are coming not from Madison Ave, but from Cormac Mcarthy, and how much stock you put in what novelists have to say is up to the individual, although I would say that Delillo seemed to be sending us a message back in 1991 with Mao II, a meesage that seems pretty on the money in hindsight.

Milk Man could not be more right. Just try and debate anyone about the merits of the current cinema and the cop-out answer will always be "Yeah, but I go to the movies to escape."

It's also the reason we're glued to American Idol 8 hours a week. It's also the reason half the country is on one perscription or another.

We're so busy escaping, we can't see what's coming.

I was just thinking about it, and the message Delillo was sending us back in 1991, was this: Novelists no longer have control of the grand/super narratives (whether they ever did [and I think they did, probably back in the mid to late 1800's] is always up for deabte). So I guess that cancels out what I was saying, although maybe it doesn't. Maybe all it means is that the Psychopath/Sociopath/Fundamentalist (Hitler/Chighur [sic]/Plainview/Bin Laden/Bush)is the new "novelist," in that they control how a fiction (and would it be too presumptuous for me to say that we are so drenched in fictions that we we used to know as "reality" has all but been erased) plays out, until, of course, chaos enters the picture, a la the car crash at the end of NCFOM. Or maybe I'm just overthinking all of this. Yeah, that's it.

Are you really surprised? All of those Super Bowl watching people are the same lot that you keep saying are the dregs of society that don't understand the movies you think are genius. WTF, Wells?

Keith Obama-man is not happy with Jon Stewart's monologue:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/26/olbermann-what-was-jon-_n_88462.html

KrazyEyes - I'm with you. The whole "billion people watching" is getting totally ridiculous now.

Know what else is funny when they say you should advertise on the Super Bowl or Academy Awards because of the huge audience? Well, in many other countries the same commercials don't even air (even for international companies like Coke or Pepsi). Watched the 2007 Super Bowl in Australia and none of the ads are the same at all... same goes for New Zealand... just thought that was funny because they are actually English speaking countries where many of the ads could conceivably cross over.

People do know that the billion thing was world-wide, right? Numbers for that won't be back for a while. I'm not sure if it actually gets to a billion, but the 32.7 million numbers doesn't really have much to do with the billion number.

I think ratings are down for a few reasons:

1) Bad host. In a politically charged year, people were looking for the Oscars as excapism. You don't get that with a very political host. Especially a political host that the right 75% of the political spectrum doesn't really like.

2) Overexposure. With so many sites covering the Oscars, there really aren't any surprises anymore. Or, there is more exposure that they're a vapid exercise without quality mattering that much.

3) Mediocre films were nominated for Best Picture. Only There Will Be Blood will stand the test of time, and even that was not PTA's best. (I know many disagree, but I don't think this was a banner crop or a banner year for film).

Excellent news about the record low ratings. I was hoping that the whole revolting exercise would be cancelled due to the writers' strike, but this is the next best thing. It tanked here in Australia, too, with an average audience of 934,000 (1.5 million plus is considered a hit). I remember when the Oscars were an event I eagerly anticipated, but those days are long, long gone.

Or, if you don't like it, you could just not watch the show or pay attention to the media coverage, instead of wishing for it to be cancelled when there are people who do look forward to it and still enjoy watching it. There are plenty of great books out there to be discovered when you turn off the TV and get away from the computer screen. There's also, you know, life to be lived and stuff. Plenty of alternatives to grumbling and hoping that something you don't care about anyway doesn't happen.