I should have linked/excerpted a Mike Fleming Deadline piece that ran four days ago called “Let Me Rant More Than Rave About The Film Climate In Hollywood Now.” I didn’t because…I don’t have a decent excuse but the best part is mainly about how to jazz up the Oscarsl

Fleming’s big idea (and it’s a good one) is that the Academy should use the Oscar telecast as a way to entertainingly preview the big wanna-see flicks of the coming year.

“Instead of Cirque du Soleil, what if Oscar promised an exclusive clip of Tom Cruise singing an ’80s rock number in his decadent hair band rock icon character from Rock Of Ages? A clip showing the giant dragon Smaug or a battle scene from Middle Earth from The Hobbit? A killer scene from The Hunger Games? One from Prometheus, Ridley Scott‘s revisit to Alien terrain? The Dark Knight Rises? An action scene marking the return of James Bond in Skyfall? You get the idea.

“All of these scenes would be exclusive, and this could become a tradition which could be promoted and would give a global movie-loving audience more to embrace than dresses that actresses are wearing.

“Insiders say this hasn’t happened because the Academy is intransigent in its fear that the integrity of the awards would be compromised. After all, they only just started allowing movie ads during the telecast. Hey, Academy: join the 21st century.

“And while we’re at it, doubling the number of Best Picture nominees has mostly added a few more films most people didn’t see. Why not create some other awards that honor the best comedy or best ensemble, which might give the unwashed masses something to root for? And when you have a year where Harry Potter was again ignored for Best Picture after an eighth installment that marked the end of an unprecedented achievement of an engrossing serial that grossed $8 billion, why not INVENT AN AWARD that gives the cast and filmmakers the chance to take a final bow in front of a grateful global TV audience?

There’s “a palpable lack of excitement for the Oscars” among industry players, he says. The basic problem is that the Oscar telecasy “is clearly hamstrung not by the imagination of its producers [but] the Academy’s unwillingness to get off its high horse and start showing audiences around the world what they really want to see.”

Fleming is basically saying that Academy honchos Tom Sherak, Dawn Hudson and Ric Robertson are basically what’s wrong.

“Why can’t the Academy face the fact that its stuffiness and stubbornness has turned movie’s most important night into the Super Bowl for dress designers? The red carpet pre-show has become a more anticipated event than an awards show that focuses too much on a Hollywood past the masses don’t care about, technical awards the masses don’t care about, and movies from last year that audiences either saw or decided not to see a long time ago.”