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This year’s Oscar host, Seth MacFarlane, and Emma Stone announce the Oscar nominees
for Best Picture on Jan. 10, 2013.
ing editor for Yahoo Movies. “Not
even for the dead. That’s why God
created websites.”
ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
THE SONG AND DANCE
Live musical numbers are “the
worst part of the show,” according to
Jack Herrguth, a developer of original programming at Comedy Central. “Forget all the dancing, forget
all the singing. It’s fun to watch on
the Internet or talk about the next
day, but during the broadcast it’s
usually pretty painful. It’s bad TV.”
Herrguth suggested playing
clips of the movies over each
singer’s performance. (“Adele’s
singing live? I couldn’t care less!”
went his enactment of himself on
Feb. 24, 2013.) Cutting away from
musical superstars wouldn’t be
the subtlest editing maneuver, but
then, playing to one’s audience
isn’t always a subtle game.
Another possibility: dispensing
with the musical performers altogether. (God help the person assigned to give that message to Barbra Streisand, who is scheduled to
sing at this year’s Academy Awards
for the first time in 36 years.) Alford suggested using technology to
fillip the Best Original Song category: “Reduce each Best Song down
to a ringtone. Put each ringtone on
a cellphone given to the composer.
Reveal the Best Song winner by
calling him in the audience.” Fin.
BEST PICTURES
The critics HuffPost spoke with
were unanimous on this: Go back
to five nominees. Everything got
screwy in 2010, when the Academy, under pressure after The Dark
Knight missed the ballot the year
before, increased the number of
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THE OSCAR ISSUE / HUFFINGTON / 02.10-17.13
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