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They're at it again, folks. Once more, with only two weeks left until the Academy Awards, this year's producers, Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic, have made another notable, unique, and potentially foreboding move for the ceremony. Breaking with decades of tradition, the five nominees for Best Original Song, which include songs from such films as Crazy Heart, Nine, and The Princess and the Frog, will not be performed during the show. Shankman and Mechanic have attributed this choice to a few factors: first, it will help the show move quicker; second, and what appears to be the most important reason (based on Mechanic's forceful comments during the past week), the Best Song nominees really shouldn't be placed on a higher pedestal than, say, the nominees for Best Art Direction or Best Cinematography.

As you probably were able to glean from the beginning of the article, this is yet another move by the Oscar producers that fills me with unease. Why, though? Both of the reasons I listed above that explain why the Best Song nominees won't be performed are perfectly valid. There's no question that, without those five songs being performed, even if the versions that are performed are shorter than originally recorded, the Oscar ceremony won't take as long. If you take out ten minutes, that's just ten more minutes to fill with more important footage. Also, it's hard to argue with the logic Bill Mechanic is putting forth: why do the Best Song nominees get extra time, while the nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay get a 30-second bit of poorly written banter between two famous presenters? So, you ask, why do I have a problem with this decision?

The reasons that Mechanic and Shankman are providing are disingenuous, to say the least. When the news was announced early last week, various web outlets, including In Contention.com, reported the admitted hearsay that Shankman thought this year's nominees were awful. That may be (though I'm a fan of the songs from Crazy Heart and The Princess and the Frog), but is that the best reason to cancel this part of the ceremony? What if Adam Shankman didn't like this year's Best Picture nominees? Would we not see clips of the films? Would that award have been tossed aside to an earlier ceremony that isn't televised? Now, I'm jumping a bit far here, but subjectivity shouldn't be guiding the decisions about the ceremony. I don't want to see a ceremony that fits Adam Shankman's barometer of quality in film. I want a ceremony based on the movies that were selected by the Academy voters.

Also, would the idea of taking out the Best Song nominees have gone by the wayside if, say, the song from Everybody's Fine was nominated? What's so snazzy about that song, right? Oh, well, it was written and performed by Paul McCartney. Seeing as none of the five nominees were sung by anyone as famous as Sir Paul, it's clear that celebrity is a big part of the issue. So, what will we get during those ten minutes that aren't being used for the Best Song nominees? Perhaps longer clips of the Best Picture nominees? A longer and more introspective In Memoriam segment? A dance medley featuring a handful of dancers from So You Think You Can Dance? If you said the last one, you are a very smart person. Yes, friends, what better antidote to boring, non-famous songs than dancing?

I've already gone on and on about how anti-dancing I am, at least when it comes to the Oscar ceremony. I won't keep beating that drum, but this idea, while unique to the Oscars, smacks of desperation. A while back, I mentioned how Shankman used Twitter to ask people what would make them tune in (aside from movies they like being nominated, perhaps), and how bad the very gesture sounds. It's not that I distrust my fellow movie-watchers (though they did flock to Transformers 2 in droves); it's that we shouldn't be dictating the content. That's what the People's Choice Awards are for. We choose what we see. The Oscars are meant to be slightly above the idea of a popular vote. But here we have Adam Shankman wondering who might intrigue me to watch, or what might work more.

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