In Contention

By Josh Spiegel

February 15, 2011

For those of you still enjoying the afterglow of Valentine's Day, this should keep it going.

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With just under two weeks left until the Academy Awards are presented live on ABC, we’re all in a period of waiting. While a few guilds are still announcing their awards, the biggest ones, the ones that everyone pays attention to, have come and gone. This past Sunday, the BAFTAs, the British version of the Oscars, were announced, and there were few surprises here. The King’s Speech won both as Best Film and Best British Film (a nice way for the Brits to tell us to suck it, as their movies were best EVERYWHERE this year). It also won for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, and, oh, Best Craft Services. However, David Fincher won for Best Director, which could potentially mean he’s got a solid shot at the Oscars. But you never know.

Many people have argued in other venues that the Oscars shouldn’t take place so far down the line. In terms of the calendar year, of course, the end of February isn’t that far off. But in terms of the new world of popular culture, when news can be old hat within a week, leaving the Oscars to last is almost like being the last person at a party. Do people care about the Oscars at all, or are we all just somehow programmed to get kind of interested? While some of the big Oscar movies are doing great at the box office — The King’s Speech and Black Swan have impressed at the multiplexes for weeks now — with the opening of spring event movies like Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (Even Though I Just Said It Twice) and Just Go With It, have audiences forgotten about the awards season?




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Again, I keep coming back to the idea that maybe audiences just don’t care. I’m very curious to see what the ratings for this year’s show are. In the past 15 years, the Oscar ratings have gone as high as 57 million viewers (for the film year 1997, when Titanic, then the highest-grossing film ever, was up for Best Picture) and as low as 31 million viewers (for the film year 2007, when No Country For Old Men was the victor). Last year’s show jumped up to over 41 million viewers; certainly, part of that could be due to there being ten Best Picture nominees, but the true test comes this year. Last year, the rivals at the top included the now highest-grossing film ever, Avatar. The highest-grossing films in this year’s nominees, Inception and Toy Story 3, have just about no shot of winning.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that the show’s length may have little to nothing to do with the ratings. The old gag is that the Oscars — and, honestly, every awards show under the sun — runs way over its scheduled time and isn’t that the worst? The telecast in early 2008, where No Country For Old Men won, managed to be one of the shortest in the last 25 years, despite being so low-rated. What will always matter is if people — not just those folks like us who may be tuned in on Twitter or on other film blogs, following the ups and downs of the season — care about the movies being nominated. A lot of people have seen and loved The King’s Speech — but a lot of them are older viewers, and advertisers could give a toss about old folks in the TV world.


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