Breaking the Oscars some more

I'm still kind of reeling from the announcement that the Oscars would have no host this year. Heck, I'd even take Kevin Hart at this point.

I hadn't had the chance to write about it, though.

Well, the not writing about why this year's Oscars are stupid stops now.

Today I learned (as did we all, I guess) that four of the evening's awards would be presented during commercial breaks on television. Or maybe we knew that already, at least those of you who are following this a bit more closely than I am. But today we learned which awards those would be.

Logically, you'd think they'd choose the categories that nobody knows the answers to on their Oscar ballots, and just picks them randomly, hoping against hope that they've stumbled upon the answer that wins them their pool. You know, your documentary short subjects, your animated shorts, what have you.

Well, credit the academy for not stepping on the little guy, I guess. Those awards will have their moment in the sun.

The ones that won't?

Best cinematography, best editing, best live action short, and best hair and makeup.

Wut.

Okay, so one of the random guess categories is indeed in there. As for the others, at least two of them are ones cinephiles consider to be among the most important to the creation of a good film, as summarized by Guillermo del Toro in a reaction tweet: "I would not presume to suggest what categories to cut during the Oscars show but -- cinematography and editing are at the very heart of our craft. They are not inherited from a theatrical tradition or a literary tradition: they are cinema itself."

Like, duh.

I had a revelation of sorts not long after hearing this:

Are the Oscars even broken?

All the recent tweaks reek of trying too hard to fix a problem that maybe isn't there.

Okay, we can all acknowledge the viewing numbers are dropping. But isn't it reasonable to assume this has more to do with natural demographic shifts between generations and between media habits? I reckon that today's younger kids are not growing up thinking that awards shows are cool, and it's not because they're too long -- or they might be too long but that's entirely not the point. If they're not interested in it, 15 minutes would be too long for an Oscars telecast. If they're interested in it, as I argued in Sunday's post about three-hour movies, they'll watch something even longer than the current telecast.

Some recent changes the Academy has been making are undoubtedly positive, like diversifying its membership by age, gender and race. That's far more likely to entice younger viewers, and we're already seeing the results with best picture nominations going to younger skewing movies like Black Panther and A Star is Born.

But all this obsession with the show's length makes the Academy seem like it's being held hostage by all those people out there who can't stop joking about how long the show is.

You know what? That is about the hackiest joke out there. Everyone knows that everyone thinks the Oscars are too long. For Christ's sake just give it a rest and stop using it as your lazy crutch when you can't think of something actually funny to say. I'm looking at you, Bruce Vilanch. (Does Bruce Vilanch still write the Oscars? Who knows.)

I'm sure they are going on some kind of statistics here to support the notion that a show that's 4% shorter will have 7% higher ratings, or something along those lines, but that really seems like a ridiculous conclusion. Each new proposed change (best popular film??) just subjects the Academy to further ridicule.

Again I could probably find the answer to this if I scrounged around online, but why the hell does it matter so much if the Oscars are becoming more niche? Is selling the advertising spots really that important? Why can't they just tailor the show to the people who do still care about its traditions, and if they joke about the length, they do it ironically, within the company of the other people dropping snark at their viewing party who all know how much they all love all this stuff?

I didn't love Roma but I loved its cinematography, and when Alfonso Cuaron very likely wins that award I think it will be worth seeing it live. I mean, this is the damn director who might have been lost without his long-time DP Emmanuel Lubezki. Instead, he went out and filmed the damn thing himself and now he's going to win an Oscar. Isn't that something?

The Academy doesn't think so. They're going to show us his speech at some time later in the show, like he won one of the technical awards at that ceremony three weeks before the show hosted by Courteney Cox.

We all deserve better.

Netflix devours the upper echelon of great directors

When it was announced -- ages ago, it now feels like -- that Martin Scorsese's next film was going to call Netflix home, it seemed like kind of a one-off. It probably shouldn't have, as things like this often indicate trends. But at the time I thought "Why would someone like Scorsese cede the biggest cinematic stage in order to tell his larger-than-life stories? Surely others won't follow suit."

Well, they're following suit.

Steadily since then we've seen films debut on Netflix by other highly acclaimed directors, such as Noah Baumbach and Joon Bong-ho. The list starts but certainly does not end there.

However, the extent to which this is indeed a trend -- an alarming trend -- did not occur to me until this past week, when I learned for the first time about the Netflix debut of Alfonso Cuaron's new film, and about the very existence and Netflix debut of Joel & Ethan Coen's new film.

When two directors (or directing units) have directed a film you've named your #1 film of the year, and you learn in the same week that their next project is on Netflix, it tends to capture your attention.

Technically speaking, the Coens have never directed a #1 movie of the year for me since I've begun keeping track of such things back in 1996. But they've directed my #1 movie of all time (Raising Arizona), so yeah, I think I can just barely justify squeezing them into this conversation.

I knew that Cuaron -- director of my #1 film of 2006, Children of Men -- had made his long-anticipated follow-up to Gravity, Roma, and that it had done well at Venice. I didn't know about its Netflix associations until just reading an article on this year's Oscar hopefuls. The writer wasn't sure if the Academy would be willing to honor Netflix with its first best picture nomination.

The case of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was a bit more alarming in the sense that I didn't even know the Coens had a new movie coming out. So I learned about the existence of the movie, and the fact that it's debuting on Netflix in November (with the same nominal theatrical release Roma is getting, of course), in one fell swoop.

It could be argued that Netflix is an appropriate platform, in some respects, for these films, or at least less inappropriate than some of their other films would have been. Roma is a semi-autobiographical black-and-white film about a year in the life of a Mexican family in the 1970s, so it's not like it requires the same type of platform as Gravity. It's the first Cuaron film since Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban not to be shot by Emmanuel Lubezki (Cuaron himself is the DP), so that's another reason it could possibly more easily slide onto the small screen. As for Buster Scruggs, about which I know less, any Coen movie is visually dynamic and would best be seen on a big screen, but it's not like they're making movies about astronauts floating around in space. It's not like this is a Christopher Nolan film debuting on Netflix (that'll never happen, even if both Nolan and Netflix live to 100).

But then there's the more dominant argument, which is that any film, regardless of its scope or ambition, should be seen on the big screen. And those who are best at making films are therefore all the more likely to demand a big screen viewing of their films.

I haven't looked into the finances behind these, whether Netflix cut a several-movie deal with these directors (God I hope not) or whether their financing was the only thing that allowed the directors to make the films they wanted, the way they wanted (a lot more likely, especially in Cuaron's case, with a film less likely to find a big commercial audience). If I were being a journalist I would have to do that. But for now, I'm wearing my internet curmudgeon hat, so I'm not doing it.

Besides, the details of these agreements are not the point. The point is that Netflix is increasingly likely to entice the very best at what they do into marginalizing their own products on the small screen. You can say that the films wouldn't even be made if not by Netflix (which is a shame and I hope not true). You can say that these films will have a moment on the big screen, for people who seek them out. But the reality is that most people (including me) will probably see them on a TV, and that's a disappointing outcome for cinema's best.

There is one clear advantage I can see, and it relates to those #1 films I was talking about earlier. Both directors will indeed qualify for my #1 movie of 2018, as their movies' availability on Netflix guarantees I will be able to see them before my ranking deadline in late January. I've never missed the chance to rank a film by either of these directors, but I had to see Inside Llewyn Davis on the very last day before my list closed (which was the day it opened here in Australia), and Roma seems like just the type of film that would have a limited Christmas release in LA and New York and not open in Australia until late February.

But if I'm seeing the films on the small screen, what realistic chance will they have to be my #1 movie anyway? In my entire history of naming my favorite movie of the year, only three of them have come from movies I first saw on the small screen. Only three.

That could just be due to my diligence in seeking out the movies I'm most likely to love on the big screen.

Or, it could be that the big screen really contributes in some meaningful way to a film's power to envelope you in its world.