Without question, the highlight of Sunday night’s Academy Awards show was cute little 9-year old Quvenzhané Wallis flexing her muscles. Shirley Bassey (who sang Goldfinger), Jennifer Hudson (And I Am Telling You), and Adele (Skyfall) also put on a show with their standout vocal performances. Yet as usual, the program ran entirely too long at 3 1/2 hours (or more if you watched the red carpet), with all awards the 40 million viewers really wanted to see happening in a short span of 30 minutes.
The 2013 Oscars can very well be described as 3 1/2 hours you’ll never get back, though most viewers probably didn’t have anything better to watch since their favorite shows were running reruns.
If you thought the Oscars were a yawn or didn’t watch, here are five ways we suggest would make the annual award ceremony better.
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1. Mandate that actors come to the awards ceremony in character. Journalists, bloggers, and academics wouldn’t need to write about what kinds of performances get black people and black films Oscar nominations. We’d let the visuals speak for themselves.
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2. Make the Oscars more like the NAACP Awards.
After a few years, everyone nominated would have gotten at least one award, so we can get a chance to hear them given an acceptance speech and not just announce awards and clap in the audience.
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3. Let Quentin Tarantino or James Cameron script the show.
Both writer/directors have demonstrated they can hold an audience’s attention for 3 hours, plus maybe they can sneak a revenge plot or two in there with a surprise ending.
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4. Invite Tyler Perry and Spike Lee.
And sit them next to each other. Enough said.
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5. Have the audience do the Harlem Shake (v2.0).
Watch the video.
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The Winners:
1. Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz
2. Animated Short Film: “Paper Man”
3. Animated Feature Film: “Brave”
4. Cinematography: Claudio Miranda for “Life of Pi”
5. Visual Effects: “Life of Pi”
6. Costume Design: “Anna Karenina”
7. Makeup and Hairstyling: “Les Miserables”
8. Live Action Short Film: “Curfew”
9. Documentary Short Subject: “Innocente”
10. Documentary Feature: “Searching for Sugar Man”
11. Foreign Language Film: “Amour”
12. Sound Mixing: “Les Miserables”
13. Sound Editing: “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Skyfall” (A tie)
14. Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway
15. Film Editing: “Argo”
16. Production Design: “Lincoln”
17. Original Score: “Life of Pi”
18. Original Song: “Skyfall”
19. Adapted Screenplay: Chris Terrio for “Argo”
20. Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino for “Django Unchained”
21. Directing: Ang Lee
22. Actress: Jennifer Lawrence
23. Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
24. Best Picture: “Argo”
