OSCAR MADNESS

The Oscars are finally happening in a matter of days after a delay of almost two months. It appears that this year's show will attempt to be the closest to a traditional program despite the on-going threat of COVID-19 in our lives with Oscar producers, Steven Soderbergh, Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins taking every measure to make sure all nominees and participants will be safe during this Sunday's live event. I'm thrilled and can't wait to see this glamourous celebration of the moviegoing experience.

In the meantime, I'm going to share some interesting links that involve discussions on the long history and the potential future of the Academy Awards:

The New York Times takes us on the journey of how the Academy Awards evolved from a low-key fifteen minute ceremony to a three-hour plus event, with it's move to television in 1953 helping to create the grand spectacle of the show and solidify it's cultural importance.

NYT: From a 15 Minute Ceremony to a Marathon

Nate Jones of Vulture looks at the cultural and artistic debates involving the Oscars, which he reveals to be hardly a new development with these complaints about the lack of diversity, category fraud, cancel culture, political speeches and honoring "popular" movies have been previously discussed over the last seventy years.

Vulture: We’ve Been Having the Same Fights About the Oscars for 70 Years

The Los Angeles Times goes back to the Oscars twenty years ago with the three way battle between "Traffic", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Gladiator" with film critics, Justin Chang and Glenn Whip discussing how these ultimate choices have aged and the beginning of internationalism in the movie industry.

LAT: 2001 Oscars Heads Back to the Arena

LAT: 2001 Oscars Rewind: What Won and What Should Have Won

After a year of the proliferation of streaming channels and watching new films at home, what does this mean for the future of cinema and the Oscars? Wesley Morris of The New York Times examines the movies that were nominated despite the lack of traditional theatrical distribution and critical buzz from film festivals and the concern of more mid-budget titles bypassing movie theaters completely.

NYT: In the Year of Streaming, What Do The Oscars Mean?

And with two women nominated in the Best Director category this year (making that a total of seven in the ninety-three year history of the awards), Joy Press for Vanity Fair looks back at a time in the 1970's when female filmmakers like Claudia Weill, Joyce Chopra, Barbara Loden, Joan Micklin Silver, Penelope Spheeris, Martha Coolidge, Joan Tewkesbury and Julie Dash were emerging to make their first movies, thrilling and inventive works, and the difficult struggle for them in trying to continue with their careers.

VF: Promising Young Women