Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

The Original BJ wrote:Per Kris Tapley, Cinematography is one of the categories that will be presented during the commercial break.

CINEMATOGRAPHY.

If true, John Bailey, the president of AMPAS, should be outraged since he is a cinematographer himself. Or perhaps he wanted this to happen because he's bitter he's never been nominated while first-time DP Alfonso Cuaron, the presumed front-runner of the category, will have to give his speech during the commercial break "as punishment".

The Original BJ wrote:Per Kris Tapley, Cinematography is one of the categories that will be presented during the commercial break.

CINEMATOGRAPHY.

If this turns out to be true the nominees, including nominees of any category that is ghettoed should boycott the ceremony. Imagine being denied Roger Deakins win & speech last year. It was one of only three reasons I even watched the show lasted year and I turned off prior to the big ones (actor, actress & picture) because we knew and I really didn't care.

Per Kris Tapley, Cinematography is one of the categories that will be presented during the commercial break.

CINEMATOGRAPHY.

mlrg wrote:

HarryGoldfarb wrote:

- A weird looking Glenn Close presented The Crying Game.

Actually it was Diane Keaton

I was driving when this came to me! And I was eager to come here to correct this, I mixed things up! In any case, it was a weird looking (although not by her standards) all white suited (I think) and overtalking Diane Keaton...

But Glenn Close did presented something that night (Score? Foreign Language?), with a weird look. Maybe it was Foreign Language Film, since I think it was Raúl Juliá who presented Original Score.

HarryGoldfarb wrote:

Big Magilla wrote: Still, I don't remember the introductions to the clips coming along until more recently. The clips themselves, I do have some recollection of Oscar hosts saying briefly "here's a clip (or whatever) from our first nominated film", etc. The yackety-yak from the cast members drawing the whole thing out seems much more recent.

They’ve never gone fully the SAG way, although Ian McKellen presented the clip from LOTR:TROTK.

Usually, it was a quasi-random choice... some that I remember:
- Sally Field presented Beauty & the Beast (she joked about hoping the nomination wouldn’t become a tradition).
- Jessica Tandy presented The Prince of Tides (all kudos and admiration up to the point of complaining about Barbra’s lack of Best Director nomination).
- A weird looking Glenn Close presented The Crying Game.
- Richard Dreyfuss presented Shindler’s List.
- Keanu Reeves presented Pulp Fiction.
- Sally Field, once again, presentes Forrest Gump (something corny like “I give you my boy, Forrest Gump”).
- Nicole Kidman presented Babe.

That's true, but it's not just SAG, it's the Globes and maybe the Broadcast Critics as well, there are so many of these things lately it's easy to get confused.

Probably more the Broadcasters, as I think about it. They had Bradley and Gaga introduce A Star Is Born, Angela Basset introduce Black Panther and the casts of Bohemian Rhapsody and Crazy Rich Asians introduce their films. Guess who are the biggest name presenters whose names have been released by SAG for Sunday night's presentation, aside from Tom Hanks who is presenting Alan Alda's lifetime achievement award. They are Bradley and Gaga, Angela Bassett and the casts of Bohemian Rhapsody and Crazy Rich Asians. The only thing that's stopping them from repeating at the Oscars is the Academy's rule against presenters who have appeared on other awards shows within 90 days or whatever the time frame is, which is probably what caused the lack of the films' original stars from repeating the presentations in the past.

https://www.sagawards.org/presenters25

HarryGoldfarb wrote:

- A weird looking Glenn Close presented The Crying Game.

Actually it was Diane Keaton

HarryGoldfarb wrote:

Big Magilla wrote: I don't remember that practice going back that far, but then I didn't recall when they went from saying "and the winner is" to "and the Oscar goes to" - which according to Wikipedia began with the 1988 awards which means there are now generations of Oscar watchers who never heard them say "and the winner is" except on YouTube clips.

Well, in 2010 they reverted to “and the winner is” and it stood for a few years, so for sure the new generations have heard the phrase live.

I don't recall that reversion, although on occasion I have heard a presenter or two use the term so I guess some members of generations X and Y have heard the term live, but probably not anyone in generation Z.

I remember Jessica Lange presenting a clip for Driving Miss Daisy in 1990 (for 1989 films of course).

Big Magilla wrote: I don't remember that practice going back that far, but then I didn't recall when they went from saying "and the winner is" to "and the Oscar goes to" - which according to Wikipedia began with the 1988 awards which means there are now generations of Oscar watchers who never heard them say "and the winner is" except on YouTube clips.

Well, in 2010 they reverted to “and the winner is” and it stood for a few years, so for sure the new generations have heard the phrase live.

Big Magilla wrote: Still, I don't remember the introductions to the clips coming along until more recently. The clips themselves, I do have some recollection of Oscar hosts saying briefly "here's a clip (or whatever) from our first nominated film", etc. The yackety-yak from the cast members drawing the whole thing out seems much more recent.

They’ve never gone fully the SAG way, although Ian McKellen presented the clip from LOTR:TROTK.

Usually, it was a quasi-random choice... some that I remember:
- Sally Field presented Beauty & the Beast (she joked about hoping the nomination wouldn’t become a tradition).
- Jessica Tandy presented The Prince of Tides (all kudos and admiration up to the point of complaining about Barbra’s lack of Best Director nomination).
- A weird looking Glenn Close presented The Crying Game.
- Richard Dreyfuss presented Shindler’s List.
- Keanu Reeves presented Pulp Fiction.
- Sally Field, once again, presentes Forrest Gump (something corny like “I give you my boy, Forrest Gump”).
- Nicole Kidman presented Babe.

The tradition I miss most that they have gone back and forth with over the years is that as the presenters are reading off the names of the nominees before the big reveal, the orchestra would play music that had an increasingly urgent tone leading up to a drum roll. It gave the presentation a measure of suspense.

Thanks for that, Tee.

I do have an excuse for not remembering when the change went into effect. I missed both the 1965 and 1966 Oscars. I was in the Army in Germany then with no access to them.

Still, I don't remember the introductions to the clips coming along until more recently. The clips themselves, I do have some recollection of Oscar hosts saying briefly "here's a clip (or whatever) from our first nominated film", etc. The yackety-yak from the cast members drawing the whole thing out seems much more recent.

Magilla, this is going to shock you, but the interspersing of clips throughout the show has been going on WAY longer than you remember.

Like you, I think of the tradition as being that, just prior to the presentation of the best picture prize, a clip was shown from each of the (then-)five nominated films. Back at the point I joined the audience (early 60s), film clips showing up on TV were a real rarity, so this was often the only chance audiences had to get a glimpse of some films. (There were no other clips shown throughout the show -- i.e., for the actors. It was strictly best picture.)

That changed in -- brace yourself -- 1966! For whatever reason, the powers that be decided that year to intersperse the best film clips throughout the evening, rather than save them for the finale. Back then -- in my youth -- I used to type up an Oscar post-mortem the day after. I just dug up my sheet for 1966's awards, and see that I complained mightily about this break from tradition. But apparently Academy folk were happy with it, because they repeated it for at least the following year. They did revert back to "save for the end" at some point in the 70s, but the idea kept returning, and by the 80s, at least, the interspersing had become the norm.

And two things made it worse: first, instead of showing clips, which were at least interesting (you could try to guess which clip each film would choose to illustrate itself), studios started simply showing their trailers, which were over-exposed and dull to watch. (I'm pretty sure this is another thing we can blame on Harvey Weinstein; I believe he started the trend.) And the second thing, of course, was, when the Academy expanded the number of nominated films, the showing of the clips began to consume way more show time.

Oddly, of late, they've occasionally gone back to the old way: as noted, in 2010 they did one big collage of the 10 nominees, and, year before last, all the clips were saved for the end (this was forgotten in the wake of the La La/Moonlight craziness). But who knows what to expect this year, when every decision the producers make seems to be the wrong one.

OK, but were those presentations of scenes from the five nominees done just before the opening of the envelope as I recall or did they have the stars of the films or other individuals come on stage and introduce the clips? I don't remember that practice going back that far, but then I didn't recall when they went from saying "and the winner is" to "and the Oscar goes to" - which according to Wikipedia began with the 1988 awards which means there are now generations of Oscar watchers who never heard them say "and the winner is" except on YouTube clips.

Big Magilla wrote:I don't remember when the practice of introducing clips of each film separately began, but it's a fairly recent phenomenon - this century I believe.

No... since my first Award show at least (1991) they’ve been doing it. And at the time, I didn’t begrudge them... They felt as serious showstopper and at least for international audiences those moments were useful. I clearly remember some of those moments, usually a scene (the book scene for The Remains of the Day, the final confrontantion for Howards End) but ocasionally a montage (the one for Pulp Fiction was quite effective). In 1998 they began playing with the concept, presenting two sets of two films loosely associated each at once (SIL/Elizabeth and SPR/TTRL) with only LIB presented on its own. Afterwards, the process has been all over the place...