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What Oscar Really Needs Is A Popular Movie

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By WALT BELCHER wbelcher

@tampatrib.com

Published: February 24, 2009

What the Academy Awards needed most Sunday night was a movie that most of the audience had seen and liked.

Hosts come and go. Musical numbers are predictably boring and hokey. Some presenters are given painfully unfunny lines. Viewers suffer through tedious acceptance speeches from little-known producers, writers and directors.

And almost no one has ever seen the best live action short film.

Oscar viewers have the same complaints every year: "Boring, boring and boring."

But if there's a film that captures the country's imagination, they will come on Oscar night.

An estimated 36.3 million people watched this year's Academy Awards, an increase of more than 4 million from last year's least-watched Oscars ceremony ever when the violent "No Country for Old Men" won best picture.

That's good but not close to the largest Oscar audience ever, in 1998, when 55.2 million watched "Titanic" win best picture.

ABC officials said Sunday's audience was the biggest for any primetime entertainment program in two years. The Golden Globes last month drew just less than 15 million viewers.

The biggest problem plaguing the Globes and Academy Awards is the relevance of movies in a world where the audience is increasingly fragmented.

Frankly, a large chunk of the potential viewing audience just didn't have a clue about most of the nominees.

The closest thing to a "Titanic" this year as far as box office power was "The Dark Knight," which has made more than $1 billion worldwide.

It received critical acclaim but it wasn't a great film and the Batman franchise seems about as shopworn as the James Bond franchise.

Also, it was pretty well accepted that the late Heath Ledger was going to get a best supporting actor Oscar for his turn as the demented Joker so there wasn't much excitement about the posthumous award.

Out of the more than 400 films released last year, there were not that many that were Oscar-worthy. This was the year of "Don't Mess with the Zohan," another "Incredible Hulk" remake and "Beverly Hills Chihuahua."

The most entertaining films for me were "WALL-E," "Slumdog Millionaire," "Mamma Mia!," "Frost/Nixon," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Tropic Thunder," "Hell Boy II" and "Iron Man."

There were a lot of disappointments: "Burn After Reading," "Get Smart," "Leatherheads," "Indiana Jones: Crystal Numbskulls," "Cloverfield," "Hancock," "Twilight," "The Day Keanu Reeves Stood Still." Ha!

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" made more than $249 million worldwide and ranks 20th in last year's top grossing films, right behind "High School Musical 3."

Best picture winner "Slumdog Millionaire" ranks 39th on the box office tally, but that's not bad because it took in $100 million in the United States and was made for $14 million.

Other Oscar night nominees didn't do as well. "Frost/Nixon" has taken in only $24 million; "The Wrestler," only $28 million; "The Reader," $33 million; "Milk," $36 million; "Revolutionary Road," $65 million; "Rachel Getting Married," $14 million.

"Doubt," the film for which Meryl Streep was nominated (best actress), ranks at 100 on the list with a mere $41 million.

"Doubt," which raises questions about racism, sex, morality, ethics and politics and beliefs in the Catholic Church, is intellectually challenging. But we really enjoyed watching Streep in "Mamma Mia!" which ranks fifth on the international box office list, taking in more than $550 million.

TUNE IN TONIGHT

"Nova: Rat Attack," 8 p.m., PBS

This new episode reports on a strange phenomenon in rural India, where every 48 years there is a sudden boom in the rat population prompted by an abundance of bamboo blossoms. The rats run amok and threaten all the crops.

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