Daily Awards Buzz & Rumors: Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Kristopher Tapley, Sasha Stone and Scott Fienberg get into next year’s Oscar race… David Carr and Lou Lumenick on Oscar ratings… Nathaniel Rogers on red carpet posing… The AP on Oscar prognosticators… Cinematical suggests a few improvements… Glenn Kenny on Oscar grumps… Entertainment Weekly answers telecast questions… S.T. VanAirsdale needs a vacation… The Vulture makes some predictions

“It’s never too late to take a long gander at what we might see dominating the film awards landscape in 365 days, and with that in mind, I’ve been doing my usual mulling over the possibilities for a few weeks to put together the sadly thorough examination of the 2008-09 award season that follows. Let’s get into it. There are some major considerations to take into account, right off the top.” – Kristopher Tapley looks at the potential Oscar nominees for next year (yikes) at Variety

“The watch is on.  Over the coming days, we will gather the new info for this upcoming year in films as we barrel towards yet another race.  We will bear in mind not hyping any movie too much thus killing its chances by year’s end.  We will also bear in mind that nobody knows anything.” – Sasha Stone joins in, in her own way at Awards Daily

“Nobody is more ready than I am to put the 2007 awards season in the rearview mirror... and nobody is more anxious for the 2008 awards season to begin, either!... At this time, we obviously have very little information upon which to base any discussion of what the awards landscape may look like—not only have none us seen the films, but some of them have not yet even gone into production!” – Scott Feinberg also jumps on the 2008 bandwagon at The Film Experience

“Nor is celebrity the precious driver of big numbers it used to be. Not too long ago people would tune in to the Oscars to find out what Jessica Alba or Cate Blanchett looked like with a baby bump. But in today’s real-time celeb information economy, anyone who cared probably already knew what they looked like and may even have seen the dresses they had selected to wear on the red carpet…. Celebrities are just not the remote, untouchable creatures they once were — they are our familiars, and we know all too well what they are up to.” – David Carr gets into possible reasons behind the low ratings for the Oscars at the New York Times

“Don’t expect Jon Stewart to be back as host of the Oscars. The audience tuned out of the deadly dull Oscarcast in droves, resulting in the worst ratings in history, a 20 percent drop from last year, when Ellen DeGeneres hosted. With an estimated 32 million viewers, the smug Stewart beat the record he previously set for the least-watched Oscarcast, back in 2003. Of course, the little-seen Best nominees didn't help, nor did a show that was slapped together in a week after the end of the writers’ strike. But there was no writers strike back in 2003, when the show managed just a million more viewers.” – Lou Lumenick also looks at the low ratings at the New York Post

“Here we see Amy Adams in perfect form, demonstrating the double akimbo tuck. Cameron works her patented chiropratwistic single so effortlessly it's like she came out of the womb this way. Painful for her mother surely but there's a price to pay for all that fabulous.” – Nathaniel Rogers with a look at how to pose on the red carpet at the Film Experience

“Everybody's in this game,’ said Poland. ‘Does it really sustain that level of interest? The truth is, there's a very hardcore group of people who are really into this and I'm among them. I enjoy the whole prognostication thing and I find it interesting sport.’” – Jake Coyle talks to David Poland (and other familiar names) about the Oscar guru game for the AP

“My favorite among his suggestions is the Gary Busey Red Carpet. Hell yeah! Get rid of Regis, who’s about as boring as watching bread get moldy, and bring on the Busey action. He can show up drunk with his fly open, and attack all the talent as they make their walk up the red carpet. It'll be almost like adding a sporting event to the Oscars – duck and run from Gary Busey before he attacks your neck!” – Kim Voynar looks at some suggestions on how to improve the Oscar telecast at Cinematical

“Good gosh, there’s just no pleasing some people. You give ‘em pageantry and they complain that there's too much pageantry, it's too long, the pageantry is boring. You give ‘em brevity and you get Finke’s ‘This wasn’t an Oscars. This was a slightly longer version of the Golden Globes.’ Great. You know what. I really hope they do bring Pilobolus back next year.” – Glenn Kenny realizes there’s just no pleasing some people at Premiere

“As for the baffling placement throughout the show of the awards presentations, there's been no official explanation. It's understandable that they’d stagger the acting awards to keep people watching for three and a half hours, but the Supporting Actor or Actress award is usually the first one given, apparently to lull viewers into a false sense of urgency, as if other can't-miss awards will follow shortly, but wouldn’t it have made more sense to present Best Actor early, since there was no suspense in that race, and leave ‘til the end the nail-biter race between Julie Christie, Ellen Page, and eventual winner Marion Cotillard?” – Gary Susman answers some questions about what happened during the broadcast at Entertainment Weekly

“High among the reasons I could never be a full-time Oscar blogger: Pieces like this, in which awards authority Scott Feinberg runs down the slate of early hopefuls, and even makes a few predictions, for 2008’s Oscar crop. We’ll know what Feinberg hit or missed about 10 months from now, but even casual observers might browse the titles and wonder: What about the Coen brothers?” – S.T. VanAirsdale is concerned about the early predictions for next year at Vanity Fair

“And after the unadulterated run of success that has been our Oscar predicting thus far (almost half of the awards right, baby!), who are we not to weigh in on the 2009 Academy Awards? Vulture's picks for Best Picture: 1. ‘Doubt’ 2. ‘The Young Victoria’ 3. ‘Defiance’ 4. Some indie comedy no one's ever heard of yet, possibly from Sundance, definitely written by someone with a heartwarming and almost unbelievable story 5. Something terrible – maybe ‘Sex and the City?’” – The Vulture makes some predictions that sound about right to us at New York magazine