Stuck in the middle

In the last few years, the Academy Awards have tried to capture formerly alienated viewers by making changes to the broadcast show and expanding the Best Picture category. Are the awards still relevant or even worth watching this Sunday?

YES:

The Academy Awards are like an old couch at your grandpa's house: dusty, full of tradition and undeniably lovable. There's something timelessly American about watching a room full of celebrities joke about each other while handing out giant, golden statues as tokens of reward. And while we may scowl at Meryl Streep's shameless self-depreciation or George Clooney's never-ending smirk, we can smile at one simple fact of life: These idiots give us movies, the undeniable breadth of modern art.

Not to mention, the Oscars usually deliver solid nominations — despite critical damnation. All right, so Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a throwaway choice when either Drive, Bridesmaids or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo would have made a fine Best Picture nominee. But, the other films — especially Martin Scorsese's touching Hugo, Terrence Malik's polarizing The Tree of Life and Alexander Payne's quiet and poignant The Descendants — are phenomenal movies. Seeing them get such recognition is both a wonderful tribute to the vitality of the films and the vitality of the Academy, which has the good sense to pick these excellent pictures.

On the whole, though, the Oscars are pretty straightforward. There's little below the surface to chew on, which may be a turn-off. When viewed in comparison to other awards shows, they lack the corporatism of the Grammys, the boozy antics of the Golden Globes, the serious tone of the Primetime Emmys or the overt playfulness of the Tonys. The Oscars have the advantage of awarding an art form that can be less subjective than music, theater or even television. Good movies are good movies. Bad movies are bad movies. It's all relatively plain and uncomplicated.

Therefore, tuning in on Sunday night is a safe bet for solid, satisfying entertainment. Even though there is no Beach Boys reunion or omnipresent champagne, the Oscars are perfectly simple: an old theater, a goofy host, your favorite conceited actors and lots and lots of talk about really good movies.

— Dean Essner

NO:

The Academy Awards aren't relevant anymore. To prove this point, allow me to crudely (and offensively) split moviegoers into three broad categories.

The first category consists of the people who go to the movies entirely for escapism. To them, movies are a lot like popcorn: agreeably tasty while being eaten, utterly devoid of nutritional content and completely forgotten after fully consumed.

This category holds the majority of American moviegoers and they mostly watch big blockbusters, animated films, rom-coms, etc. Nothing wrong with that. Let's call them the Rockers.

The second group of people is the hardcore cinephiles. They're the type of people who sneer at films with budgets over $30 million, and whose list of favorite movies contain only a handful of American films. They like movies a lot, and they watch a lot of movies. Call them the Mods.

And then there's the third and last group of film watchers: folks who have more discerning taste for films than the Rockers but aren't quite as esoteric as the Mods. These people like to watch movies that make them think and feel. They're not quite ready to fully dive into the kooky world of subtitles, but they're on the verge. They shall be dubbed the Proletarians.

The movies the Oscars enjoy rarely line up with the movies the Rockers favor. How many blockbusters have been nominated for Best Picture in the past decade? You've got Avatar, Lord of the Rings and Inception. Maybe Gladiator? That's five out of 74 nominees.

So, the Oscars don't really have anything to do with mainstream entertainment. The Los Angeles Times recently found the median age of the Academy was 62 and only 14 percent of the voting body was under the age of 50. Your doddering old grandfather isn't going to have the same taste in films as you, especially if you're a Rocker.

But even if the Rockers' favorite film of the year gets nominated, everyone will have already seen it by then. The Oscars have never been relevant to the Rockers, except as, perhaps, an interesting bit of trivia about their favorite movies.

The Oscars might be just slightly less relevant to the Mods. Partially because the Mods have already seen all the films nominated for Best Picture, and partially because a large portion of the Mods are smartass cynics.

If you watch enough films to call yourself a Mod, chances are your taste in film is more refined and diverse than the modern Academy's. I love War Horse, and I adore The Tree of Life, but the rest of this year's nominees aren't within spitting distance of my personal top 10 list.

When you're a Mod, your favorite movies aren't likely to be recognized by the Academy. Your favorite movies are likely to be idiosyncratic in a way that polarizes audiences. You might admire Antichrist for its brazen, genital-mutilating artistic bravery or respect the restraint and pacing of Mysteries of Lisbon.