Oscar questions

By now you probably know that there's some awards show coming up on TV tonight. I don't know how much of it I'm going to watch, if any. In part it's because I'm a fan of The Amazing Race, and in part because I'm not that big on the pageantry of the awards shows. Do we really need performances of all the Oscar-nominated songs? Maybe one of the performances will have a "wardrobe malfunction", but I doubt it.

The folks producing (or should it be directing?) the show never seem to have an idea of how to get the show to end within the allotted time. They've taken to trying to cut down the length of the speeches by having the house orchestra start playing to drown out the speaker, reminiscent of a scene in Glenn Ford's Trial. I'd propose a better way: if the speech gets too long, cut to commercial. That way you get your commercials in; you let the speakers speak longer, and you let the audience get out of hearing the boring parts of the speech. Perhaps industry insider care to hear about some assistant producer thanking his or her manicurist, but the folks at home don't.

Is Natalie Portman in The Black Swan better than Maureen O'Hara in The Black Swan? Is The Black Swan better than The Red Shoes?

How many gratuitous political references will there be?