AND THE OSCAR FOR BEST "WHAT THE F***" MOMENT GOES TO......BQ'S GUIDE TO OSCAR'S NEW CHANGES

                The New Best Popular Movie Award....First thought that went through our head - Spielberg must be gnashing his teeth......if they'd instituted "Best Popular Movie" back in the late 1970's, he'd have literally dozens of Oscars lining his shelves by now...... on award night he'd be seen clutching his Best Pop Movie statuette for "E.T." right next to Richard Attenborough's  Eat-Your -Vegetables  Oscar"  for "Gandhi"...….

                   Heresy? Dumbing down?   We understand the pundits screaming "Blasphemy!" at the idea of a separate-but-equal Popularity award for Best Picture.......ever fearful that the Academy will turn the event into the MTV movie awards.....(Best Villian, Best Kiss, Best Kickin' Ass Fight Scene)........maybe the Academy could dump gallons of green goo on people, just like at the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice awards......(what a damn shame.....with Harvey Weinstein kicked out of the Academy, it's too late to empty a tub 'o slime on him......except metaphorically -  in courtrooms....)

                   But if these critics paid any attention, they'd realize this was inevitable for two reasons.....the state of movie-going today.......and naked TV network greed....

                   The gap between mega-budget studio popcorn movies (almost entirely comic book/superhero entries) and serious 'artistic cinema'  has grown ten times wider and deeper than the Grand Canyon......

                    What this all reminds us of.......the incredible clash of movies vying for Best Picture in 1968, when Ancient Old Hollywood faced off against Edgy New Hollywood......with movies like "Doctor Dolittle" and "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" competing against "Bonnie And Clyde" and "The Graduate"..........(maybe that's where they should have started Old and New Best Picture awards.....)

                    So the compartmentalizing and splitting up of movie audiences (and their tastes) has reached complete and total Civil War.......hence the People's Choice awards and all the other televised popularity contests standing apart from the Academy's  supposed 'high tone' ceremony.

                    Oh yeh, the greed part....we almost forgot. At the end of the day, all this hubub boils down to ABC's dire, immediate need to get more eyeballs parked in front of the Oscar telecast....and sell more commercial time.  Oscar's been steadily bleeding viewers........butter popcorn gobblers have opted out of watching a 4 hour telecast that climaxes with multiple awards for an Independent film that they've never heard of and would watch only if the Academy Governors staged a home invasion and forced them to sit through the film at gunpoint.

                     The new, strict 3 hour running time....So, let's get this straight.......the shlub from Lower Slobovia who won the award for Best Foreign Short Animated Black & White Documentary no longer gets to babble at the podium until the LA cops almost have to be called out to drag him off the stage.  He'd now receive his award during the commercials........Godspeed and Good Riddance.....

                     BQ says.....Bring back our Icons!!   We demand that the Academy reinstate the annual Lifetime Achievement award to its rightful place on the live telecast......and not shuffled off to an unseen ceremony held in November........who decided it was more crucial for us to hear Seth McFarlane sing "We saw your boobs" or watch Jimmy Kimmel prank moviegoers instead of seeing cinema icons like Roger Corman, Eli Wallach or Donald Sutherland get their long overdue awards for their monumental careers?   A grievous wrong that needs correcting ASAP.