This news, combined with the reports that Queen Latifah will be singing during the In Memoriam segment, and, new mom M.I.A. might perform on stage while in a bed, have us wondering: what the hell is going on here? We know the Academy Awards are in a tough bind, increasingly becoming a niche broadcast--instead of Hollywood's version of the Super Bowl, the Oscars now play more like Hollywood's own NBA All-Star Game--but do they have to seem so desperate? If Messrs. Condon and Mark think that throwing a bunch of pretty looking teens and Top-40 stars onto the stage will get a younger demographic to watch the show, they are just completely lost. Lest we forget, does everyone remember what movies got nominated this year? The Reader. Milk. Frost/Nixon. Combined those three films haven't even grossed as much as Twilight did during its opening weekend. Even Slumdog Millionaire hasn't attacked the zeitgeist; Juno, it is not. People, both young and old, aren't going to watch the Oscars this year because they simply don't really care about any of the movies that were nominated. And to paraphrase a slogan that we heard ad infinitum during the presidential election: it's the movies, stupid.

Of course, there was one simple way to get more viewers to watch this year: The Dark Knight. Nominating the biggest movie since Titanic would have been like having fifty Zac Efron's on stage at the same time covering a Jonas Brothers song. Not that we're bitter...