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Short version, everything wrong with the Oscars results from them becoming a big TV ratings monster and thus a commercial sales monster.  Everything bad about the Oscars is in there because it's better for ratings, or is believed to be.

So, the radical idea that will never happen is - stop airing the ceremony live.  Remove the ABC-contractually-mandated need to hit a specific running time, and all the other hoops that are being jumped through because the network demands it.

Anyway. 

The answer to all problems is stream the show.  Forget any attempt to keep it tight.  Go the other way.
Let acceptance speeches be ten minutes long again. Do all the songs.  Hell, do them twice.  Put three martinis into Jim Carrey and just let him have the stage for a while.  People who love movies can watch that version. 

AND THEN

edit all that into a nice tight three-hour package for ABC to air a bit later, and to sell umpteen commercials for. Sure, the element of "who will win?" is lost, but all the banter and celebs and gowns and jewelry are included, for the folks who were never gonna watch Life of Pi and will never care about the diff between "Sound Mixing" and "Sound Editing" anyway.

Unfortunately the Academy's deal at ABC has years to go before they could potentially jump to a new platform, so nothing's likely to change anytime soon.  Until then, remember that The Oscars is an ABC television show, and the Academy are merely its showrunners. They can fight and even win some battles, but in the end, the network is the boss. And for every question about network tv that begins with "Why did they _____?", the answer is always "Money."

I mean, you didn't think the Academy wanted to add that category for "Movie that was really popular", did ya?  That's as classic a network note as ever there was.

NOT YET OWEN SHHH

I just learned this one and I think it works best in riddle form...

What do King George VI, Judy Garland, Queen Mary, Jimi Hendrix, Winston Churchill, and Bon Scott of AC/DC have in common?

Tragically, Alan Smithee died in 1999 after completing An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn .

It seems almost inevitable in retrospect, but a 1999 black comedy about Hollywood - in which a director named Alan Smithee wants his name off a movie but the only permissible pseudonym is "Alan Smithee" - ended up being an actual Alan Smithee film when Arthur Hiller wanted his name off it. 

This Alan Smithee singularity led the DGA to end Smithee's career - the whole point of Smithee had been to hide behind-the-scenes disagreements from the public.  But it had become common knowledge that a Smithee credit meant the real director had disowned the movie, pretty much defeating the purpose.   

He's had credits since but only as an in-joke, not as an official DGA-sanctioned credit.  It's not clear yet whether Smithee has had an official successor or if disgruntled directors can now just pick whatever name they want.

Dogs have been banned from Antarctica since 1994.
Per international agreement, all non-native species (except us) have been removed from the continent.

Froot Loops come in many colors but they all taste the same.
Presumably they taste like 'froot'.

So I saw it, finally.   A friend had warned me it was awful and I figured that had to be an exaggeration, but I texted her afterward to say she'd been right.   It's not the worst movie I saw this year, but a definite disappointment.

    Now I really regret that DiF the podcast is over, because it'd be fun to autopsy this one.  I had my fix mostly figured out before the end credits were over -  the whole movie should have been the third act.  Start the movie with the Rebels deciding all is lost, and then one ship of wacky misfits says fuck it, there's one thing that might work and we're gonna try for it.  What little back story we needed could have been covered on the flight over - guess what, my dad designed the death star and it's got a weakness, if we can just get hold of the plans.  And off we go.   

Bonus: little to no robo-Tarkin, Vader only at the very end when he was being a badass, and none of whatever was supposed to be happening with Forest Whittaker or any of that other filler in the first hour which didn't affect a single thing that happened afterward.

    It's kinda like how Aliens was a near-perfect movie, and then years later there was a special edition where we found out Ripley used to have a whole dead-daughter back story - that the movie hadn't needed and so we never missed it.   If only Rogue One had had somebody in the room early on who said "guys, the mission is the good part - let's just lose everything before that."  Because once they set out on the REAL mission, Rogue One is actually pretty darn good, and of course I LOVE that every blessed one of 'em died.  That was awesome.   But that first hour... yeeesh.

Walter Peck had no dick.  Gregory Peck, on the other hand...

/filmsplaining

This applies more often to tv than movies, but I tend to avoid Anything In A Prison.  I think it comes from being the child of a civil rights attorney/public defender, and thus growing up aware of what a nightmare most prisons are.  So for me the concepts of prison and entertainment do not intersect at all. 

So for example, Orange is the New Black - never been remotely tempted to watch it.  I  don't care how many awards it wins.  And although Shawshank is a well-made movie, I doubt I'll ever watch it again.

When Joel created the show, Mike Nelson was still a waiter at TGI Fridays.  Mike is a talented fella, but he wasn't always the head writer - he started as the writing room assistant.   
It's fine to prefer the direction the show took when Mike did become the head writer.  But to say the reboot is at a disadvantage if Mike isn't writing... sheesh, it's Joel's freakin' show.  Everything MST3K is came out of Joel's brain originally.   I'd only be worried if someone ELSE was running the reboot. 
But of course, I'm a Joel guy.  If you're a Mike person your life must be very difficult already, so I will leave you in your freakish misery.

Will Ep 7 top Avatar in overall dollar amount?  Yeah, probably.  Avatar topped out at 760 million domestic, and hell, Jurassic World's made it to 660 million and still counting (though just barely).   So yeah - Ep 7, with 6 more years of ticket price inflation to pump it up, can probably get to 760 million.

BUT... that's why straight dollar amounts alone are meaningless, unless you're comparing films of the same year or adjusting for inflation. 

If you do adjust for inflation - basically turning dollar amounts into the more meaningful estimate of  number of tickets sold - then Jurassic World is suddenly right behind Avatar... but neither of them is HALF as successful as Titanic.  Neither of them even crack the adjusted Top Ten.

Episode One, which was arguably even more anticipated than Episode Seven, is only the seventeenth-highest grossing domestic movie ever (when adjusted).   Adjusted, Avatar is 14th, Titanic is fifth place, and SW New Hope is 2nd place.   A New Hope made the 2015 equivalent of a billion and a half domestically. 

Or we can adjust it the other way, and say Avatar would have made 216 million bucks in 1977 currency.  Compared to New Hope's 460 million, that's not even a contest.  I mean, think about that - a 460 million dollar take would be mega-blockbuster money right now in 2015.  Star Wars got there in 1977, when tickets cost three bucks. 

Now, IF Episode Seven is so damn good that it spills over out of the built-in fandom and becomes a bona fide phenomenon like Avatar or Titanic or New Hope, then it might crack the all time adjusted Top Ten.  Mayyybe.  But it's pretty much impossible to do that nowadays - the all time top ten hasn't changed since 1997 when Titanic joined the list.

But - will there be Variety ads proclaiming Episode 7 beat Avatar in some way or another?  Almost certainly.  Although studios love to buy ads that say that, it's important to remember that sort of honor is only slightly more notable than those "World's Greatest Grampa" statues.  The recipient likes showing them to everybody, but they don't really mean anything.

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I visited Tippett Studio just a few months ago - Eric Leven still works there and I asked him that very question.  He said he would think about it, but first even he would have to dig up whatever copy he could find.

However, just recently one of my co-workers/co-stars in the movie posted this pic on Facebook - that's me as the evil genius who intends to ruin the animation business with motion capture, along with Molly and Eva as my "motion capture bimbos".  Good times.