Step one...nominate films that the general public care about...when art house critic's pets dominate..the award looses credibility. And no, I do NOT feel making "Bridesmaids" compete against something arty like "Tree of Life" is the answer.

How about looking back toward the Academy's early history. In 1929 someone had the BRILLIANT idea of giving one award for Artistic Merit...and one for solid popular film-craft..."Sunrise" won for "Artistic Quality Of Production" (and is usually noted as one of last great flowerings of the Silent screen)..."Wings"...a beautifully crafted and exciting audience pleaser won the equivalent of "Best Picture"...rather than having popular entertainment duke it out with artistic triumphs...THEY HONORED BOTH...it seems like a wonderful idea to me...but the "Artistic...." category was deemed unnecessary as of the next awards...

Bring it back...one award for "Film" one for "Movie"...and no it is NOT ghetto-ising popular entertainment...it is celebrating it...

Another basic problem stop with the annoying lead outs...(WHO thought of putting that very out of place musical ensemble up in that balcony...every time they started their cacophony I wanted to turn the channel...and the stupid stunt of having people wandering up and down the aisles handing out goodies...cheap and tacky...

Oh...NEVER do another mind numbing and totally extraneous production number that adds NOTHING to the evening but length (the aerial acrobatics might have wowed the theater audience...they were boring and poorly shot on TV...if you need to provide cheap entertainment for the Hollywood insiders save it for the commercials...

Oh and one last thing CUT BACK ON THE ENDLESS ADS!!!! I watch only one night of TV a year...and the torture of being bombarded with these annoying messages swears me off the medium every year...

Other than that...some writing worthy of the host...and a bit better taste in presenters would be nice...(please no more stoned acting very happy youngsters...Emma Stone seemed to be taking lessons from James Franco...)...

Anyway...I fully believe the awards can be saved...but only if movie lovers are given genuine reasons to continue caring!

"The 84th Annual Academy Awards" was not one of the best shows yet, it was far from the worst. As having funny guy Billy Crystal back as host improved the pace and laughs of the show. Evening though some of Crystal's skits and singing gets a little old still his jokes brought joy and the opening montage of seeing Billy in all of the best picture nominees was a blast. Interesting during the show was seeing clips of interviews with stars telling of their favorite movies and explaining how they felt that film has impacted life and culture, as by watching film anyone can take something from it and be inspired. Also moving as always was the tribute to those that we lost during the past year. As is becoming the norm again the past years winner presented the category in which they had won in.

As for the awards most went as planned as the academy finally got it right awarding Christopher Plummer(best supporting actor) an Oscar as at 82 he's the oldest to ever win heck he's almost as old as the Oscar's(84 years). However in the best actor race the man himself George Clooney was upset losing to "The Artist's" French macho man the talented Jean Dujardin as evidenced by the other wins including the best picture win "The Artist" proved that Hollywood was paying tribute to the old days of cinema and the silent film era as this picture was the first silent film to win top honors since 1929's "Wings". Nice and fitting was seeing the best actress in the business win for Best Actress as the transformed and always real and believable Meryl Streep(a 17 time nominee) won her third Oscar as she was stunning and direct as Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady".

Overall it wasn't the best Oscars, yet not the worst it was good seeing Billy back and I'm glad the class act veterans like Streep and Plummer came away with wins. And only fitting was the academy paying tribute to old Hollywood's silent era by awarding "The Artist" best picture.

Here we have "The 84th Annual Academy Awards", a television event from 2012 that honored the best films of 2011. The host was for the 9th time already Billy Crystal and he brought the experience and class that came with such a challenge. He had decent screen time and yet I wanted to see more from him. The exact opposite was Jimmy Kimmel this year who I really did not want to see more, actually the less the better. So looking at recent hosting jobs at the Oscars, one can really only hope Crystal returns for a 10th time. Another interesting thing here is that 2012 was an election year, yet nobody talked about all the failures from Obama's first four years. Now compare that with all the anti-Trump propaganda going on at the Oscars and other award shows right now while he did not even have the time to prove if he is a good or bad president. Shame on you Hollywood. This is pretty much the only negative thing I can say about the 2012 Oscars. It was a really good ceremony otherwise. The two dominating films that year were Scorsese's "Hugo" (a tribute to Georges Méliès) and the French black-and-white silent film "The Artist". As these films honored the early days of film, the entire ceremony was in the spirit of doing exactly the same and it turned out very well. Crystal's jokes were working well and he seemed almost effortless in his delivery, which made it even better.

Apart from that, the references to the old Hollywood left a lasting impact eventually. And the winners were also great. The two films I already mentioned are amazing and I also liked the love for "The Descendants", Woody Allen and "Saving Face". Streep deserved her third Oscar as well much more than Davis her first, so I'm glad they went for "The Iron Lady". It is kinda funny how Stone and Davis starred in "The Help" that year and they both won this year. Chastain was also close to a nomination for 2016. So there are more than just a few parallels to the most recent event. Farhadi won his first Oscar that year, second Oscar this year. But there are letdowns too of course. Spencer was not Oscar-worthy at all, not even nomination worthy, even if she was as much a lock for the win as her male equivalent Chris Plummer, and it's a travesty she beat Bejo. The in Memoriam performance was underwhelming. The praise for "Bridesmaids" is a joke and letting the cast present three awards was a horrible decision. The song category (including the winner) was a complete joke, but glad to see they fixed it. Also not that big really on the animation winners for 2011. Of course there are undeserving nominees each year, but the likes of Jonah Hill, Melissa McCarthy or "The Tree of Life" were very bad decisions. But as you see from the rating I gave it I still believe it is easy to look beyond the flaws here and enjoy these 2.5 hours for the great tribute to the wonderful world of films that it turned out to be. Great job to the writers and Crystal. I really hope they will reach that level again at the Oscars in coming years.