Gone Baby Gone – No Montages, No Group Presenters

In hopes of trimming down the Big Show, the AMPAS has decided to nix the best part of the show, the movie montages (really, to me, the only reason to watch) and the popular decision to have multiple best actor and actress presenters. No one cares this year because it’s a done deal:

Gone will be the movie montages — like last year‚Äôs salute to horror movies — that often contribute to the broadcast‚Äôs unwieldy running time. While there will be film clips from the ten best picture nominees and brief filmed introductions to different segments of the show, ‚ÄúWithin the body of the show, we are not doing any film montage sequences,‚Äù Cohen tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview.

Gone too will be the relatively new tradition, established just two years ago, of using five presenters to offer tribute testimonials about each of the best actor and actress nominees. “We’re not going to do that this year,” Cohen says. “What we did love about it was that it was a moment where each of the nominees really gets their due. [But] we found a version of that, without using the five people on stage, from the 1970 Oscars, and we stole it.”