By: Randall David Cook A Review Of Academy Awards Coverage
Thanks to the Internet, Oscar hype has left La-La Land and spread like a flaxen
virus. Daily newspapers that once controlled what was published about the
Academy Awards now must compete with Web sites created specifically to discuss
every possible angle in the greatest of detail. However, like many of the
nominees in this year's Oscar race, all that glitters is not golden.
Given their respective bases, great Oscar coverage would be expected at the
sites of the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Indeed, the
quality of writing on the awards at these two sites is far better than almost
everywhere else and is at times, such as New York Times reporter Margy
Rochlin's feature on nominee Marcia Gay Harden, even exceptional. However, the
Calendar Live section of the Los Angeles
Times site is clunky and unattractive, and beyond the stories little is
featured except for a yawn-inducing game in which readers are asked to print out
"Six Degrees (or less) of Kevin Spacey" to take to an Oscar party. The New
York Times' site fares far better with challenging trivia and prediction
contests and a particularly clean design.
The trades, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, offer comprehensive Oscar packages
from an industry point of view, but their coverage has fallen off since the nominations
were announced last month.
One Web site that has garnered repeated mentions from film journalists is Inside.com,
which unleashed an entire section devoted to the Oscars that has been as active as a Miramax
marketer. The claim to fame of this section is the fact that the prognosticators
give numerical values to everything, with the nominee having the most number of
points being the supposed winner. One reason the site has attracted attention is
that its choices for who would be nominated were dead on.
While many newspaper sites offer little on one of the year's biggest
entertainment events, we did find some truly outstanding achievement in Oscar
coverage. And we also must mention some online-only Academy sites that are
invaluable resources for reporters writing about the Oscars. Here are our
awards:
The "Chocolat" Award for Prettiest Site That Needs More Filling: The Dallas Morning News,
which is all dressed up and has nowhere to go. Why does Javier Bardem's bio only
list one credit? Surely a Texas paper would realize that films in Spanish count
too.
The Rob Lowe and Snow White Award For Best Effort To Make The Oscars Fun For
Kids: The Morris Communications newspaper chain of Augusta, Ga., which has
built a colorful and informative Oscar
section that includes a "Guess Who I Am?" game with great sound effects.
"The Wonder Boys" Award For Best Trip: The Chicago Tribune/Metromix
is offering a trip for two to the country or state of the film that wins "Best
Picture." Yet another reason "Erin Brockovich" shouldn't win.
"The Requiem For a Dream" Award For Worst Trip: http://battlefieldearth.warnerbros.com/.
The official site, just in case you missed it in the cinema.
"The Legend Of Bagger Vance" Award For Best Links: Though www.goldderby.com, a fine Web
resource set up by "Movie Awards" author Tom O'Neil, has a great page of links and brings
together experts and critics such as Leonard Maltin, writers from The Associated
Press, New York Daily News, and US Weekly, it's still an also-ran
to Alex Fung's Page at http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/%7Eaw220/. Fung's site deserves a
visit for its vast page of links and awards that would exhaust even Jim Carrey.
Moreover, Fung's Oscar columns are smartly written and on the money.
The "Quills" Award For Best Writing: With excellent in-depth profiles of
Joaquin Phoenix, Kenneth Lonergan, Ellen Burstyn, Javier Bardem, Juliette
Binoche, and others, The New York Times
does the near-impossible and brings some heart to the Oscars.
The Marquis de Sade Freedom Of Expression Award: To KnightRidder.com's
Real Cities, for its "Naked Truth" game in which players get to determine which
category Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts and various other actors and actresses fall
into: NN ("Never Naked"), AN ("Always Naked") or NIPS ("Naked If the Part
Specifies"). (We saw the game on Philly.com.) For
some odd reason, Judi Dench was not one of the selected participants.
The Bring It On Award For Site Too Fun To Be Worthy Of an Award: Mr.Showbiz Goes
to the Oscars presents awards you won't see on Oscar night, fashion face-
offs, fun contests and tough trivia games. Moreover, the entire package is
touched by attitude, such as this bon mot about nominated director Stephen
Daldry: "If they'd remembered that Ridley Scott is British too, he'd never have
been nominated." Mr. Showbiz is a production of ABC News Internet Ventures.
And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for:
The Award For Oscar Site Most Deserving Of "Traffic": OscarWatch (www.oscarwatch.com)
has the most engaging and colorful Oscar information on the Web. Site editor Sasha
Stone, who also writes for the Santa Monica Mirror, casts her net wide and far to bring
in a great variety of sources, experts, and opinions. The result: engaging
columns, an energetic design and entertaining sidebars (particularly the gallery
of ads that were being used to entice Academy members).
Randall David Cook (randalldavidcook@aol.com) is a
playwright surviving as the community manager for a financial Web site in New
York, and a long-time Oscar fanatic. As a teenager, he won The State
(Columbia, S.C.) newspaper's Academy Awards prediction contest, including a free
trip to Hollywood. His own annual Oscar contest attracts hundreds of
participants.
Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.
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