Why limiting the Oscars to three hours is a bad idea: "The Oscars should always be long"

Vulture

"At first, this sounds like a great idea, because the annoying people in your life always complain that the Oscars are too long," says Kyle Buchanan of the Film Academy's plan to make the ceremony three hours by cutting down on live awards. "Well, it’s not for them! The Oscars should always be long, because we wait all year for this show and those stray, long moments are where all the weird and memorable shit tends to happen! Nobody complains about the Super Bowl running 20 minutes over, because that’s masc, I guess. Even worse is the way this cut-down is going to be enacted: Several categories will be presented during the commercial breaks, then editors will whip together a quick montage of those winners to play later in the show. What a dumb way to diminish all the craft that goes into these movies and ding the non-famous on the biggest night of their lives, especially since many of these craftspeople hail from exactly the kind of popular blockbusters the Academy wants more of. (Just delete the three short-film categories like we’ve been telling you! They make no sense in the era of YouTube and they’re simply about rich kids renting out the Nuart to qualify!)"