So why am I already feeling sick of the Oscars?
The glamor of the stars has been disenchanted by social media, the program format is constantly being changed in search of a younger audience and the back-pounding during awards season has taken its toll.
The finger-pointing SAG Awards, Critics Choice, BAFTA, Golden Globes and so on have weakened the element of surprise at the Oscars.
Call me a hater,
but I'm not alone.
The gala has steadily lost millions of viewers over the past ten years.
In 2022 just over 15 million viewers, the second least seen in the history of the Oscars after the record low figures in 2021 of around ten million.
For its own part, the lack of interest is about the fact that the awards are less and less about artistic qualities and more about which of the films has managed to market itself best to the "right" target group, and what values they represent.
Östlund's satire on
one percenters and superficial influencers is right on time, but all the excrement and vomit must this year compete against Netflix's anti-war film "On the Western Front, nothing new", which was timely with the war in Ukraine.
And blockbusters like "Top Gun: Maverick", whose huge box office receipts have "saved Hollywood" (as Steven Spielberg told Tom Cruise) at a time when cinemas are on their knees.
The biggest threat is, of course, always a heartwarming feel-good, this time in different multiverses, in the unexpected indie hit "Everything everwhere all at once".
This year's gala has
thus once again become a battleground for the war between streaming services and cinemas.
With more crowd-pleasing blockbusters as a counterweight to the nominated prestige arthouse films such as "Tár" and "Banshees of Inisherin", which flopped hard at the cinema.
Should they win statuettes, they can have a longer life in the digital world.
The Oscars are
increasingly about anything other than whether the movies are good or not and in a climate where everyone is chasing a fragmented audience, we get the sports analysis we deserve.