Now is the time for all the studios to send their game-hunting publicists out into the wild to tame the journalistic beasts of the film awards conversation. “This film is the studio’s top contender; that film is not.” “This film turned out better than expected; that film did not.” The Toronto International Film Festival is now exactly one month away, and in the next 30 days, flags will be planted, egos will be stroked, the bed will be made for films to lie down and ultimately wow us with their illustrious prowess, or otherwise disappoint us with difficulties performing. Basically, the season has started, but we’ve still got a lot of dog and pony stuff to go before anything even begins to settle into a viable mixture worth discussing. So what can we talk about in the meantime?

How about coverage? Last year marked a brand new age in the world of awards watching on the internet. Folks like Emanuel Levy had been writing about the Oscars for years when the web boom came along, providing an outlet for all those obsessed with this time of year to start gabbing about this film’s chances or that film’s.

Sasha Stone’s Oscarwatch.com is unquestionably the site that paved the way for this movement, and she rarely gets the credit she deserves. Awards aficionado Tom O’Neil cooked up GoldDerby.com soon after, offering a space for various sanctioned pundits to toss in their two cents on the race unfolding before them. That may very well have been the first mark of professional punditry that thrives today as an advertising beacon for various publications.

Speaking of advertising, internet columnist David Poland saw an opportunity to cash in on the proceedings in 2002 when he launched MovieCityNews.com, a renegade news source that plays like a trade with attitude (for lack of a better term). He ushered in the age of Oscar ads we live in today, at once creating a monster and the ultimate symbiotic relationship during this time of year for journalists and studios.

The bar was raised in 2005, but no one involved in raising it seemed to rise up to it. The Los Angeles Times purchased Tom O’Neil’s GoldDerby.com, also bringing in former Premiere writer Steve Pond and fashionista Elizabeth Snead to blog the season as they saw fit. The New York Times tapped the witty David Carr to blog in his own fashion, a fashion he determined halfway through the season to be more dependant on recognizing the futility of it all, thereby creatively rising above the pack. And USA Today set aside some net space for Steve Bowles to talk up the Oscar race as the "O-Factor" joined the fray.

Ironically, the trades did not do much in the way of improving their respective awards coverage pages, though The Hollywood Reporter’s Anne Thompson took up blogging and spent plenty of time dishing on the Oscar flurry.

So, we’ve entered the age of traditional media, “sanctioned” if you will, elbowing their way into the game. Meanwhile, folks like Ms. Stone keep doing the same purposeful thing she’s always done; her niche is her own. Countless, in many cases faceless amateur Oscar sites and blogs continue to pop up, while the insularity of message boards still finds room for tangible discussion from time to time.

I’ve written about the history of internet awards coverage until I was blue in the face, but the point here is to ask, “What’s next?” Is the whole machine grinding into the perfect tool for usage by studios and publicists, out to manipulate, as their job dictates? Are we playing into their hands, or are they playing into ours? That might seem like an immature question, and one might wager that no hands are being played into, given that everyone wins. But while everyone wins, I think everyone loses all the same, because a system like this is destined to stagnate.

What I hunger for is variety and insight, and that’s typically difficult to find in this world of largely reactionary commentary. I by no means succeed in bringing as much to the table, but I try, and I guess what I’m hoping for this season is to see these many different outlets do just that – try.

In the final analysis, however, insularity reigns supreme. These issues are of no concern to anyone outside of the metropolitan centers that live and breathe the entertainment industry. The audience is extremely limited, but that audience dictates something broader in context, so the importance in the eyes of those with the power is in no way reduced. However, covering the Oscar race has to contain an element of personal commentary to have any spice whatsoever, and to assume there is any sort of journalistic benefit to the whole matter is to have a blinded view of journalism indeed. Yet here I am, writing about the Oscars.

There is no “answer,” and there very well may be no “truth.” It has taken living neck deep in the race in Los Angeles – in utero, if you will – to fully comprehend that notion. The search is fun, and defining the season is a joy. Rooting for favorites is hard to escape, though objectivity is not necessarily fleeting. However, there are now far too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough items on the menu. Someone needs to think up a clever new soufflé.

Maybe things will stay in the rut they were in last year, and then we’ll know. We’ll know that a new standard of “one hand washes the other” has been established, likely to survive, well, as long as each entity is served. Or maybe personalities will show themselves and bring both entertainment and enlightenment to the table, but those times might be a ways off. Traditional media still has to catch up in the web world, let alone set interesting standards in this rapidly growing zone of film awards coverage.

All the while, we’re looking toward a ceremony that, year in and year out, boasts an outcome that is as subjectively acceptable or unacceptable as anything else. And complain though we may, chastise though we feel we must, each and every year, the glamour grabs us, and the fantasy takes us in.

You want to know what the funny thing is? No one is watching.

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Previous Oscar Columns:
7/31/06 - "Old and New, the Oscar Season Approaches"