4 Oscars Will Be Awarded During the Breaks. There's Pushback

In an attempt to streamline Oscars night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is making a change it hopes will contain the show to three hours. Four major awards—film editing, cinematography, live action short, and makeup and hairstyling—will be announced during commercial breaks of the Feb. 24 broadcast, reports Variety. Winners' speeches will be shown at a later point in the broadcast, sans the recipients' walks to the stage. Those presentations will be streamed live on Oscar.com and on the Academy's social media pages—"a first for our show," wrote Academy President John Bailey in an email to members.

The decision isn't getting a great reception, per EW.com and the Hollywood Reporter. Guillermo del Toro, who directed the award-winning The Shape of Water, posted, "Cinematography and Editing are at the very heart of our craft. They are not inherited from a theatrical tradition or a literary tradition: they are cinema itself." Jordan Horowitz, producer of La La Land, simply tweeted a thumbs-down emoji in response to the news. Academy member Kees van Oostrum, head of the American Society of Cinematographers, calls the move "unfortunate" and tells THR it's ironic that Bailey is involved in the decision, as Bailey himself is a cinematographer, but he adds, "I don't think he had a choice." (More Oscars stories.)