Oscars 2010: and the winner is... my dress designer

By Michael Deacon Published: 7:00AM GMT 06 March 2010

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Gwyneth Paltrow in Ralph Lauren at the 1999 Oscars Photo: GETTY

In the 81 years since they were established, the Oscars have altered figure some-more times, and some-more radically, than Chers nose. The initial Oscars werent even the Oscars: well known simply as the Academy Awards, they were hold a great five years prior to that nickname (whose start is uncertain) took hold. The eventuality itself was a black-tie cooking with a small 270 guests.

Now see at the Oscars today: an spectacular of sequins and simpering, promote to a illusive tellurian assembly of 250 million. British viewers will need near-Olympian status quo to watch the rite live (it starts at 1am the time on Monday, on the digital channel Sky Movies Premiere); but, if you dont whim staying up utterly that late, you can regularly balance in to Sky1 90 mins progressing to catch fast snatched interviews with the stars ("So discuss it us: what are you wearing?!") as they rush down the red carpet. Yes, thats right: 90 total mins of red-carpet chit-chat.

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But afterwards this is the law about the Oscars today they arent unequivocally about films; theyre about frocks, attire and frothy gossip. Theyre about whos wearing what, and how majority those garments would have cost if the stars had essentially had to compensate for them. In the days that follow, the media will concentration as majority on who incited up in a bullion robe as on who went home with a bullion statuette. The speak will be of the battles in between conform houses to skirt the heading actresses (50 designers competed for the right to yield Julia Robertss get-up at the 2001 ceremony), and of the exclusivity deals the stars are means to secure (in 2005, for example, Charlize Theron insisted on being the usually singer to wear Gucci; Gucci agreed).

This sartorial violence would have dismayed progressing generations. At the 1951 ceremony, it was deliberate a prodigy that Marlene Dietrich wore a skirt that unprotected her legs to the knee ("Thanks to Dietrich, the dusk was sanctified with showmanship," comments Robert Osbornes Official History of the Academy Awards). During the Seventies and Eighties, a small actresses appeared to be essay to see as un-stylish as possible. The majority distinguished e.g. is Cher in her medieval sight of 1985: her wig looked similar to an electrocuted busby.

All this altered in the late Eighties, for 3 reasons. One, the Academy (the organization that runs the Oscars) allocated an central Oscars conform consultant, who sent out a minute to all nominees saying, "Everyone should be elegant. Everyone should see similar to a movie star." Two, conform designers realised how majority publicity, and to illustrate money, they could have from sauce a glamorous singer on one of the worlds most-watched TV events. (The engineer Valentino believes that Julia Robertss preference of one of his dresses in 2001 was value $25 million of broadside to his brand.) And three, the actresses realised that wearing a stylish tag could win them not usually some-more attention, but potentially even a money-spinning gig as the "face" of a brands promotion campaign.

It would be easy to weep all this, to call it shoal and silly. The complaint is, though, that the mania with conform has turn necessary to the Academy since the rite itself, nowadays, is of so small interest. Indeed, the award-giving piece of the night has majority in usual with the sort of movie that so mostly wins Best Picture: punishingly long, nauseatingly cocksure and probable to leave the spectator rambling about in his chair with boredom. The rite has become, says the LA Times, "the years stodgiest awards fest".

As the movie censor Tom Shone points out in his essay in todays Review section, observation total in the US have been disappearing for years: 2008s eventuality drew a jot down low of 32 million. Compare this with the 55 million who watched the rite 10 years earlier, when Titanic won eleven awards.

For this years ceremony, the Academy was roughly dauntless sufficient to shake up things up by employing a presenter who was immature and funny: Sacha Baron Cohen, the star of Borat and Brüno. Then it motionless hed be as well majority of a "wild card" (in alternative words, he competence have uncomfortably correct jokes about the guests, in the approach Ricky Gervais did when hosting the Golden Globes in January). Instead, the staid on a safely disciplined presenting twin of the actors Steve Martin, 64, and Alec Baldwin, 51.

Why these dual have been brought together isnt clear. Perhaps the majority inexhaustible thing that can be pronounced about Martin as a host is that hes accessible (his time positively isnt taken up by creation beguiling drive-in theatre any more). Baldwin seems softly inappropriate, too: nonetheless he once won an Oscar (Best Supporting Actor for 2003s The Cooler), hes best-known these days for his TV work, interjection to his performances in the sitcom thirty Rock (for that hes won dual Emmy awards).

This year, we might even be denied the wish of examination dementedly excitable acceptance speeches, of the sort since by Roberto Benigni when his movie Life is Beautiful won in 1999: "I wish to lick everybody! To dive in to this sea of munificence is as well much! It is a snowstorm of kindness!" The organisers have intended that, from right away on, no debate will last longer than 45 seconds.

This direct might infer irrelevant; if, say, Meryl Streep wins Best Actress and starts babbling and squealing over her allotted 45 seconds, the tough to suppose how organisers could stop her. Sound an alarm? Dispatch armed guards to draw towards her sorrow in to the wings? Empty over her head the essence of a tank of gunge? (I dont ask these questions rhetorically; I ask them in genuine hope. Any one of those 3 prospects would yield the kind of unpredictability the Oscars rite painfully lacks.)

But maybe the main reason the Oscars are no longer about drive-in theatre is drive-in theatre themselves. As Glenn Close pronounced in an talk with this journal last month, Hollywood movies in ubiquitous are apropos some-more and some-more formulaic: "The studios are creation a lot fewer movies and theyre creation majority some-more of the same kind of movies. If you go in to a big Cineplex and see at the trailers, the all fight fantasy or strife of the titans."

The majority interesting Hollywood hits these days lend towards to be family animations (Wall.E, The Incredibles, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Up). Since, however, the Academys electorate apparently cruise themselves as well grand to endowment the Oscar for Best Picture to a cartoon, they roughly constantly finish up handing it to strenuously tedious dramas starring Sean Penn. Its as well majority to goal that this years Best Picture esteem will go to Up rather than the bookies favourite, The Hurt Locker, that is an roughly definingly Oscar-ish fight epic though the actuality that it has been destined by a lady frequency creates it a standard Oscar contender.

The box office, though, tells us that the open right away mostly prefers the drive-in theatre animated. If this direction continues, maybe one day well be spared the red-carpet unsteadiness about frocks since there will no longer be any actresses left to wear them. Hollywood"s stars will all, instead, be animation characters.