Rolling Out The Red Carpet

The media frenzy hasn't quite reached Super Bowl proportions yet, but it feels like it's starting to get there.

The festivities kicked off Thursday night with an Oprah Winfrey Oscar special on ABC, and will continue on Sunday with the TV Guide Channel running their red-carpet special starring Joan and Melissa Rivers, in which they spend two hours criticizing who is wearing what, followed by the broadcast itself (8 p.m., ABC), three-plus hours of the most interminable television imaginable.

In Britain, they held the equivalent of the Oscars last week called the BAFTAs, and that broadcast by comparison was crisp and precise. No musical numbers, no pontificating, none of the stuff that makes the Oscars excruciating to watch.

To think, the Oscars used to actually be a lot worse, when stars saw the awards show as their two-minute platforms to criticize some aspect of the world they didn't like and felt like they had to share with the rest of us. Not to mention the terrible musical revues they would do with the show, nor the fact that the show often ran well past the time it was supposed to end.

Ellen DeGeneres is back as the host of the show, and I think she's a pretty good choice in what has to be one of the most thankless tasks in Hollywood. I thought Jon Stewart did a very respectable job last year as host, yet he got lambasted by the critics.

Anyway, it's a very long process to find out whether or not I won the office Oscar pool.

(By the way, I recant everything above if I ever sell a script that gets nominated for an Oscar.)

For more Oscar coverage, Reel Fanatic blogger Keith Demko and I talk about the Best Picture nominees via podcast on macon.com with Webmaster Ryan Gilchrest, and in Sunday's edition of The Telegraph, I give my predictions while Keith lists some of the bigger oversights and bad choices made by the Academy.

Among my personal oversights: Aaron Eckhardt for "Thank You For Smoking," Jason Reitman for Best Adapted Screenplay for the same movie, Gretchen Mol for "The Notorious Bettie Page," and Michael Sheen as Best Supporting Actor for "The Queen."

WEEKEND'S WORST BET: Notice I said "worst." TNT is re-running the 1999 movie "Payback," starring Mel Gibson. This was a mediocre effort when it came out originally, and I thought little more of it until I saw writer/director Brian Helgeland's re-cut of the movie at the Austin Film Festival, and it blew me away. It's a shame that Gibson and the studio made the changes they did. Do yourselves a favor and find the director's cut of the movie and forget the version that TNT shows.

WEEKEND'S BEST BETS: Mostly new episodes among the usual Friday fare, so if you watch TV on Friday nights, you are in luck.

On Saturday, the conclusion to the terrific miniseries "The State Within" (BBC America, 9 p.m.) airs. If you missed the first two episodes, the network is re-running them beginning with Part I at 3 p.m. The series revolves around America and Britain's response after a terrorist act is committed in Washington, D.C.

Sunday will be pretty quiet because of the Oscars, but new episodes of "Grease: You're The One That I Want" (NBC, 8 p.m.) and "The Amazing Race (CBS, 8 p.m.) will air, as will new installments of "The Dresden Files" (Sci-Fi, 9 p.m.) and "Battlestar Galactica" (Sci-Fi, 10 p.m.)