The academy this summer, along with everything else it announced, stated that the Honorary Awards will no longer be a part of the Oscar ceremony come February. Then, this week, they announced the FOUR Honorary Award winners. They will receive their awards at an untelevised ceremony in November. This is of course a double-edged sword.

I for one am happy that the Honorary Awards are no longer part of the Oscar ceremony. First off, for a ceremony that is always chastised for being too long, this is an unneeded 10 minutes per Honorary Award that need to be spent. This can save us close to 30 minutes probably, time that can be spent in better ways (like not cutting off acceptance speeches) or just forgotten. It will defiantly make the ceremony move faster, and will focus it on the past year in film.

Second, it opens up the possibilities of the award itself. I highly doubt that four people (see Wesley’s post below for the info on this year’s winners) would be getting Honorary Oscars this year if they were being given in February. That is too much time for them to spend on it. All of this year’s recipients are overdue and more than deserving, so the ability for them to get their moment and their statue is important and key.

They will also be getting their due in a much more in-depth way, also. Traditionally, a presenter gives a short speech, we see a montage of clips from their career and the recipient gives a short acceptance speech. It is one more award in an evening with 24 other awards. Moving this to its own ceremony, though (such as the American Film Institute does), these recipients will be given a much more thorough tribute and their career given a true reflection. Lauren Bacall, Roger Corman, Gordon Willis and John Calley will be given more than a 5 minute montage now. They will be given an evening-long reception where each of their careers can be examined over a 20-30 minute presentation.

Of course, this brings us to the one flaw in the new Academy system: this November ceremony will not be televised. While I fully support, and applaud, the new ceremony, it is criminal that we will not be able to view it, nor that the Academy is not honoring these lifelong cinematic figures with a national program. They are pretty much saying you get an Oscar, but it isn’t important enough that we want people to see it. Wesley has already said he hopes TCM or Bravo will pick it up. If ESPN can air Baseball Hall of Fame inductions, and with the appearance now of an awards show for every niche of entertainment imaginable, surely one of these stations (or PBS, or AMC, or Ovation, or HBO) can spend a few hours honoring these newest Oscar winners.