The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is setting out new rules about how one may campaign for their Academy Awards. The changes are kinda complicated, involving how many screenings you can have and how often potential nominees can appear at these screenings and whether little meatball appetizers can be served at them…or something like that.
What strikes me as odd is that the reason for these changes is that someone feels that last year, there was "excessive Oscar campaigning." In an industry where excessive anything is usually rewarded, I'm not sure how they measure that or why anyone thinks they can inject dignity into the proceedings.
But what's really weird is that they aren't zeroing in on a possible reason that there was "excessive Oscar campaigning" last year. It's because the Academy has started doing "excessive Oscar nominating." Go back to having five nominees for Best Picture instead of ten and right there, you cut out an awful lot of the campaigning.