How the Oscars lost its mojo

In the era of peak Oscars, the movies commemorated were, at worst, honorably decent and, at best, the sort of sumptuously mounted, inoffensively impressive super-spectacles that the industry had good reason to be proud of: Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, Amadeus, The Last Emperor, The English Patient, and, inevitably but justifiably, Titanic. By the same token, the stars assembled to deliver statuettes into the hands of their fellow stars were worth oohing and aahing over. John Wayne announced The Deer Hunter as best picture in 1979; Jack Nicholson announced Unforgiven in 1993. 

But Wayne is dead, Nicholson has entered a state of deep retirement, and Harrison Ford begged off fulfilling his previously-announced duties as an award-presenter due to shingles — a largely inconsequential viral infection (knock on

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