Where's Billy Crystal on the New Oscars Poster?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the poster for the 84th Academy Awards, and it's... nice? I mean, Oscar looks sexy as ever, and all those foggy images of awards-night glories past recall both the champagne-fueled afterparties and the preponderance of white folks who take this hardware home every year. But isn't something missing? Like, the host?

After all that hullabaloo about Brett Ratner and Eddie Murphy that the Academy worked to deflect, and after all the lengths that the Board of Governors went to just to replace Murphy with an ultrasafe, ultrastable emcee, and after years of advertising hosts from Chris Rock to Jon Stewart to Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin to Anne Hathaway and Anne Franco, where is Billy Crystal? If I'm a casual viewer, I'm far likelier to take positive notice of the host than of the centrally positioned reminder that Driving Miss Daisy actually won Best Picture once upon a sad, sad time.

Also: Can't we get some more color in here? Sidney Poitier? Denzel Washington? Mo'Nique? If it has to be Best Picture alums, maybe Poitier and Rod Steiger from In the Heat of the Night? Even Anthony Mackie and Jeremy Renner from The Hurt Locker. I'm not sure what this says about the young demographic that the aging Academy claims to covet; I doubt they're watching Giant and/or The Sound of Music.

Or maybe they are! Are you "young" and obsessive-compulsively watching Gone With the Wind on a DVD loop in honor of white, uptight, vaunted Academy legacies? Tell us in the comments!

[via Awards Daily]



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