Once upon a time, long, long ago, the Oscars were a simple, understated awards ceremony held to honor the best Hollywood movies of the year. The show was simple, without much glitz or glamour and with no red carpets in sight. The awards were, in effect, a way for Hollywood studios to pat themselves on their collective back and congratulate themselves for a job well done. There was little money involved, advertising campaigns were nonexistent and the awards and nominations did little to affect box-office grosses.Yawn.

Today, the Oscars are big business. The ceremony draws huge television ratings, usually second only to the Super Bowl, with enormous amounts of money changing hands on network advertising. News agencies as reputable as The New York Times and as gossipy as E! and Access Hollywood devote columnists and reporters to cover the event year-round. One recent Brandeis alumnus, Scott Feinberg, writes a column for the Los Angeles Times that provides constant news and forecasts regarding the awards ceremony.

But it isn't just news agencies that are devoting an increasing amount of time and money to the Oscars; in recent years, the awards have become big business in Hollywood. There used to be a time when studios made films for the sole purpose of making money, and the Oscars were merely seen as an added bonus to celebrate their success. Now, though, Hollywood creates what are called "prestige" pictures, films designed from the ground up to receive Oscar acclaim. These prestige pictures are, in fact, often only able to achieve box office success through Oscar nominations. For examples of this, one need only compare the box office success of last year's Oscar-nominated films like No Country for Old Men or There Will be Blood to the relative financial failure of Oscar-ignored films like Into the Wild or The Savages. Studios often spend in the tens of millions on advertising to help secure Oscar nominations, knowing that the money spent can pay off big time if the Academy embraces their film.

It isn't just about advertising though, as studios carefully market their films to build Oscar buzz. Last year's No Country for Old Men premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 2007. The film gained a tremendous amount of critical acclaim there, and yet studios held off releasing it until November of the same year. With its critical praise and Oscar interest intact, the film went on to make upwards of $160 million worldwide, far and away the highest grossing film of directing brothers Joel and Ethan Coen's careers.

There Will be Blood, on the other hand, had a few small screenings to build anticipation, but for the most part was rarely viewed before its release in late December. Critics raved over the film, but it noticeably wasn't widely released until after its eight Academy Awards nominations had been announced. For a film like There Will be Blood, Oscar nominations weren't a bonus to preexisting financial success, but rather the only hope of earning enough to cover the film's costs.

This, of course, brings us to this year, when the Oscars season is just starting to heat up. There are some Oscar hopefuls that have already been released and are jockeying for nominations, including summer blockbusters like The Dark Knight and Wall-E to more independent films like Rachel Getting Married or The Visitor. However, no one denies that the heaviest hitters are still on the way.

A number of these films have been hidden away from the public, as they are either incomplete or their studios are still readying ad campaigns to go along with their releases. Many studios are also afraid of getting bad early press, as a couple bad or mixed reviews can sink a film before it even opens to the public. Frost/Nixon, the film version of the Tony Award winning play about a series of interviews between television personality David Frost and former president Richard Nixon, recently had its first screening for critics who generally found the film stiff even as its acting was impressive. While it remains to be seen how Frost/Nixon will do upon its wide release in late December, there is no doubt that the less than glowing reviews it has received will hurt its Oscar chances.

On the other hand, for some films early screenings are essential for building positive buzz. Slumdog Millionaire, the Danny Boyle-directed Indian love story, premiered this year at the Toronto Film Festival to rave reviews, which have catapulted it from an almost entirely unknown into the heart of the Oscars race. Milk, the Gus Van Sant film that chronicles the life of Harvey Milk, California's first openly gay elected official, was screened for the first time for a few select critics, who have since been tripping over themselves to praise the film. In these cases, early screenings have helped to build anticipation for each respective film's release, creating the positive word of mouth necessary to mount a successful Oscar campaign.

Finally, there are those films that studios have kept locked away from prying eyes. Certain movies simply have enough pedigree that studios don't feel the need to build buzz through early screenings. For instance, Sam Mendes, the Oscar-winning director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition, is gearing up to release Revolutionary Road, another meditation on suburban life based on a beloved but long thought unfilmable book by Richard Yates. If that weren't enough, the film reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet for the first time since their success over a decade ago in the Oscar-winning box office smash Titanic.

Every year without fail, major Hollywood studios prep their prestige pictures to gain Academy Awards attention. And each year, a number of them fail to live up to the hype, fail to match the lofty expectations bestowed on them because they fail to achieve Oscar glory. Yet, quite often it seems the lack of success comes more from the failures of the film's advertising campaign than from faults with the film. And, as the Oscars continue to grow in size and scope every year, with more money at stake each go time, studios will continue to push films for Oscars even as they ignore what the Oscars were once about. The Academy Awards were meant to celebrate the best films of the year, not to be a vehicle for studios to try and achieve box office success. Therefore, is it any surprise that the Oscars rarely manage to award the truly best films of the year? Without trying to offend anyone's tastes, there probably isn't a serious film critic left in the world who actually thinks Crash was the best film of 2004. However, as long as studios spend millions to push their choice of Oscar-worthy films, those which are truly the best of the year will continue to go unseen and underappreciated. While perhaps there is no easy solution to this problem, it would be wise of Hollywood to do some soul searching and realize what the Academy Awards should be as opposed to what they have become. Perhaps then we could see an awards ceremony which would honor the best films of the year, rather than the best-marketed films of the year.