THE DEPARTED: This year's Oscar Necrology segment faces the same questions as in most year -- what to do about too-recent deaths (Ramis), given that the footage likely has already been edited to fit its time slot? Who gets tributes beyond having their photos in the montage?
Given this list of those who passed away in the past year, I'd try to make room for oral tributes to Shirley Temple Black (Drew Barrymore?), Harold Ramis (Bill Murray, ideally), and Philip Seymour Hoffman (P.T. Anderson?), in that order of importance. (If you'd rather have a Peter O'Toole tribute than Hoffman, I'm okay with that.) Make sure to include Roger Ebert in the montage—his love of movies brought so many of us such joy, and he deserves to be remembered Sunday night—and don't forget Deanna Durbin.
