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MTV Movie Awards Go Legit: Meet the New Academy

Twilight

The MTV Movie Awards have never been what you’d call credible — remember in 2007 when they introduced the “Best Summer Movie So Far” category (in June) just so Viacom could give an award to Transformers? — but this year they are stepping away from being simply a forum for tween girls to award things to Robert Pattinson and are trying much harder to bring back the “music” that’s long been missing from MTV.

According to MTV president Stephen Friedman, the MTV Movie Awards are now going to be voted on by an “academy” of actors, producers, and other industry insiders in addition to online ballots. This will lead to some tweaks to existing categories such as “Breakthrough Performance,” which will now be voted on by directors (however, “Movie of the Year” will continue to be open to fan voting throughout the show). The show will also feature a brand new “Best Music” category, which will highlight the best uses of songs or pieces of music in specific scenes, as well as a “Best On-Screen Transformation” category (which will recognize actors who go to almost unrecognizable lengths to inhabit a character), and, well, “Best On-Screen Dirt Bag,” which, we assume, was done as a favor to Mickey Rourke.

This brings up two questions. One: Does this mean that the young adult adaptation du jour won’t just landslide every year? (It’s been the “MTV Twilight Awards” for what? Three years running now?) And Two: Why does MTV even care? They clearly are never going to get behind the velvet rope alongside the Independent Spirit Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Oscars, and have always seemed okay with that (see the aforementioned “Best On-Screen Dirt-Bag” category). Will this iffy grasp for respectability (assuming the new format even makes a dent in the almost certain Hunger Games mop-up) end up robbing the show of whatever kind of personality it had, even if it was “The Show For Text-Happy 11 Year Olds.”

We’ll see. MTV also announced that the band fun. will headline the festivities and perform their single “We Are Young” over a montage of classic party movies through the years. The revamped show will air live on MTV on June 3.