After lacing up her tennis shoes and tying her bowtie, Ellen Degeneres walks down a street lip-syncing to a Fitz & The Tantrums song while dozens of men and women in matching suits dance in flash-mob style behind her.

This was the scene enacted in the trailer released back in December advertising the Oscars and boasting the vitality and charm of this year’s host.

The Oscars, more formally known as the Academy Awards, will air at 6 p.m. Sunday on ABC.

Despite Degeneres’ wide range of appeal, though, many people in the younger crowd will not be tuning in simply because going to the movies is last on their to-do list.

Michael Livingston, a senior music performance major, said he doesn’t watch Degeneres’ talk show regularly, but he thinks she is a good entertainer.

“I think it will be a fun round of Oscars because she’s a fun person,” he said. “She’s a good television host and she knows how to entertain people, and that’s probably why she was chosen to host.”

Livingston said he doesn’t watch much TV or many movies because he constantly is focused on rehearsing his music and completing his schoolwork.

“I just don’t have much time, and what free time I do have I either catch up on something or try to get ahead or I’m just hanging with friends,” he said.

He said he watched the Oscars with his family before college, but they never got too into who won or lost.

The categories he does pay attention to, though, are the music categories.

Livingston said he hopes “Frozen” will win for the song “Let It Go” nominated in the Best Original Song category.

He said he has heard comparisons between the music in “Frozen” with the music in “The Lion King,” and though he wouldn’t say one is better because they are different styles, Livingston agrees both were significant.

“As far as music goes, it can make or break a movie,” he said. “I would definitely say music made or is very large part of what made both ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Frozen.’”

Wen Chang, a sophomore elementary education major, also agreed that Degeneres would make an entertaining host, but she said she likely would not watch because she thinks the awards are too competitive and do not focus on the right attributes.

“When you think of categorizing, it’s more of everyone thinks this person is perfect or he deserves to be the most important winner, but I feel like we’re all winners no matter what we do with films or music because it shows that we’re still working to improve the world,” she said.

Chang said if she were in charge of judging for the Oscars, the awards would focus more on the message behind the movie rather than how big of a budget it has.

She said the only film she would be rooting for is “12 Years a Slave,” which was nominated for Best Picture and six other categories.

“I really like ‘12 Years a Slave’ because it did show their point of view how blacks could not become a human person, and how they were forced to live in slavery on plantations and they had to only eat this much food and barely have nothing left, so it kind of showed that’s a message that blacks should also be treated equally,” Chang said.

While students are more or less disinterested in the awards show, Robin Murray, a film studies professor, said she attends an Oscar party in which everyone casts their ballots, and for every eight correct predictions, the predictor wins a chocolate bunny.

However, she said she usually arrives late because the award shows can start to drag.

“Award shows for the most part are long and tend not to be as entertaining anymore,” she said.

She said the audience for award shows has decreased along with dwindling movie audience as programs on Netflix and YouTube appeal to niche audiences; for example, horror movies rarely make the nominations list.

Although the award most talked about is usually the Best Picture, Murray said she also watches for the documentary and foreign film categories.

“I think there you might get a broader taste of what’s out there and what good film and film making looks like,” she said.

She said the documentaries that win tend to have an “activist edge” to them and attempt to change people’s minds, like the 2009 winner “The Cove” about the killing of dolphins.

This year, she is rooting for “The Act of Killing” because it takes an interesting look at the atrocities of war.

She is also hoping “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa” will win for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

“It really did look like a bad grandpa,” she said.

Stephanie Markham can be reached at 581-2812 or DENverge@eiu.edu.com.