The Oscar Postmortem

I did not watch the awards telecast this year. I haven't watched it in many years, because I decided a long time ago that I care too much about movies to pay too much attention to all of the political bullshit that comes along with the Academy Awards ceremony. The guys you expect to win usually win, the best picture virtually never goes to a deserving film, and the whole thing is a bizarre mess of make-up awards for people who got shafted for more deserving films, sentimental gestures, and the results of a lot of behind-the-scenes deal-making.

Avatar got shut out of anything but the technical awards: good. That gaudy hunk of shit didn't deserve anything more (not that, as I just mentioned above, "deserve" really has anything to do with it). I can't complain too much about The Hurt Locker getting best picture, even though I've seen it and didn't really like it very much. Inglourious Basterds blew the hell out of the other nominees in virtually every way that a movie can and should, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has never been a body given to awarding that sort of movie (you know, a fucking amazing one that completely kicks your ass and will be watched by film lovers for generations). Quentin Tarantino will have to content himself with the make-up award he gets for this slight in 15 years or so, when he mades a lesser work that the fogeys in the Academy aren't afraid of: his The Departed, in other words.

As far as the much-discussed inclusion of ten Best Picture nominees is concerned, I think everybody knows that was a purely financial decision, since it didn't effect the outcome of the ceremony at all. Leading up to the event, everybody was asking the same question: "The Hurt Locker or Avatar?" The other eight fucking movies nominated didn't even have a horse in this race as far as anybody was concerned. So, the ten nominees are a joke, and it's only ever going to come down to the usual choices: the blockbuster, the little movie, the prestige picture, and the one that actually has balls and will never win.

So blah blah blah, another pointless Oscars has come and gone. Hurrah for all of the people who won awards for their entire body of work rather than for anything they did this particular year (Jeff Bridges), and this has been way more words than I ever wanted to write on this fucking subject.

Done.