Oscar Who?

Currently Reading: All She Was Worth By Miyuki Miyabe

Did you get to see the list of Oscar nominees today? If not, go have a look.

I can say for sure that it's going to be a slow night for Oscar on TV this year. Looking at the best picture nominees I think only two movies have actually been out there long enough for anyone to see them. That will make Ray and The Aviator the favorites among the general population but who can say how the Oscar voters will go.

Looking back over the past year in film, I must say, it was an awful lot like the past year in the NFL. You have maybe three or four REALLY good movies. You've got several movies that LOOKED good at first sight but fell apart rather quickly. There's a group down at the bottom that you just have to shake your head and wonder how those films even got MADE much less distributed. And then you have everything else. This was a HUGE year for "everything else."

Where there any real surprises? For me, only one. It didn't shock me that neither The Passion nor the Michael Moron film got nominated. I figured the Moron film, outside the documentary category (which it wasn't entered) wasn't even CLOSE to the level of the other films in the running. As for The Passion, well we've come a long way from the Hollywood that made The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur. They're not likely to be very big on religious pictures no matter how well made. Besides, Latin? Aramaic? You're lucky if actors these days can speak in complete sentances in ENGLISH much less old or ancient dead languages.

No, the only real surprise for me was in the Original Score category. I'm looking at that nominees, I see Harry Potter, ok. Not overly thrilling but ok. You have creepy music from The Village and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Pretty much all sounds about like the same stuff every year. So where were The Incredbiles? The score for The Incredibles is FABULOUS. Really gets your toes tapping. Great stuff and yet, not nominated.

I don't really have a dog in most of these fights. I'd like to see Don Cheadle take home an Oscar if for no other reason than that he's so consistantly good every time he's on the screen. And wouldn't it be great if Martin Scorsese finally, FINALLY got his Oscar? And Cate Blanchett too. She should have gotten one for Elizabeth YEARS ago but don't get me started on that one.

I guess the real question is whether not I'll actually WATCH the Oscars. Maybe I'll just flip back and forth, catch the major awards and let that be that.