The Oscar Menace

The floors at our house are being refinished which has seriously messed up my viewing and posting of reviews but we should have a Wong Kar-Wai restrospective coming up. Anyway, the Oscars are tonight and I feel like playing prognosticator. Even though I have only seen one of the Best Picture nominees, I know that film should have no business winning ANYTHING. All this talk of Crash creeping up on Brokeback Mountain and pulling off an upset is truly troubling. As you could tell from my review of Crash, I thought it was a reckless, manipulative, and a shortsighted film. That Hollywood thinks that this film has something meaningful to offer up about race just shows how shallow and vapid these people really are. Yet somehow they and a good majority of critics think that this is an important and powerful film. This makes me want to puke. I haven't agreed much with the latest batch of Best Picture Winners, basically everything since 2000, and if Crash does win Best Picture, I will boycott the Oscars for eternity. Here are my random picks:

Best Supporting Actreess: The only one I've seen was Rachel Weisz and I thought it was underwhelming. I'm jumping on the Brokeback bandwagon - MICHELLE WILLIAMS

Best Supporting Actor: Dillon's character is the main problem with Crash, so he's gone. I've haven't seen any others so I'll go with the consensus - GEORGE CLOONEY

Best Cinematography: If a Terrence Malick film is nominated here, it should win - THE NEW WORLD

Best Actress: Nothing here seems like performances that were exceptionally strong. I have feelings that Walk the Line isn't that good, so I'll go with FELICITY HUFFMAN

Best Actor: Plain and simple I'll go for the upset - DAVID STRATHAIRN

Best Director: I've finally come around to the fact that Ang Lee can make just about any kind of film (except blockbusters) and make it quality - ANG LEE

Best Picutre: No to Crash. With all this talk about Brokeback Mountain being a revolutionary film, all I see is a standard romance picture with two men instead of a man and a woman. Capote is overrated. Munich has no support. All this leads to something that should never happen in my mind, the director/picture split. But I have to go with GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.

Also, Paradise Now and Murderball for best foreign film and documentary.