A Night at the Oscars

And so the annual Hollywood back-slapping that is the Academy Awards rolls around and, i have to say, i was quite looking forward to being able to watch it at a reasonable hour - for those of you that didn't know, i used to get up at 2am in the morning to watch them back in the UK. Of course, no ceremony would be complete without a ridiculously large number of commerical breaks - not that it mattered much this year because i understand the viewing audience was the lowest for some considerable time. Anyway, i had a passing interest in a few of the awards tonight - particularly the Animation feature which, thankfully, was given to Wallace and Gromit. Yay!!

Above all, the Oscars are considered the 'Big' awards of the film year - but i, personally, don't particularly hold any faith in the results - given some of the past choices by the Academy, added to the overly self-indulgent style of the whole affair - and the fact that results can be swayed easily - by a good marketing campaign for example (step forward "Shakespeare In Love" which won Best Picture over the frankly superior "Saving Private Ryan" owing to an absolute fortune spent by the production company Miramax). This year there was no escape with "Crash" - whilst an excellent film - getting the Oscar nod, perhaps due to its L.A. setting, especially considering the vast majority of Academy members live in that city, it's no real surprise when you think about it. Ultimately, this year was the 'issue' year of the Oscars - a chance for Hollywood to kid itself into thinking that they still had the moral high ground because of a few (mostly independent) films that tackled difficult subjects. It's something of an irony that, with the Oscars out of the way, it's back to the usual dross and blowing things up that is the 'business as usual' attitude of film making these days.