Oscar the Grouch!

I didn't really watch the Oscars this year. Oh, I stepped in and out to see who won this or that and tried to catch a Jon Stewart joke or two, but I missed most of it. I thought it looked like a good crop of movies this year, but I'm not much of a television person and don't really value the opinions of the Acadamy of Arts any more than, say the New York Film Critics Circle or my Mom. The Oscars are, and have always been, a way to market movies. If the soft-drink industry tells you that Diet Mr. Pibb with Lime is the best drink, is it really? Maybe it is....but not because Slice is bad, or doesn't speak to me, or shouldn't have won last year. Poor big budget, action-packed Pepsi seems to be always nominated, but never wins.
Somehow we all feel invested in this process - whether making sure we see all the movies, or rooting for Heath Ledger or Dolly Parton or hoping "King Kong" wins for best sound effects. That's kinda fun, and it's nice when a movie or a performance you like gets nominated or wins. It validates your opinion and makes you feel like a part of things. The fact is, however, that you don't vote. Each studio nominates movies they can market as award winners to the academy, send them DVDs and lots of stuff, and the Academy votes. The voters at the academy have as many varied reasons for voting for what they do as we do for liking Dr. Pepper or Elf Soda, from what was great this year to so-and-so should have won last year for this other movie or political reasons or what they see as a way to split the difference between favorites. Most don't see all the movies they vote for: it's a crap shoot, and they depend as much on marketing as we do.
That's not to say these aren't good movies, or are bad performances, or what have you. I haven't seen all of them, but the films I have seen that were nominated this year are uniformly good movies that I enjoyed and got something out of, whether it's to talk about the drug companies actions in Africa, being glad I don't live in LA, or how much it would suck to be a gay cowboy. That doesn't mean that "Harry Potter" or "Serenity" weren't great and fun and made me daydream a little bit, that's good too. I guess I'm just glad there weren't many crappy movies nominated, and I don't have to put up with six more months of advertizing for "Titanic".
I bring all this up because it seems that some people feel pretty alienated by the Oscars for nominating movies that they don't think are fun, or don't seem to reflect their lives, or become convinced that there are political reasons their favorite movie should have been the winner in such and such a catagory. I say to them, Lighten-up. The best picture is the one you enjoy the most - whether it's an action picture you may have loved, a psychological thriller that scares the socks off your feet, or the tragedy that shows you something about human nature in a way you have never seen it before and allows you to think for a while. I think maybe my best picture was "March of the Penguins", but I'm a sucker for little baby aminals.
This year, it gave some coverage to some movies that might have otherwise been overlooked. I have seen a million TV ads for "SAW II", I couldn't tell you why, I think they come on during the Simpsons reruns I sometimes watch. This is a movie I am not interested in, and the marketing folks are wasting their money. I saw zero TV ads for "The Squid and the Whale", which looks great and has been recommended to me by several people who know what I might like. And now there is it's ad - an academy award nomination - it will be easier to see now and my interests are validated, and I am more likely to see it in the theatre or probably rent it. Marketing money well spent. The Oscars are about marketing, and that's great. But please don't take it so seriously. It's not the Superbowl, for heaven's sake.