I don't understand the point of award shows (other than to sell commercial time and underline which acts and actors I'm supposed to like so to maximize the effectiveness of future commercial time which will have them in it). You claim to honor the best of something, but only one. If the movies themselves are not actually battling each other, why must only one win? It's certainly not like they can't make more of the silly trophies. There is no competition. Movies cannot take steps to improve themselves to show up the other ones. Movies cannot alter their perceivable elements based on poll results. Nor can they initiate offensive measures to overcome their opponents. Good Night, and Good Luck cannot throw a bucket of cement at Munich, clobber "Capote" with a steel chair (though I will gladly do that myself if it is deemed necessary), give Brokeback Mountain a backbreaker and crush Crash to prove who is the most worthy and dominant combatant.

To say one is the best means nothing, because there is no explanation offered to justify the decree, nor are the vote totals disclosed. Also, no sensible future person is going to watch just one movie based on what year it was made in. The only reason for that award system is to accomodate the structure of the award giving ceremony. If you were going to choose five, or even just three movies out of all of them for one year to give equal recognition to, it would be impossible to have the complete casts for all eligible movies in the audience, out of which to bring five to the stage, and five wouldn't fit on the stage, besides. So instead you choose them earlier, tell those they're all great then, and then say later "ha ha, actually I hate four of you and look you're on TV while I'm telling you this!"

In addition to simple meanness, without the award ceremony we couldn't have The Red Carpet, the superficial parade of people I probably hate as narrated by the unbudging smiling presence of people I definitely hate. The Red Carpet show actually has credits at the end. In the event it takes more than one diaperbrain to set that whole thing up, what are the chances those people deserve to be named for it?

But the statues, though... the Ac (as no one calls the academy) might as well give out certificates of achievement, because no one would want a miniature C3PO holding a sword if an unquestionable invisible council hadn't ascribed significance to it. It's all too silly to be given the level of importance it is. I don't consider "academy award winners" to be any more splendid than "academy award nominees," and often go so far as to hate them as a result of their status if they start acting like them being picked over the other four is indicative of order and rightness in the universe. So there. All the time (at this time of year) I hear phrases like "probably won't win" and "odds on favorite." Based on what? If you find it consistently possible to pick the winners, based on anything other than guesses, before they really are picked, then you ackowledge the whole thing is a sham! "Traditionally, the academy has gone with..." why would it nominate things that it had no intention of ever letting win? Listen to what you're saying! You fool!

I hate the phrase "major award." All of the awards are the same statue, so that's stupid talk. It's even stupider talk because the "major awards" lean heavily, almost to the point of falling over, toward boring, serious, realistic films, which implies those are the only major films, and they aren't. I understand that the other "major," non majorly nominated films tend to take in a lot more money. Perhaps, you might say, balancing it, but it isn't balanced because the majorest award is still called "best motion picture," rather than "best motion picture that was wrongly shunned by ticket buyers." No one left a theatre showing the most recent Star Wars movie talking about how fabulous the makeup was. And surely there are plenty of movies with great fight scenes or explosions that have poor box office showings. Where are their awards? There's no "achievement in beat-upping" award. I admit that most comedies are terrible even in their comedic aspects, which tend to be the only aspects they have, but some aren't. Ehhh, I'm glad there isn't an award for comedy, though, because people who rank humor are pretensious scumballs. "Watson, you idiot! Someone stole our tent!" They did let Return of The King win, but that probably wasn't as good a movie overall as the first one was. Fredo doesn't encounter anyone from the previous movies at all through the whole thing until the epilogue, and then it's only for long enough to tell them he's leaving again. It wants to make a big show of the ultimate final showdown between the good and evil armies, but it doesn't even matter because the evil all gets eaten by the earth when the ring is destroyed. If Aragoop had simply run away from the big gate instead of fighting, he would have saved countless lives ("countless" in the aspect that I did not bother trying to keep track of how many extras looked like they were pretending to get dead).

Scene from Brokeback Mountain

As long as I'm mentioning them, here is another problem with the actual version: Samweis Gaw-gee, a now hardened adventurer, even with a surprise attack can at best frighten off an assumedly old and sickly giant spider. However, some strange woman, not even an important enough character that I could figure out what her name was, who's never even fought in a battle before, defeats with two quick chops what context suggests is the fastest, fiercest, fliblest lizardbeast of them all. After years of stuff like Quest for Camelot and Moolawn and Schreque gooning them up, finally a film appears of status grand enough to deserve dragonny things in it and this happens. Bah, I say.

I was going to scan the title frame from a Sunday edition of the syndicated comic strip impostor Night Lights and Pillow Fights to place here, but I've just looked at the New Haven Register comics page for the first time in quite some, and couldn't find it. But I'm so glad it isn't there anymore that I don't even feel bad about lacking an appropriate picture or wasting the time. And then I was going to use a yoshi from Tetris Attack, but I'm so glad I deleted the game that I don't feel bad about having wasted more time.

I'd still rather see the king return again than listen to Truman Chipotle for 90 minutes. He sounds exactly like all the occupational therapists at the special school I used to go to. Not in the voice so much (though that is annoying in a different category) as the unbearably gentle inflection, sincere or otherwise. It's like rubbing the tip of a feather on my forehead, one time. No! That will not do! I need to take the entire length of the feather and scrape it across now! Both ways! Again! Harder and harder! Make me bleed, you breathy baby-talk babbling boobarian! I've actually seen that movie now (whereas I hadn't a few lines ago), and the whole thing's so miserable and pointless that I entirely forgot how annoying Wile E. Capote's voice is. That's worth five frogjammed academy award nominations, sure. It did accomplish most of what it set out to do, I think: Portray T C'p'te as a loathesome manipulative wretch with little use for truth when seeking something, but was it enjoyable? Yes in the least. I also come across as manipulative, I suspect, but it's never on purpose and it never gets me what I want anyway (do you think I'd still be at tripod with under 150 intentional views per month after three years if I was in touch with my weaselness?), so it hardly counts. Truman knew exactly what to say to people, while* I typically have no idea. And my facts are wrong because I don't bother to check them, not because I lie. Apathy and avarice are two totally different vices.

Scene from Capote

*except forty years later.

This doesn't follow on the previous part at all (nor should it aspire to), but what made The Lord of the Rings the special for me was that it didn't employ any contemporary American big stars (sure, I'd heard of a few, but no one obnoxiously "huge") or production companies. Maybe that's because it was produced in New Zealand by mostly British people, and perhaps it didn't have the same significance for them, but I tell you it should have. If those films had been made over here, Ben Stiller would be the Gollum, Will Smith would be the Elf and Robin Williams would be the Dwarf, and all of them would have much bigger roles. It wouldn't be pretty. I mean that it would be less pretty than a band of medieval men drudging over mountains and slogging through swamps for several months and never bathing or changing their clothes at all typically is. Also, somehow, the whole thing would be over in 87 minutes (not each, total) with outtakes during the credits. And Alien Ant Farm or whoever it was then would have its one song, which it took from someone else, playing during that. And no one would remember it. Good for them, but not really, since it should have been worth remembering.

Surgeon General's warning: Do not, under any circumstances, get it.