Movie Sign

So what did I miss while I was going on about coinage? Ah, yes, the Oscars.

They weren't that bad this year. I liked Jon Stewart (but then, I'm his best friend). The folk who are whining and moaning about Stewart's rookie performance usually whine and moan about the politics of the event, or the comercialization, or the length, or the dance numbers. They're the type of people who go to NASCAR for the crashes. Get over it - it was a quiet year full of smaller, more intelligent films. You want the ratings to go up again? Make more LOTR movies. Outside of Wallace and Grommit, you lost the all-important nerd demographic.

And the Tomlin/Streep introduction for Robert Altman? Brilliant. Only sad thing about honorary Oscars is that it is a reminder that we blew these talented people off when they were making their films. Is this an apology in advance for the inevitable snubbing of the Prairie Home Companion movie?

Of course, there was something that did get under my skin. Brokeback Mountain. No, not the movie, but the fact that Larry McMurty co-accepted the Best Adapted Screenplay award while wearing jeans. Hey, Larry, thanks for reinforcing all the negative stereotypes about us author-types. And we just got upgraded from "slobs" to "rumpled". (A friend from New York swears that his tux jacket didn't fit him either, and may have been presented when he got there. I doubt that - I'm a minor-league game designer and even I have my own tux).

And the not-so-subtle undercurrent of this year's ceremony was "Go See More Movies". Yeah, I got that. We'll see how the schedule works out this year.

More later,