The Week In: Rewarding Mediocrity -- Oscar Night

For the annual spectacle that is the Oscars, two of Cosmodrome's resident film snobs/celebrity culture experts will debate the event in real-time.

Here's their prepared opening statements, and don't forget to check back post-show for the blow-by-blow account.

The Film Snob, Jeff

Every year, the Academy nominates a handful of Hollywood films – films that were distributed by subsidiary companies like Focus Features, New Line Cinema, and Warner Independent Pictures – in a race that will allow one or two lucky prestige films to join the ranks of big blockbusters in making a fuck-ton of money. For a movie-snob like myself, the reason to root for one of these films over another usually has less to do with the quality of the movies – which are mostly bad, anyway – than it does with a war of ideas in the culture. If the Oscars provide one good public service, it’s the free publicity that it gives to one or two slightly offbeat Hollywood films.

This year, in particular, what we have is a crop of explicitly ideological films – not “independent” films, nor particularly good ones, but political nonetheless. Am I a big fan of Brokeback Mountain? No, I think it’s a conventional prestige film encumbered by its sweeping time span. But I am rooting for it to win Best Picture. Why? Because it happens to be the one explicitly queer film to break through the homophobia of mainstream America. The Oscar will only help to further that cause. Additionally, I’m rooting against Crash – not simply because it was straight up one of the worst movies I’ve ever sat through, but because, in the war of ideas, Crash would represent a step back. The $53 million Crash has already earned at the box office – and the astronomical amount it would make on DVD if it won Best Picture – has been possible precisely because the film appeals to the latent racism in all of us that it’s supposedly preaching against.

The Oscars are political. No one should understand that better than the two gentlemen who I’m most anticipating to see tonight: Jon Stewart and Robert Altman. Let’s hope that the comedian and the auteur give Hollywood a run for their box office.

The Philistine

Every year, a group of rich, beautiful, semi-moronic people get together in a theater to hand a series of gold statues to themselves. They call this event the Academy Awards.

So will I be watching? Of course I will. Do I realize it's deeply stupid, superficial, and an incredibly poor assessesment of filmmaking merit? Yes, but that's besides the point. The Oscars are really all about these rich, beautiful, semi-moronic people. As much as I mock them, somewhere inside of me I just want to be like them. I'd say so far I've got two of three traits down. (I'll let you decipher for yourselves which two.)

As for this year's show, I find myself less interested than in many years' past. It reminds me a lot of this year's Super Bowl. Yes, it took place, and yes I watched, but will I remember a single thing about the event in a few years? Did I watch with anything more than semi-indifference? No - and in fact, it was so uninteresting that when my friend Dan put on Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl, I found it hard to argue against the channel change.

So what's the problem? There's no heroes or villains. Just as the Pittsburgh Steelers or Seattle Seahawks lacked an interesting storyline, so do this year's major nominees. Yes, people are selling this as the year of the "indie" or "political" films - but who gives a shit? These movies are not independent by any stretch of the imagination, and if we're looking to the Oscars for political lessons (which we are), then this country is in serious trouble (which it is). Truth be told, I liked it a lot better when I was cheering against Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, or Gibsonheart, or for a movie I truly loved like L.A. Confidential, Fargo, or Seabiscuit (kidding).

This isn't a knock on this year's nominees. In fact they're all pretty good (save for Crash). However, in getting caught up in this indie/political bullshit, they ignored a big-budget Hollywood film I preferred over any of the actual nominees - King Kong. Once again, the Academy managed to screw up what they are supposed to be good at.

OK, enough complaining, here's a few things I'm looking forward to tonight:

-Three 6 Mafia's performance
-Jack Nicholson wearing sunglasses indoors
-George Clooney's acceptance speech
-Rachel Weisz
-Robert Altman's acceptance speech
-The annual can-you-name-all-the-movies-in-the-montage contest
-A great speech from a technical award winner
-Salma Hayek, Jessica Alba, Keanu Reeves, Naomi Watts, and Ludacris presenting (for reasons of hotness, hotness, stonedness, hotness, and stonedness, respectively)