The 77th Academy Awards...(yawn)...

I know there are people who watch the Oscars every year without fail. They watch the whole thing, from the pre-show where reporters stop the actors on the carpet and ask them mind-numbingly idiotic questions like, "what are you wearing" to the final credit crawl while the orchestra plays on. For them, it's an event - a major happening bigger than the Superbowl that they can discuss around the water-cooler the next day. In a way, this is fortunate for me because when they come up to me and ask "did you watch the Oscars last night?", I can simply say "no" and and they can move on to the next bleary-eyed pop-culture addict.

So why won't I be watching? Well, I've watched some years and haven't watched other years. The major criteria for me is - I have to CARE.

And this year, frankly, I don't.

I don't feel like wasting 3.5+ hours of my life watching:

• people wearing some of the most god-awful outfits ever designed
• Chris Rock screaming at the audience with that maniacal smile of his
• shots of the same actors over and over sitting in the first five rows pretending to be having fun
• presenter teams of actors who have absolutely no chemistry with each other
• these same presenters - people who make a living reciting other peoples' words - inexplicably failing to read cure cards without having it look like that's exactly what their doing
• bad jokes delivered by the presenters that result in an uncomfortable silence from the audience
• seeing clips from the each nominee in the category "Best Documentary Short Subject"
• listening to winners of the technical-oriented awards - people I've never heard of - ramble on and on and on about the people they want to thank because they think they'll probably never be up on that stage again
• hearing one or two big-mouth ass-hat celebrities use their spot on the world stage to make some idiotic political statement just because they have a captive audience
• five-minute commericals every eight minutes

I could go on but the point is if I'm going to endure all of the above and a lot more, I damn well better actually care who wins. The fact is I've seen almost none of the movies nominated for anything.

In fact, expect for the animated movies that I've seen with my kids - "Shark Tale, Shrek 2, etc. - I can count on one hand the number of movies that I've seen that are nominated in ANY of the 24 major categories.

Obviously that's my problem but I haven't been persuaded by anything to want to see them.

The other night I saw "The Aviator". OK, that was pretty good, but it doesn't make my list of 100 best movies and if I hadn't seen it, my life would still be as meaningful. The best part was Cate Blanchett. Most actors have talent, but this woman has a gift. I'm a huge Katherine Hepburn fan and anyone that pull off a convincing performance playing her deserves an Academy Award. Basically Cate nailed it as Kate.

Obviously I was interested enough to watch last year because I wanted to see an upstart Kiwi director like Peter Jackson sweep the awards away from the established Hollywood elite. Plus he and his crew absolutely deserved every award they got for "The Lord of the Rings" films.

I'm not a snob who turns his nose up at the artistic output of Hollywood. There have been years where I've watched because I did see three or four of the movies nominated for Best Picture - and I saw them before they were nominees. I've even watched if I haven't seen many movies but Billy Crystal was the host (someone whose actually entertaining). But this year? Forget it.

Here's my prediction: This will be one of (if not THE) lowest rated Academy Awards shows of all time. You can check Drudge late tomorrow morning for the overnights.

Here's my advice: Save yourself the hassle and do something more fulfilling, like playing a board game with your kids. Then the first thing Monday morning, log on to the internet and print out a copy of the winners from any news site. Then you'll know in a couple of minutes what I took other people a whole wasted evening to find out.

Posted by: Gary at 06:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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