Bearded Oscar flotsam, day II

It's an unwritten law that the Academy isn't allowed to award interesting films with the mantle of Best Picture, but I am not kidding when I say I would've happily seen any of the nominees (plus King Kong) mop the floor with Crash. Much of the press condemned the Academy for succumbing to political pressure; I condemn them for awarding awful, cardboard, fraudulent, immature, maudlin movies. It is now ten years since I've agreed with a single Best Pic win, and that's still just because 1996 was a crummy year for film.

The tragedy of Crash is that everything about the movie - editing, camerawork, and especially acting - is phenomenal EXCEPT the screenplay. With a good screenplay you can still make an awful movie, but with a bad screenplay you cannot make an even decent one.

Nicholson's performance was the best of the evening, suggesting the slightest tinge of disgust and resentment, not just with a lousy Best Picture winner, but with a lifetime Gold Card membership to an industry doomed to self-embarassment on a (now-yearly) basis. well, maybe not; anyway, I can't wait until next year.

George Lucas has announced the beginning of the end for epic movies, citing the five BP nominees as "independent" movies and predicting that, in 19 years, the average picture will cost $15 million. Good luck.

Steven Spielberg, who might as well have stayed home (the lack of Spielberg power in the room was palpable) told Roger Friedman at Fox 411 that he has committed to taking the year off. Consider Indy IV axed.

Roger Ebert, America's most famous film critic and now, officially, a staunch supporter of crap (soon to be played by Phil Hoffman), published his official retaliation to anyone who dared suppose that a movie featuring a bigoted white cop who molests a black woman who gets into a car accident the next day only to be tearfully saved by the very same bigoted white cop could be boneheaded and ludicrious.

As usually befits the climax of the Awards Season, some new trailers for high-profile ensemble dramas: Robert Altman (whose speech, coming from someone frequently accused of heartlessness, was pretty dull)'s A Prairie Home Companion and the final, non-internet preview for X-Men: The Last Stand. Also, Robert Towne's Ask The Dust went online recently and nobody told me about it.