No Surprise

This may have been the most predictable Academy Awards in years. I don't recall a single surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, even for the smaller categories. The SAG, WGA and DGA awards perfectly predicted who'd win. The only major award with any suspense, actually, was Best Picture, where The Aviator, having won a bunch of technical awards, still had a shot at edging out Million Dollar Baby.

Perhaps tomorrow I will write on the worst and best choices. I admit I was pleased to see my favorites (scroll down a few days), Wasp and Ryan, win for short film.

Meanwhile, at the tiresome Razzies, where they award conventionally bad films (never anything brave or interesting--quite often Oscar nominees are worse than what the Razzies choose), they decided not to even be true to themselves.

Instead, they decided to play politics. They gave awards to George Bush, Condoleeza Rice, My Pet Goat, Donald Rumsfeld and Britney Spears for their performances in Fahrenheit 9/11. This is just silly. First, they weren't giving "performances" in any normal sense of the word. Second, since the point of the film was to mock them, and since (within the context of the film) they delivered, if anything, their "performances" were quite good. I'm sure even Michael Moore would agree. The Razzie people actually made bigger fools of themselves than usual.