Oscar Thoughts

I thought these observations on the Oscars were very good:

Has anyone ever had a weirder Hollywood career than Hilary Swank? Here's an actress who's managed to pull down two Academy Awards in six years -- and yet apart from her Million Dollar Baby and Boy's Don't Cry turns, she hasn't been in a single good movie in that span. (And even the quality of MDB and BDC is, well, debatable.) Her oeuvre ranges from the mediocre-but-tolerable (Insomnia, The Gift) to the astonishingly dreadful (The Core, The Affair of the Necklace) . . . but all you have to do is put her horsey good looks into a gender-blurring role (transvestite, female boxer), make sure she's physically brutalized during the course of the film, and bingo -- she's Hepburn and Streep rolled into one!

More generally, it was a pretty uninteresting Oscar show -- well-suited for a weak year in movies. What struck me, watching, was how flawed all the films were, even the ones I somewhat liked, like The Aviator and Eternal Sunshine. The only real exception to this rule (without opening the can of worms that is The Passion) was The Incredibles, which was almost perfectly executed -- and so I was glad to see it recognized, even in the deeply lame "Best Animated Film" category. It was also nice to see what Charlie Kauffman really looks like, hear Jaime Foxx talk about his grandmother, and watch Chris Rock make fun of Jude Law. (I predict that he will not be invited back -- Rock, I mean, not Law.)

Other than that, well -- two cheers for euthanasia? It seems slightly odd in a year when Christopher Reeve was on the "In Memoriam" List . . . but then, that's why I'm not a voting member of the Academy, I guess.