The Groves Of the Academy

I haven't really seen any of the movies nominated for Oscars, which will be given out at the 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony tomorrow, but I hope Sandra Bullock wins the best actress Oscar for The Blind Side. She's never been taken all that seriously as an actress, yet she's getting some of her best reviews ever for playing a white Southern woman who takes in a black teenager and raises him to become a great football player. And it would be a shame if she lost that and won a Razzie for All About Steve. But Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie and Julia might provide her stiff competition for the Oscar.

The award for best actor looks like it could be a showdown between Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart - he plays a country singer, and he did his own singing for this role - and George Clooney for Up In the Air. Don't count out Morgan Freeman, though, as Nelson Mandela in Invictus, about South Africans in the days after apartheid rallying around the white-dominated rugby team.

Looking at the ten best picture nominees, I had to ask myself: How did they come up with ten? And why do they think quantity equals quality? Oh, right, this is Hollywood. I hope Avatar doesn't win. Nothing against James Cameron or anything like that, but if a 3-D movie wins, this could have a great aesthetic fallout on motion pictures, and bring to something as kitschy as three-dimensional imagery the artistic legitimacy it shouldn't have. At least give the best director Oscar to Kathryn Bigelow for her Iraq War movie The Hurt Locker, if not best picture.

If Vera Farmiga wins best supporting actress for Up In the Air, this could bring her the stardom that has eluded her up to now.

The envelopes, please. :-)