Jazz and Razz

I don't regret not watching the Oscars last night. If I want to watch well-dressed Americans in an act of narcissism, I'll watch a Senate confirmation hearing. Besides, the entertainment segments sounded like they were crushingly boring - a tribute to the greatest Hollywood musicals of the past decade (both of them), hit-and-miss jokes from host Seth McFarlane - when all I really want to know when I watch and awards show is who won what. That's why I don't watch them; I'm better off reading about it the morning after.

I guess the big surprise was Argo winning Best Picture, even though its lead actor and director, Ben Affleck, didn't get any nominations for himself as Best Actor or Best Director. The scuttlebutt is that the members of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are jealous of Affleck because he's young, talented and good-looking and also because he's married to an actress (Jennifer Garner) as young, talented and good-looking as he is. It's easy to assume that giving Argo Best Picture is to compensate for that, until you realize that Lincoln was Argo's chief competition and this was just another opportunity for the Academy to screw Spielberg again. I know some critics found Lincoln dull, and that they found the congressional debate scenes to suggest what C-SPAN would have looked like had television existed in the 1860s, but I enjoyed it. And Daniel Day-Lewis deserved his Best Actor Oscar for playing the sixteenth U.S. President. But you knew that Sally Field was never going to get the Best Actress award, because the Academy still hasn't forgiven her for her oafish acceptance speech for her Oscar for Places Of the Heart. And let's face it, no matter how much she tries to break from contemporary parts and step into a role - Mary Todd Lincoln - belonging to the ages (like Honest Abe himself), she's still the Flying Nun in the eyes of some. But I like her, I really like her. I like Anne Hathaway, too, but her Best Actress Oscar for Les Misérables isn't going to make me see the movie. I saw the stage version at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey - Anne Hathaway's hometown, ironically - and while I liked it, I've had my fill of Les Miz, thank you very much.

Silver Linings Playbook didn't get the Best Picture win some folks were hoping for, but Jennifer Lawrence's Best Supporting Actress win for that movie should provide them for compensation. And, while I haven't seen Life of Pi, the Best Director award for Ang Lee - whose movie used a good deal of special effects - suggests again that the Academy really wanted to deny another win for Spielberg, who, ironically, was an innovator of special effects.

As for all those big musical numbers that paid tribute to Chicago (and all that jazz) and James Bond, it's obvious that the Academy will use any excuse to keep Dana Owens (Queen Latifah to you, honky!), the doyenne of Hollywood political correctness, on the Oscar ceremony guest list, and while I love Adele Adkins - Adele, sorry - as if she were my daughter, let's be honest. If your idea of a great movie musical is A Hard Day's Night, the Oscars are not for you.

Oh, yes, the Razzies. My favorite awards, them! Well, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II was the big winner (or loser) this year, and while there was plenty of stuff in that movie to make the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation (GRAF) members puke, most "GRAFers" seem to have blamed Kristen Stewart, this year's Worst Actress Razzie recipient, for their indisposition. Recent Razzie "wins" - and even some of this year's nominees (Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Lopez) - are usually about good actors giving bad performances in bad movies, but the consensus seems to be that Kristen Stewart is just plain bad, the heiress to the tradition of Madonna and Tanya Roberts. She even beat out Milla Jovovich, one of those models-turned-actresses that film critics wished had stuck to modeling, for the Worst Actress nod, as well as Katherine Heigl, who continues to strengthen the knots tying cement blocks to her once-promising movie career. And as long as Hollywood values quantity over quality (ten Best Picture nominees, guys? Really?), the GRAF will remain in business for a long, long time. It may even outlast the Tea Party movement.

And vampire romance movies are to women's cinematic tastes what Three Stooges and action movies are to men's.