Oscar hype doesn’t mean quality films

For those who aren’t aware, the Academy Awards are nothing but a ceremony devoted to honoring the year’s most overrated performers, their directors and their respective movies.

It should then be no surprise that the honey of the bunch nominated in this year’s categories shall be awarded to art-house films bent on winning Oscars (“The Hours”), crowd-pleasing money makers (“The Two Towers”) or just plain pathetic, overdrawn garbage (“Gangs of New York”).

Many of the films nominated are not bad films. They just aren’t as good as they’re hyped to be. Granted, there are some interesting races going on in some categories, with nominees who are well worth the consideration. Unfortunately, this list is sparse and short-sided compared to those who deserve to be there instead.

There were quite a few arrogant snubs on this year’s ballot. Take, for instance, the two best Hollywood films of the year: “Adaptation” and “Far From Heaven.” Each film received only four Oscar nominations, while the love-it-or-hate-it “Gangs” stabbed away with 10.

Praisers of “Far From Heaven” have loudly criticized the Academy for the lack of nominating Dennis Quaid, who is good, but the movie is driven by the supporting role of Julianne Moore’s love interest, played by Dennis Haysbert. “Adaptation” was successful in its acting nominations (it deserves every one of them), but was atrociously ignored in the picture and director nominations.

Here are the two best things about this year’s Oscars: “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” only having one nomination (original screenplay — originality ironically being far from this stinker) and Cameron Diaz not being nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Madonna should flatter herself after watching Diaz in “Gangs.”

The multiple nominations for “Gangs” is undoubtedly the work of Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax, who spends a fortune on advertising dollars during the awards season to get his company-helmed titles nominated. These nominations sometimes translate into upset wins — did anyone really think “Shakespeare in Love” was going to beat “Saving Private Ryan” four years ago?

Weinstein’s got a real problem this year, however — four of the five best picture nominees are movies that were either co-produced by Miramax or produced by Weinstein himself.

The Academy Awards have become “The Harvey Weinstein Show,” with Big Harv standing above the stage of the Kodak Theatre with his puppets dangling from his fingers.

The Academy Awards could also be aired on CourtTV — does anyone want to tune in to the ‘Dreamworks vs. Miramax’ case? Since 1996 (with the exception of “Titanic” winning in 1998), every film that has won best picture has been produced by either one of these companies (a 3-2 lead for Dreamworks).

It’s a showdown between seasoned vet Martin Scorsese for “Gangs” and first-timer Rob Marshall for “Chicago.” Forget what you’ve heard about Scorsese and this being “his year.” Scorsese has deserved to win several times before (especially for 1990’s “GoodFellas”), but “Gangs” lacks the sentiment of his past work. Besides, Marshall won the Director’s Guild of America award, which is basically a sure lock for this award.

For best actor, it’s between Jack Nicholson in “About Schmidt” and Daniel Day-Lewis in “Gangs.” “Schmidt” was only nominated in one other category, and though Nicholson is an Academy favorite (12 nominations, three wins) and won the Golden Globe, he has some tough competition. Day-Lewis won the BAFTA and the SAG awards and has dominated the critics’ circles awards. Tough call, but give the edge to Day-Lewis.

Renee Zellweger pulled a 180 on the pollsters and predictors when she won the SAG last Sunday. She has a better chance than people realize. For one, she’s riding the “Chicago” train, which will sweep, and also won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Nicole Kidman won for the Best Actress in a Drama Globe and the BAFTA, and since the Academy leans heavily on the drama rather than the lighthearted stuff, she may still pull it off.

Julianne Moore, however, gave the performance of the year, winning almost all of the critics’ awards. Unfortunately, the critics don’t vote for the Academy. Moore deserves it, but she’ll probably lose to Kidman, who was not that great in “The Hours” — she was put in scenes where her supporting players overacted, thus making her all the more radiant. Otherwise, they’re awarding Kidman for staring at something and looking sad, distraught or unhappy. Therefore, they should throw away the award to the throw-away nominee — Diane Lane in the painfully ridiculous “Unfaithful.”

Chris Cooper’s role in “Adaptation” should garner him an Oscar. All of the other nominees are great, but do not hold the momentum Cooper possesses.

Ed “Woulda Shoulda Coulda” Harris has been nominated before (and was robbed in 1998 for his role in “The Truman Show”), but his role in “The Hours” was very artificial, perhaps one of the weakest roles in the entire movie.

Paul Newman was magnificent in “Road to Perdition,” but the film lacks any other major nominations.

The most interesting race of the year is for Best Supporting Actress. Meryl Streep has rarely been more electric than in “Adaptation,” and hasn’t won since 1982’s “Sophie’s Choice.” If she doesn’t win this year, she’ll keep her status as the Susan Lucci of the Oscars.

Streep has some serious competition, though the odds are still in her favor — Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah, both in “Chicago,” could split the vote. Zeta-Jones won the BAFTA and the SAG, which makes her a larger threat.

Moore has a chance for her work in “The Hours,” especially if she lost the Best Actress Oscar. Moore gave two great performances this year, picking up her third and fourth nominations, and her nomination in this category will give the Academy the advantage of awarding the two actresses receiving the most praise this year.

Kathy Bates wasn’t in “About Schmidt” nearly enough — she was almost better than Nicholson — though this isn’t her year to pick up her second Oscar.

With all of that said, Streep will probably nab her third Oscar, but Zeta-Jones is worthy of a surprise win.

For Adapted Screenplays, “Adaptation” owns the oxymoron of being the most original adaptation in perhaps all of Academy history.

It surely deserves the award (and expect it to win if Cooper and Streep win their awards), but the only true opposition here is “The Hours,” a Best Picture nominee that if Oscar tradition is held, will win. I don’t count on it, though.

75th annual Oscars celebrate the year’s most offensive, mediocre film releases

By Tim Kearns

Daily Staff Writer

First things first, I’d like to thank Miramax head honcho Harvey Weinstein, without whom nothing is possible. Secondly, I’d like to thank my hairdresser, my wonderful agent and my wife, what’s-her-name.

Get used to hearing that. There will be, at minimum, three-and-a-half hours of such thanks, lauded to people who apparently played an integral part in being selected as the finest whatever by the cabal known as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

While the Academy is loath to nominate mediocre films (read: “Chocolat”) because Miramax apparently has nuclear weapons, this year, oddly enough, the best film is actually from Miramax.

But their potent powers of mind control haven’t ceased, somehow bringing nominations for the blatantly offensive and offensively mediocre “The Hours” and Martin Scorsese’s beloved mess, “Gangs of New York.” But rather than harp on such injustices, there are worse ones out there.

The Best Actor category is the first example that springs to mind. First things first, I have to state that I believe all Nicolas Cage performances deserve capital punishment more than awards, so you can cross him off my voting list. With him goes Adrien Brody in “The Pianist,” who deserves accolades, but certainly not a nomination, for his mostly disaffected performance in Roman Polanski’s film.

Richard Gere, on the other hand, deserved a nomination as either Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor, since the line between the two is certainly blurred following Denzel Washington’s win last year. After Gere, Hugh Grant offered what is probably the most superb and important performance of the year by singlehandedly car rying “About a Boy” on his back. Leonardo DiCaprio has several Oscars on the way for his excellent performance in “Catch Me If You Can,” but instead, he’ll have to wait for “Titanic II,” when, no doubt, he will secure a statue for a worthless performance.

In Best Actress, the selections are equally undaring, aiming directly at movies manufactured for the Academy. In doing so, they neglected one of the most bizarre yet sincere portrayals of the year, Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Secretary.” No surprise here, since the Academy always aims for movies designed to win Oscars for their actresses, like “Frida,” “Far From Heaven” and “The Hours.” Choosing from those nominated, Nicole Kidman seems like a shoo-in, mostly just because she actually won the Oscar last year, and this is a year of sympathy.

Supporting Actor is possibly the most woefully nominated category of the year. Though those who are nominated at least somewhat fail to infuriate me, they hardly show much insight. An entirely new list could be created without any significant injustice.

John C. Reilly is a good choice — the Academy just chose the wrong movie. He’s solid in “Chicago,” but his screen presence is pretty unimportant. Rather, he should be picked for his performance in the otherwise middling “The Good Girl.” He nails that role and keeps the movie from falling into the hands of Jake Gyllenhaal.

Christopher Walken gives a good performance in “Catch Me If You Can,” but is a dark horse at best. Other nominees for your consideration: Phillip Seymour Hoffman in “Punch-drunk Love,” Thomas Kretschmann for “The Pianist,” and Kenneth Branagh in a shockingly good performance in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”

The Supporting Actress category is a crap shoot. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kathy Bates, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore were obvious choices, so the only person who’s out of the question is Queen Latifah, mostly because her role wasn’t significant enough to compete with the others.

At Best Director, it becomes totally obvious that “The Lord of the Rings” almost didn’t get nominated for Best Picture and has no chance whatsoever of winning, since director Peter Jackson didn’t even get a nomination. The likelihood of it pulling a “Driving Miss Daisy” is practically zero. The down side is that they replaced Jackson with so-called auteur and overly-acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, perpetrator of such Academy Award-winning cinematic crimes as “All About My Mother.”

As much as it pains me to say this, a better candidate would have been Steven Spielberg, either for “Minority Report” or the tremendous “Catch Me If You Can.” Frankly, the Academy needs to learn to reward him for making good movies, because if not, expect another “Lost World: Jurassic Park” or “AI: Artificial Intelligence” in the near future.

Though Rob Marshall is the obvious favorite, some are pushing for Scorsese to win for Weinstein’s direction. Frankly, my guess is that Polanski might sneak this one out while the others are all glaring at Stephen Daldry for making “Billy Elliot.”

In other categories, there are few surprises. Once again, in the Best Film Editing category, we see the people voting just scribbled down their Best Picture nominees. “The Pianist” was edited to minimize the emotional impact and cut the film’s value in half.

“Gangs of New York” may not have been edited at all, and if it was, it was most certainly not by Thelma Schoonmaker. The obvious favorite would be “Chicago” in this category, simply because it seems a likely Best Picture winner.

The Original Screenplay battle is frighteningly bad, which is unsurprising considering that most of the top films of the year were based on books or plays. Almodovar might win this for “Talk to Her,” but “Gangs of New York” may score its big victory in this category. There are clearly some films that should have been considered, like Woody Allen’s underappreciated comedy “Hollywood Ending” or even Michael Moore’s very well-written documentary “Bowling for Columbine.”

So no matter how the Oscars turn out, there will be some big disappointments, mostly that so many of us will have wasted somewhere between 210 and 300 minutes of our life watching them only to discover that the best picture is actually “Mr. Deeds” or “The Master of Disguise.”

But we also will all score a major victory this year, thanks to the presence of Steve Martin and the absence of Whoopi Goldberg as host of the awards ceremony. And for that, I would definitely like to thank you-know-who — Harvey Weinstein.