Oscars and awards...

Last night was Oscar night. I was not sure how I was going to like it since I have not seen any of the top nominated movies. Over the years I have been going out to the movies less and less. I just don't feel the need anymore. High ticket and food prices plus people who have no regard for other people have really turned me off on the experience. I would rather wait for the dvd release. Even more so I usually wait for my library to get the dvd so I do not even have to pay for it. Eventually I probably will see all the top nominated movies this way. Maybe.

But I digress. The telecast was surprisingly good last night. Hugh Jackman did a pretty good job as host. Especially for his first time. It seems like the movie industry took a cue from the Golden Globes and even the MTV Movie Awards and lightened up their attitude. They actually seemed to have some fun. I say it was about time. The awards pretty much went as expected with Slumdog Millionaire being the big winner. The one big upset it seemed was Sean Penn winning the Best Actor award over Mickey Rourke. The fact that the majority of awards went as expected made me wonder how attuned to reality the awards are. Did the best people/picture win? Do voters make the right choice or the one they think they are suppose to make? I always wonder with award shows. Some seem to go out of their way to pick winners that no one has seen or read. It is like they want to thumb their noses at popular culture. Last night for example there were three songs nominated for best song. Two of them were from the same film. I find it really hard to believe that out of all the movies released in 2008 they could not find any other songs to nominate. I am not saying that what is popular should be picked as the best. Whatever is the best should be chosen. I just think that the process should be a little more transparent so we can judge the choices a little more rationally. After every award show the voting process should be revealed so we can see just what the actual vote counts were not only for the winners but for who made the last round. Of course that won't happen because then we would see just how restrictive the whole process is. I can dream though...