Oscar Hangover

Wow, this is pretty lame even for Oscar voters. The embargo against animated films being nominated best Best Picture continues (sorry, Wall-E), and the voters are above the low-class origins of The Dark Knight but not above the archaic corn of Slumdog Millionaire. There can be only so many slots for indie offerings, so Wendy and Lucy and Sally Hawkins were out; glad about Melissa Leo, though. The audience helped Benjamin Button score big, and critics helped Slumdog. The top-drawer nods for The Reader surely had something to do with affection for the late Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, right? But even The Reader feels less obligatory than Frost/Nixon, a movie that would probably be dead by now if it had opened wide in December. Nice strategy there. At this point, I just want to see Jerry Lewis’s acceptance speech for the Humanitarian Award.

I talked with KUOW’s Steve Scher a few hours after the noms were announced; that hour-long call-in show is here. For the Academy’s list, go here.