- April 26, 2024
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Like any self-respecting movie fan, when the Oscars aired on Sunday, I did anything else in the world but watch them.
“You win the award for Best Potted Herb Purchased at a Grocery Store,” I whispered to my basil plant, gently pouring water onto its stems, using this precious time to catch up on chores. “And the award for Best Appliance goes to (I did a mouth drum-roll then swung open the closet doors): Vacuum!”
And then I vacuumed.
Often in my life, people have foolishly mistaken my extraordinary ability to form, argue for, vehemently defend and never back down from my opinions as being “judgmental.” But the distinction between judging and opining on any and everything, for me, couldn’t be starker. Sure, I’ll form ideas about movies all day long, and I’ll gently explain to you why yours are wrong-headed and stupid. But to sit through the Academy Awards would be some kind of passive admittance that one movie is inherently “better” than another. That’s a judgment. And I’m in it for the debate, not the decision.
Spraying antibacterial mist onto my kitchen countertops (the countertops were nominated for but didn’t win the award for Best Hard Surface in my Home, losing in an upset to my bathroom vanity), and then wiping them down, I thought about all the people out there who will flock to the theater this week to catch this year’s Best Picture winner before it hits DVD.
Sad, isn’t it — all those people blindly following the be-all-end-all collective word of the Academy?
It would be so much easier if they all just blindly followed me.
Running a Swiffer duster through the blinds (which were snubbed even of a nomination by the academy [me] in this year’s chore-centric Anti-Oscar Award Ceremony, became the center of a lot of gossip and bad press from the Home Décor pundits [also me] in my home), I thought about how I haven’t seen “American Hustle” or “12 Years a Slave” — so let’s just say those movies are wastes of time and move on, OK? Here’s all you need to know about the rest of the year’s nominees.
“Before Midnight” and “Gravity” — now those are two you’ve got to see before the Oscar hype dissolves and you don’t care enough anymore to hit a Redbox. And “Wolf of Wall Street”? I love Marty Scorsese and Leo DeCaprio, but the best thing about this one was Jonah Hill and his teeth. So, meh. Just meh.
No doubt Roger Ebert (RIP) would have concurred with my critical analysis here.
And that’s it, everything you need to know about last year in film. And it only took about, what, 10 seconds to read? I just saved you three hours.
Send thank you gifts to Mike Cavaliere / 1 Florida Park Drive N., Unit 103 / Palm Coast, Fla. 32137. And rest assured: They’ll get here safely. Rumor has it the mailman just won Best Action Sequence for the time he delivered a box of wine glasses to my house without breaking a single one in transit.
