Oscar night is The Big Night in Hollywood. You may watch it to cheer for your favourite movie, or to see if you've lost your office pool again or, more likely, to see all the big stars gathered in one room and on the red carpet.
Regardless, it's a night of glamour, of star gazing, speech making accompanied by a good bits of live TV in what is a very scripted night.
But there's also room for surprise. This year, we'll will be watching a few Canadian representatives, including Paul Haggis for Crash and the documentary Murderball.
And of course, is this may be the left-leaning Oscars. With Jon Stewart hosting and with Brokeback Mountain pegged as a favourite, many will be seeing if Hollywood will be making a political statement (in addition to the usual fashion statement).
But it's about the movies, right? Well, that's what we hope as we brought one of our film critics, Liam Lacey, on-line.
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See the full list of nominees and, while you're at it, see how your top picks rank against other readers. Plus, read how our film critics rated the top films of 2005 at our Academy Awards page.
Liam Lacey has been a film critic for The Globe and Mail for more than 10 years and is also a contributor to Entertainment Weekly's Critical Mass column.
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Kenny Yum, globeandmail.com: Thanks for joining us Liam. You've already laid out for us your top picks for the big categories. I'd like to start off by following up on what we've talked about before in a previous discussion. How would you describe this year in the Oscars -- a lack of blockbusters in the Best Picture lineup. Tell us a bit about the top movies and is this a blip on the Oscar map?
Liam Lacey: To put the current Oscars in context, it would help to have been in the critics' screening rooms during the first nine months of last year when so many of the movies were terrible. I'm not talking about Deuce Bigalow or The Dukes of Hazzard, but Kingdom of Heaven, Stealth, Bewitched and so on. It became clear that the only two possible contenders before the fall were Cinderella Man, which was doubtful, and Crash, which was okay though not great. The news was the box office slump and the much-repeated headline was "It's the movies, stupid." The movies that came out in the fall were better but people just weren't going in the same numbers any more. Capote, Brokeback Mountain and Good Night, and Good Luck were definitely better, all very worthy movie made for under $15-million without major stars in the leads.
So, they were critics' favourites but not popular hits. As for Munich, I'm not sure how it got in there, apart from Steven Spielberg's clout and the idea that, somehow, it had something to say about how vengeance doesn't make you happy. So, we've ended up with this very political year of movies that aren't popular choices and by the summer, we'll be back to a series of popcorn flicks, often based on comic books. It's a strange time though I can't say I'm sorry that the Oscars are, relatively, quite credible this year. They also reflect the great political divide in the United States right now. Hollywood's definitely a blue state of mind, perhaps even more so in the second term of President Bush.
