Oscar Roundup '05

Jesse Walker | February 28, 2005

Best Picture went to Million Dollar Baby, an assisted-suicide movie. Best Foreign Film went to The Sea Inside, an assisted-suicide movie. Conservatives are upset that there were no awards for The Passion of the Christ, their own assisted-suicide movie.

Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind won well-deserved Best Screenplay awards, demonstrating yet again that the writing categories are where the Academy votes its conscience. The least deserved award went to The Aviator's Cate Blanchett: Her impression of Katherine Hepburn was right up there with Martin Short's, but if you want to honor acting you should have given the prize to Virginia Madsen.

I'm sure that Martin Scorsese is disappointed he didn't get an Oscar for The Aviator, his Howard Hughes biopic. But I think Hughes himself would have been satisfied with those aerial shots of Sidney Lumet's daughters.