Oscar Roundup 2010

I haven't seen The Hurt Locker, so I'm not sure whether Kathryn Bigelow's success tonight really reflected the merits of her movie or if it was just the Academy's way of apologizing for snubbing Point Break. But there were some clear-cut winners and losers at the Oscars this year, and as we sit here wondering when Beau Bridges will finally take home a golden statuette we should take a moment to recognize those victories and defeats:

Winner: randomly selected black actors. Whenever someone from Precious won an award, the camera would zoom in on the people who made and starred in the movie. And then it would show us any black face it could find, whether or not they had anything to do with the picture. Unless Morgan Freeman and Samuel L. Jackson had cameos that no one told me about.

Loser: randomly selected blue actors. In the future, people who believed a genre movie about an extraterrestrial Blue Man Group would do well at the Academy Awards will be viewed with the same bewilderment as people who believed Chairman Mao was building a better breed of democracy in China.

Winner: my teenaged years. When an Ingmar Bergman or a Billy Wilder dies, he gets a few seconds in the annual death montage. When John Hughes dies, he gets a tribute that was probably longer than some of the nominees in the short film categories. Apparently, my generation now runs Hollywood.

Loser: my middle-aged years. At the end of the tribute, they trotted out all those actors and actresses who had starred in Hughes' movies and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD THEY'RE OLD. THAT MEANS I'M OLD. I'M HALFWAY TO THE GRAVE AND I'VE BARELY STARTED LIVING. WHY, LORD, WHY?

Winner: James Cameron. Because he stopped beating his wife.

Loser: Hannibal Lecter. An actress informed us tonight that no horror movie has won an Oscar since The Exorcist, a statement that airbrushes The Silence of the Lambs out of history. It won Best Picture, people. I know you wish you gave the prize to Point Break that year, but you missed your chance.