et’s face it, after 85 years, the Oscars have become a bit
of a joke. The awards show is too long (2002’s production
ran an ungodly 4 hours and 23 minutes), with bad hosts
(ahem, Anne Hathaway and James Franco) and the win-
ners (and the nominations) are all-too-predictable (Steven Spielberg
and Meryl Streep seem to be at least nominated every year, even
when they don’t have a fi lm in the running). When’s the last time
you saw a comedy or sci-fi fi lm nominated for Best Picture?
They lack diversity to the point of being embarrassing; accord-
ing to a 2012 Los Angeles Times study, 94 percent of Oscar voters
are white and 77 percent are male. And lets not forget to mention
the preceding, frenzied circus of “Oscar buzz” — press junkets,
nip slips, wardrobe malfunctions and the ubiquitous “Who are you
wearing?”
The Academy Awards are about everything but the art of fi lm. So
forget the Oscars, or turn it into a game (e.g. drink every time new
host Seth MacFarlane tells an offensive joke). Here at EW, we still
really love fi lm, without all the spectacle, and thus we proudly pres-
ent 2012’s Top Movies (many of which were not nominated). We
would not like to thank the Academy …
L
WES ANDERSON’S MOONRISE KINGDOM
12
February 21, 2013 • eugeneweekly.com