That’s the lens through which I’ve seen the Oscars ever since, and I don’t think that reviewer was too far away from you (or me) on this one.

Well said! Because a huge investment that employs massive numbers of special effects folks and calls itself Transformers, does not mean it is transforming–or even a bit mind altering. What I think is that money thrown at B movies should be called B Plus (bucks).The language of Film criticism needs some redefining in a digital value system post Warhol with no McLuhan around to set things in order. Twilight might top the Softcore Creature category. Remember the original impact of Aliens and compare? Fun column, well done–

Instead, the real-life Oscars find themselves hopelessly trapped in the middle, endorsing calculated middlebrow pablum that everybody involved knows is a big pile of unmemorable meh.

That crystallizes the problem with the Oscars exactly. Everyone knows an “Oscar movie”, and it has become something that is neither popular nor particularly good.

Some unexpected nominations still sneak in (Tree of Life surprised me), and there seems to be a laughable choice almost every year (The Blind Side was nominated for Best Picture. I don’t know that I will ever get over that.), but by and large, an Oscar movie is an Oscar movie. Middlebrow pablum that everybody involved knows is a big pile of unmemorable meh.

I don’t quite say the hell with it. I’m as professionally interested in the outcome as anybody else who covers this business for a living, and as my editor recently observed, the Oscars are quite a bit like the Republican presidential contest. Just because the whole thing’s a charade doesn’t mean that nobody cares, or that we can ignore it.

But, for the love of Jesus, the Oscars can be ignored, and because there would be no significant detriment to our society, government, schools, healthcare systems – even the quality of movies might improve – if we did such a thing, then I think they should be ignored. The sooner the better.

Oscar voters are picking the movies that make people who work in the film industry feel better about what they do[...] I say the hell with it.

Whatever Salon is paying Andrew O’Hehir, it’s not enough. This is gold.

I preferred the show Siskel and Ebert used to run, “If We Chose the Oscars.” In those shows, they would both argue for their choices and explain why they voted the way they did. In other words, the show was an educational lesson in critical thinking; they showed there could be intelligent criterion for liking or disliking a film and the film’s elements.

I think that last sentence needs to be inverted (and altered) somewhat — over the past few decades, the mass moviegoing audience has wandered increasingly far from that of the American public as a whole, devolving into a demographic of teens and adolescents who love CGI, sequels and superhero comic adaptations. Asking that group who visits the multiplex each weekend to accept the sophistication of most Oscar-nominated fare is simply asking for trouble.

Oscar has traditionally made blunders, such as choosing the wrong William Powell movie, “The Great Ziegfeld,” over the nominated “Libeled Lady” as best picture of 1936. (Another Powell movie, “My Man Godfrey” — perhaps the greatest screwball comedy ever made, whether the Kate Hepburn crowd likes to admit it or not — would have been an even better choice, but it wasn’t nominated despite having entries in all four acting categories.) But at least in those days, the filmgoing audience comprised virtually the entire age spectrum, whereas today, relatively few adults over 35 go to movies unless they live in big cities or college towns.

The idea of giving an award based on popularity is akin to replacing the Mona Lisa with a Farah Fawcett poster.