Martin Scorsese will have his revenge on Los Angeles

Inevitable thoughts on this year's Dewies:

Picks I would have made: Clint, Hilary, Annette, Kate, Cate, Clive, The Incredibles, House of Flying Daggers (for Cinematography), Before Sunrise, ESOTSM, Sideways (for script)
Hoodwinked (but not pejoratively so): Mike Leigh, Catalina Moreno Sandino, Alan Alda, Sophie Okonedo, Tupac Ressurection
Vehemently (or maybe not vehemently) opposed: Natalie Portman, The Passion of the Christ (for Cinematography), Super Size Me, The Story of the Weeping Camel, all of Film Editing except maybe Collateral, Hotel Rwanda (for script)

That's not too bad, is it? Three-fifths of the Best Actress collective I support, and I have little against everything else. Of course, this means I now have to slog through Finding Neverland, The Sea Inside, The Motorcycle Diaries (and to a less arm-twisting extent, Kinsey and Ray). And I simply cannot swallow that a group of people who are in any way technicians nominated the Film Editing lot, year in and year out the most arbitrary group of nominees on the roster. (Remember Good Will Hunting in 1997?) No ESOTSM, but fucking Neverland? (Again, haven't seen it. But no one speaks of its technical panache.)

No point going into the laundry list of pesky omissions, but Paul Giamatti's snub is...I'm speechless. Expectedly, there's some grumbling about a Sideways backlash, but it's not as though these guys sit around in dungeons and say things like, "Gentlemen, let us give Sideways everything but what it most deserves." More like the voters are sheep, which makes things more mysterious given that Giamatti is the glue of the film, and would make for a ripping good Babs interview. ("You once had the most embarrassing line in Planet of the Apes. How do you feel now?") I guess these surprises are inevtiable, but why of all people him?

Meanwhile, I'll go on pretending that Mark Wahlberg ever had a chance. (Surely the blame rests with the studios themselves, who chose not to remind voters of ESOTSM's countless four star reviews nor tried to push Huckabees' rabid originality upon -- at the very least -- the screenplay group.)

The Razzies also came out with their noms today. As usual, what a bunch of pussies. Catwoman? Alexander? George W. Bush? They don't care whose toes they step on!