2007 Oscars - Ellen makes Britney hair jokes,world crumbles

Comfy, down-home, just so pleasant Ellen DeGeneres is hosting the Oscars shortly and as the world crumbles and the US moves closer and closer to Roman Empire style fascism (we even get the word from their use of fasces - for god's sake, i think they're even on the back of the dime!!!) wouldn't it be great if in between the Anna Nicole and James Brown aren' t buried yet jokes, and the Britney shaving her head and in and out of rehab daily jokes, wouldn't it be great if daughter of N'awlins DeGeneres took the Smirking Chimp to task and asked point-blank why he and his administration have forsaken the people and the city of New Orleans??? I bet she'd get a standing ovation. After reading last week about pallettes of money airlifted to Iraq and subsequently disappearing, it is clear that our Iraq policy is like an eating disorder, binge and surge, binge and surge. With the same dire results - unhealthiness leading to premature death. And still Guiliani leads any Democrat in winning in 2008!!!
With that note, on to the Oscars.
I saw almost everything nominated for almost every category this year - thanks to screenings at the Arclight and studio DVDs. So here goes:
Best Picture - Sadly, the single Best Picture last year was Children of Men and Cuaron was the Best Director. But the geniuses at that studio released it around Xmas (Santa loves a post-apocalyptic thinker) which was too late for the top reviewers to even include it in the Best of Lists at year's end. Que Lastima, Senor Cuaron. So instead, Letters from Iwo Jima gets the "Eastwood knows what war really is" vote, which is almost an anti-war vote. 62 years after WWII we get a film from the enemy POV. This means, of course, that in 2069, the Repiblican Party will finally understand the first thing about the Middle East/the Muslim World. Prepare for 6 decades of death and destruction. Babel is the ultimate multicultural document but we get beaten over the head with the constant theme of "we don't hear each other, we don't listen to each other". If the powers of Hollywood llisten to their housekeepers and nannies, this wins in a runaway. But they don't. They have yet to hear or listen to their many Marias and Luis's. In a year of humanity and humanizing films, the Queen, or rather, the person of the Queen of England, is far too inhuman to win. Picture, that is. Mirren is a lock for Best Actress. But that's for later. Little Miss Sunshine might just spliut the important votes and sneak in but too many people in L.A. can spell pastiche. So, no go. So it's Scorsese, for a minor work, after getting jobbed for all the major ones. The Departed is at best a "crowd pleaser" (thanks, Alex) and features the two most egregious moments in a Marty Eyebrows film - that lame shot of the rat at the end (WE GET IT! WE GET IT! IT'S A MOVIE ABOUT RATS!!!) and the scene with Leo in the doorway and Vera Famigna (apologies for spelling) actually says something like, "You look so vulnerable", taking us out of the movie completely and into the heads of teenage fan magazines and Leo's agents. But The Departed it is.
Best Director - Or not. Can they give the Best Picture to Clint's film but Best Director to Marty? Watch them do the opposite - Best Picture to Marty but Best Director to Clint. The man's a 100 and he made 2 movies at once. And he plays jazz piano.
Just watch. As Art Fleming used to say on Jeopardy, Stephen Frears, Paul Greengrass, Alejandro Inarrittu, just watching.