This year's Oscar idiocy

If the Academy Award nominations have seldom seemed less exciting and relevant, it's not just because we're all distracted by terror alerts and the prospect of war.

The choices themselves offer a thumb-in-the-eye for ordinary movie goers, who this year flocked to see a number of high-quality, crowd-pleasing films – all of which might have been legitimate Oscar contenders: "My Big, Fat Greek Wedding," "We Were Soldiers," "Signs," "Spider-Man," "Catch Me if You Can." The Academy largely overlooked these films, operating on the dubious but durable theory that "any movie that the public adores doesn't deserve attention from us."

The only major box office hit that also received serious Academy attention was "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," and that great film, despite even warmer reviews and more ticket sales than its predecessor, got less than half the nominations of "Fellowship of the Ring," and far less prestigious consideration. This time around, the Academy failed to recognize the heroic achievement of director Peter Jackson, instead nominating the flamboyantly gay and terminally eccentric Spaniard Pedro Almodovar for his disturbing and hypnotic view of illness and obsession, "Talk To Her."

In fact, Almodovar's surprise inclusion in the Best Director category highlights one of the most striking features of this year's nominations: the Oscars ceremony is almost always gala, but it's safe to say that it's never been so gay.

The Advocate, America's most prestigious homosexual magazine, published a list of the 10 top gay films for 2002, and seven of those 10 emerged as major Oscar contenders. "The Hours," nominated for Best Picture and nine other awards, features relentless gay content: focusing on the past relationship between AIDS-afflicted poet Ed Harris (nominated for Best Supporting Actor) and Jeff Daniels, as well as the current love between Meryl Streep and her companion, Allison Janney. Meanwhile, one of the dramatic highlights in this absurdly over-rated extravaganza involves the passionate kiss between suicidal housewife Julianne Moore (nominated for Best Supporting Actress) and her chirpy neighbor, Toni Colette.

In the Best Actress category, Salma Hayek won a nomination for playing the Stalinist, bisexual painter Frida Kahlo in "Frida," as did Julianne Moore, as a suburban wife coping with her husband's newly discovered gay identity in "Far From Heaven."

Even "Lilo & Stitch," the kiddie film from Disney nominated for Best Animated Feature, drew endorsement from The Advocate because it represented the work of "out" gay filmmakers.

The other "minority" emphasized among these nominations would be Hispanics, with Mexican-born Salma Hayek competing for Best Actress, Spaniard Pedro Almodovar nominated for both Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, and Mexicans Carlos and Alfonso Cuaron chosen for Best Original Screenplay for "Y Tu Mama Tambien" – about two teen-aged boys who finally get the chance for a threesome with a gorgeous older woman, but unaccountably prefer to make love to one another.

It's absurd, of course, to suggest that these prominent nominations for people who speak Spanish represent some sort of "racial triumph" – since the half-Arab Salma Hayek, and the light-skinned European Almodovar would seem to share almost nothing in terms of ethnic ancestry. At least any claims that this represents Hollywood's "Year of the Latino" (the way that last time we had "The Year of the Black" with Halle Berry and Denzel Washington winning top Oscars) will only highlight the patently absurd idea that there is, or ever has been, such a thing as an "Hispanic race."

The nomination of the eloquent (but overlong) holocaust drama "The Pianist" for many top awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Adapted Screenplay) demonstrates once again that Hollywood will much more readily forgive sexual crimes than political incorrectness. Veteran director Roman Polanski won't be able to appear in person to collect any awards he wins since he left the United States as a fugitive some 30 years ago, facing charges for seducing a 13-year-old girl in Jack Nicholson's hot tub.

If Polanski wins, no one in the Hollywood establishment will fail to stand as part of his ovation, but when the Academy presented an honorary Oscar to the great director Elia Kazan ("On the Waterfront," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn") many luminaries refused to honor him because he had condemned Stalinism (and his own past involvement in the Communist Party) in the 1950s. Apparently in Tinseltown, it's worse to tell the truth about communism than to molest little girls.

The foolish elitism inherent in this year's awards helps to dampen the response from the public – all of the movies nominated for Best Picture were released in December, and four of the five received only very limited release in Los Angeles and New York. Even with the best intentions in the world, it would be difficult for everyday Americans to feel too excited about movies they haven't seen.

Scheduled for March 23, the Oscars will go on, says the Academy, whether or not we're at war in Iraq at that time. In fact, this timing should provide powerful motivation for President Bush to get on with the Iraqi campaign: If we've invaded the country by March 23, the Hollywood hot shots will express "support" for our troops and "compassion" for the suffering Iraqis, but at least they won't offer foreign-policy advice, or solidarity with the French-German "Axis of Weasel." In fact, the best news about another annoying Oscar year (does anyone recall last year's triumph for the forgettable and feckless "A Beautiful Mind"?) is that no French or German (or Belgian) production was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, or any other significant Oscar.

No wonder that the French foreign minister now wants to delay the whole ceremony until the Oscar inspectors have a chance to do their job.