This isn’t going to be one of those Oscar recaps that demands to know why Farrah wasn’t mentioned during the “In Memoriam” segment.  Nor will I dwell overlong on an even more profound snub, in which Michelle Pfeiffer, as the Belle Époque courtesan Léa in Stephen Frears’ Cheri, gave a better performance than all five Best Actress nominees—and the guys too—combined, yet this apparently failed to register with the Academy.  Instead I come to talk to you about—but wait, that was a fantastic John Hughes tribute wasn’t it?  They could show that last scene of Sixteen Candles, with Molly Ringwald kissing Jake Ryan—I mean Michael Schoeffling—over her flaming birthday cake, fifty times a week and I would never tire of it.  If they had trundled out Michael Schoeffling onto the stage for the Hughes salute instead of, say, Jon Cryer, I would actually have left this mortal coil and ascended into heaven, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels way.  So yes, the Oscars is always a case of missed opportunity and tears shed over spilled milk.

But let’s talk about doubling up.  Me and other elderly Oscar fans have been all up in arms about the new bylaw of the Academy that allowed them to name ten nominees for the Best Picture category.  As long as I’ve watched the show, there’s been only 5 for best picture, just like for every other category (except that phony one where they give awards to top makeup experts), and now all of a sudden there are 10.  Grandma called me, however, after reading a particularly Swiftian harangue from me on my Facebook page, and explained that when she was a girl in the 1930s and through World War II, they would nominate as many pictures as they felt like, sometimes a dozen!  People often say 1939 was the greatest year in classic Hollywood studio production, so I looked back in ye ole Guinness Book to see what films were nominated in that year.  Ah so!  Gone with the Wind, Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights.  Hmm, not so great.  People in 1939 seemed, just like today, to admire “class” above every other consideration.  So how would it shake down in 2010, when thank God, that awful Weinstein Miramax seems to have left us?  Weinstein/Miramax was always your bellwether for classy films with Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, and for fifteen years they’ve ruined the Oscars.  Now we are free, free to enjoy the results of what happens when “class” is no longer going to be factor #1.  I suppose bleakly enough, the market will continue to rule film production, and that the industry-sponsored Oscars will continue to show this, more or less indiscreetly.

This year it was that picture with Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer as the Tolstoys.  And also what about that Young Victoria picture that won something—costumes?  There has never been a good biopic produced in Hollywood, and that includes The Blind Side too, but the ones with people speaking in English accents have got to be the worst.