Critics make much ado about Oscar

HOLLYWOOD has never been so full of nasty denunciations, agonized hand-wringing and self-important rhetoric.

But if you thought I was talking about the writers strike, you're wrong.

The loudest fussing and feuding is coming from the world of critics and Oscar prognosticators, who have been lobbing H-bombs at each other and various awards groups with alarming frequency.

Just when you think the media's intoxication with Oscar and Golden Globes buzz has finally reached a fever pitch, some new brawl breaks out that takes it to a new level of hysteria.

Current highlights include: A rant by LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas, who wrote off a string of recent best picture winners (including "The Departed," "Crash" and "American Beauty") as "thoroughly undeserving" of real achievement, then went on to dismiss Oscar soothsayers as "pseudo-journalistic white noise" taking up valuable column inches that could be devoted to legitimate film criticism.

This provoked a tart zinger from Oscar blogger Scott Feinberg on his website andthewinneris.blog.com. Feinberg asked, referring to Foundas' account of the LA Film critics' voting, "How do you have the gall to participate in an awards season vote and then criticize those of us who cover it?" That came just days before Feinberg, assessing Thursday's Golden Globe nominations, described the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. as "one of the most corrupt, pathetic, kowtowing groups of awards voters imaginable."

Not to be outdone, New York Daily News critic Jack Mathews blasted the New York Film Critics Circle, saying its voting was "corrupt" and marred by "politically-motivated" balloting.

This was followed by a piece by Time film critic Richard Corliss bemoaning the insularity of critic awards, saying "we're essentially passing notes to one another, admiring our connoisseurship at the risk of ignoring the vast audience that sees movies and the smaller one that reads us."

What on earth is going on?

First off, critics are wrestling with their waning relevance, especially when it comes to the Oscars.

The award announcements make a nice one-day headline, but the reality is that while a chorus of negative reviews can hurt a small film, if a film has a big studio campaign behind it (2001's "A Beautiful Mind" being a good example), it can survive a lot of critical brickbats.

Critic awards have little correlation to Oscar victories. You have to go back to 1993 to find a film ("Schindler's List") that was awarded best picture by both the academy and the LA Film Critics Assn.

There is also a growing tension between critics -- who take film seriously as art and are increasingly scornful of the vituperative blog culture -- and Oscar pundits, who with their wacky statistical analysis come off more like breathless racetrack tipsters than film admirers.

The root of all this evil, of course, is that everyone writes entirely too much about the Oscars (my newspaper included). With all those special issues and Oscar blogs to fill, the occasional astute observations are drowned out by the 24/7 blather.

The awards process has also been undermined by the snobbishness of academy voters, who seem to have forgotten that the Oscars are just as much about craft as high seriousness.