Worst of the Oscars 2009

The Los Angeles Times has all the photos and hot talk about last night's Academy Awards, "Best & Worst: Oscars 2009."

I noted to a friend of mine last night, who said she wasn't even watching the broadcast, that the Oscars is the one awards show I watch all year, and since I'm something of a movie buff, I try to get fired up about it. I started discounting the wild left-wing politics of some of Hollywood's greatest actors long ago - like Sean Penn, for example, who has given some powerful perfomances in recent years, in flicks like Mystic River.

But note Andrew Breitbart's analysis of the political stakes at Hollywood's big annual event:

On Sunday night at the Kodak Theater, where Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama debated each other in front of the same prideful crowd a year earlier, the political left convened to celebrate its progressive political agenda. The Oscars communicate post-modern, post-American liberal values more effectively than elected Democratic officials themselves. The liberal establishment understands this and uses the glamorous Hollywood elite and its incessant stream of left-leaning product and promotional vehicles as its proxy messenger.

This year's cause celebre was not the ailing American work force or the heroic and underappreciated U.S. military, but an attack on California's just passed traditional marriage amendment - as represented by the white ribbon worn by pliant celebrity throngs. Dissenters in the midst dare not wear their contrarian ribbons for fear of more punitive Proposition 8 backlash.

This year Gus Van Sant and his gay marriage public service announcement "Milk," garnered eight nominations while Clint Eastwood and his objectively conservative box office titan "Gran Torino" got completely shut out. Except for the expected (and deserved) posthumous Heath Ledger best supporting actor nomination, the good-vs.-evil international sensation "The Dark Knight," also was passed over by the Academy.

Last year, 31 million American voters watched. Perhaps a few million less will tune in this off-year in cinema ....

In Charlton Heston´s last years, the Academy paid tribute not to his legendary cinematic achievements but to a Michael Moore documentary that portrayed the screen legend as a doddering fool. Alzheimer's is known to have that effect.

Have you no sense of decency, Oscar? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

God, isn't that just awful.

As I was watching last night, I kept thinking, "where're the nominations for Defiance, which should have been Best Picture, at least out of the movies I saw last year (and no offense to Slum Dog Millionaire, as I've yet to see it).

Anyway, Breitbart's comparing last night's leftist enclave of the Hollywood elite to this week's CPAC conference in Washington. He notes that the right needs to shift gears in the culture wars, and engage the left's entertainment-establishment in the arena:

My biggest fear is that later this week I will be among the legions at CPAC rearranging the furniture. Instead, the conservative movement needs to think in revolutionary terms.

And the revolution must begin in Hollywood.

More later, dear readers ...