..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

3 DAYS TO GO
One More for The Road

"Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is"

Less than 100 hours to go… and everyone is just about at the end of their lovely ropes. There is nothing else to do but to suit up, show up, and try not to mess up. The ballots are cast, the question has been answered - even if the count is not yet complete - and the parade is about to pass by. Please do not feed the monkeys.

A last minute run at messing up the Crash party happened on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the Original Song from Crash was rumored and rumored hard to have really been written for a still unsold film that is most notable for opening with Patrick Warburton's full frontal puddy flopping around on screen. As it turns out, the song was written in collaboration with Paul Haggis and there are dated e-mails to prove it. So much for that drama.

The Publicists Guild gave out their annual awards on Wednesday, recognizing Tim Menke, who was recently unkindly dumped by The New Paramount under new management, Fox's work on Walk The Line, and unretireable retirees Bob Dowling and Army Archerd. The big talk in the small room was, of course, the ongoing saga of Paranoiamount, Empathy/Universal, and DreamEveryoneStillWorks. The most unfortunate moment of the day was a misread of the nominees for the film candidates with Good Night, And Good Luck unmentioned while non-nom King Kong was announced as a nominee. With due respect to a great job by the team at Fox, if I had a vote, I think among the nominees, Laura Kim & Crew did more with less than anyone this year. Again, loved the Walk The Line opening campaign. But the fact that we are still talking about GN&GL is really a pleasant shock.

The saddest part of this season, for me, has been the lack of true passion and the many spurts of negative energy ahead of positive energy. It has been my experience that the people who are most interested in accusing others of taking sides or campaigning are usually the most interested in taking sides and campaigning. But that doesn't bother me as much as the "tear it down" attitude that some have. Anyone who claims to take pride in a film not doing as well as its supporters hoped it would is, simply, pathetic. And to encourage that nihilistic attitude with any form of support is the best explanation for why it continues. Too often, we get what we ask for.

The Oscars are not a science… they aren't brain surgery… they aren't The Truth. They are a very large variation on a kid's sporting event. Everyone who is on the team gets to play. You can root for your kid, but don't stick your leg out into the field of play to trip an opposing player or curse at the other kids on your child's team for not playing hard enough. It would be naïve not to recognize that there is a whole industry built up around this event. God knows MCN benefits from it. But the spirit gets lost too easily and too often. Discourse has become dis' coarse… and that is a loss for everyone.

Technology added a bit to the fun this last week when the Oscar nominated Live Action Shorts turned up on iTunes for $1.99 a pop. There was no package price, but I guess they figured that any of us who would pay for one or two would pay for them all… and that no one else would buy any of the films. Still, it gave us all a chance to see all five films and, hopefully by next year, there will be a pre-nomination grouping of shorts with potential and then a package of all the short nominees.

What really struck me about the live action shorts is that all of them showed that their directors have real potential in the future, though I can also say that I would be willing to guess which of the directors will end up in TV and which ones will be in features. Our Time Is Up is a Kevin Pollack comedy with a bittersweet twist. The Runaway is a bittersweet twist that is inevitable from the start, but still very well made. Cashback is a bit schizo, with a very brought comedy about the boredom of menial work that segues into a fascinating idea about how men see women, though I would have been happier with an expansion of either half rather than having both. Six Shooter is a drama about loss through death. And The Last Farm is a long, tough, though interesting slog.

And so we come near to the end. It will be nice to find and fall in love with a movie (V For Vendetta is first on my 2006 list) without someone comparing it to how I feel about some other movie. And as exhausted I am by thinking about most of the 2005 films at this point, I look forward to tasting them all again in a few months, free from the heat of the race, and enjoying them simply as movies again.

I have purposely not written a 2006 Oscar Race column. I know what the current contenders are… and so do many of you. But someone has to say, "no," now and again or we just keep rolling downhill. And the joy is uphill. Right?

The excitement of 2006 is Scorsese, Inarritu, Eastwood, Coppola., DePalma, Fincher, Soderbergh, DeNiro, Condon, Taymor, Forster, Gibson, Gondry, Stone, Greengrass, and Snakes On A Plane. Bring it on. (And apologies to all I forgot. I'm waiting for you, too.)

Last Week's Oscar Chart

1 Week To Oscar
2 Weeks To Oscar
3 Weeks To Oscar
The Nominations Special
6 Weeks To Oscar
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10 Weeks To Oscar
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31 Weeks To Oscar
2004 Oscar Columns

- Email David Poland