Oscar! Oscar! Oscar!

Not unlike Oakland: There's no hair there
It is certainly fun watching and predicting who will win an Academy Award. Unfortunately, some "film critics" see this as merely an opportunity to get a big fat blurb on a movie poster. Something like, "the Academy is going to eat this one up", or that this is an "incredible film that will surely be talked a lot about during Oscar season." Of course, I didn't make these up--I didn't have to. Ben Lyons went to the little trouble of throwing up these blurbs and Erik Childress form Criticwatch went to the even greater trouble of keeping track of them. And not only from Lyons but from MANY other critics as well. Erik read through hundreds of reviews so that you don't have to. The conclusion:

Criticwatch has been tracking these quotes since 2003 and in that time, 61 of the 79 films exposed to this sort of pre-Oscar hype have either failed to get a single nomination or get the nod specific to its Lyons-esque boasts. Studios and their advertisers are never going to ignore such buzz when selling their films, but maybe its time they start backing up that praise. Less than half of the above films we’re sent out to critic’s groups for consideration at the end of the year; a sign of no faith in their ability to garner awards attention. Even though its becoming increasingly more clear that critic organizations are steering the ship towards Oscar and not just the bloggers and prognosticators that Patrick Goldstein recently demeaned. But more on that later. As one of those prognosticators myself, a word of advice beyond calling out Ben Lyons as no more of an expert than Stephanie Meyer – remember – just because Larry King says you’ve already won, doesn’t make it so.

Oh, one more that I would add to the list:

Look for a Brangelina Oscar night. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to get Oscar nominations. Brad for his work in “Burn After Reading” and Angelina for “Changeling.”

Stunning insight and sounding cool at the same time--or at least trying really hard to. I bet you can't guess who said this one. I'll give you a hint: it wasn't Roger Ebert.