Letters to the Editor
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You go to the movies with the movies you've got
My gut feeling going into this (which was wrong) was that this year the Academy would avoid the ultra violent content. Among the other offerings, "Into the Wild" was a film project doomed from the beginning, being 'quirky' and dark. This would have been a fine year for a film like Ordinary People, (we probably would have rather seen the curmugeonly psychologist turn the troubled outdoorsman in Into the Wild, into a well adjusted young man, if we had our druthers), or a year when something like Kramer vs Kramer wins, ( How would they do that picture now? Would they have the child before they are married, and avoid the messy divorce when they decide to split).
Bottom line is viewers are tired of 'quirky", with or without the violence, which is like pouring salt on nouveau cuisine. This might have been the year we took a U-turn, back to simpler times. But you go to the movies with the movies you have. You know Out of Africa isn't really all that bad, but they remade that already as the English Patient? Next year the producer who makes a simple family drama will win something, and people will flock to see it after it wins, because they didn't see it before, which is one way to measure these things.