I can't believe I watched the whole thing -- the 2010 Academy Awards show made Avatar seem tightly paced.  Seriously, the show went downhill the moment Neil Patrick Harris left the stage. To be fair, there were no real surprises among the actual winners, draining any suspense from the proceedings.

Of course, this is a Foreign Policy blog -- so are there any lessons that can be drawn about world politics from such a pop culture phenomenon?  Actually, yes: 

1)  Clearly, security studies trumps international political economy when it comes to the Academy Awards.  I noted yesterday that Avatar, The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds were all about war and resistance.  Those films received ten academy awards.  The only nominated film that addressed IPE was Up in The Air, and it got shut out. 

2)  That said, the awards also suggest that in Hollywood, Thucydides' dictum that "the strong do what they can, the weak do what they must" does not entirely hold.  Despite being the highest grossing picture in history, Avatar got clobbered by The Hurt Locker. So much for financial power translating into prestige. That said, I'm pretty sure Kathryn Bigelow could take James Cameron in a fight, so maybe there was a different kind of power at work here. 

3)  Hey, that was some hard-core bargaining going on between Disney and Cablevision as the awards show was beginning. 

4)  The person with the greatest amount of "soft power" in Hollywood?  Tina Fey. The woman could be paired with an eggplant and she'd get the eggplant some laughs.   

5)  Clearly, the Academy Awards has problems dealing with asymmetric threats. How else do you explain a three-minute homage to horror films in which the entire zombie genre gets less than a second of screen time??!!! Hello?!  Chucky from Child's Play got a longer shot, for crying out loud! 

Fools -- they clearly haven't thought this through. I mean, based on the John Hughes tribute, Judd Nelson is already a member of the living dead. 

One final thought:  if there was any justice in the world, the Best Visual Effects Oscar would have been a tie between Demi Moore and Michelle Pfeiffer. In general, I found a rough but direct correlation between age and fashion sense. The older the actress, the more chic they looked. 

Post your own thoughts in the comments.

With the release of 2012 today, we're now at the peak of the apocalyptic movie season.  Soon to come will be the big-screen adaptation of The Road, which looks like yet another barrel of laughs.  This comes on the heels of animated apocalypse movies like 9 and WALL*E. 

This raises an interesting cultural question -- is the obsession with disaster/apocalypse films correlated with the economic downturn? 

I'm not sure the answer is yes. Roland Emmerich, the director of 2012, is just a disaster porn fetishist who likes to destroy the world every time he commits anything to celluloid (except mosques, apparently).  His first disaster flick, Independence Day, was released in 1996 -- not exactly the peak of anxiety about the state of the world.  Deep Impact and Armageddon were also released during the boom times of the last decade.  Furthermore, during the Great Depression, Hollywood responded by instituting the Hays Code and releasing films about "high society" that allowed the downtrodden American to fantasize about The Good Life (a fact that Woody Allen ruthlessly exploited in his best and darkest film, The Purple Rose of Cairo). 

Still, the last time I can remember a spate of disaster flicks being released in such a fast and furious fashion was in the 1970's, another period of economic and political upheaval.  Films like the Airport series, Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Meteor, and Virus were not pieces of great cinema, but they all seemed to hit some taproot of anxiety that caused people to flock to the movies.

So... a question to the pop culture mavens here at foreignpolicy.com -- do down times lead to more disaster flicks, or is this just a trick of the light? 

Due to travel snafus, your humble blogger was unable to post his traditional pre-Oscar predictions post.  Suffice it to say that I correctly predicted all of the major awards but, as always, screwed up the best documentary short and best foreign language film. 

Ten quick points, both positive and normative: 

1. I think it's telling that one of America's most competitive industries organized an awards show around an Aussie host, a British best actress winner, a Spanish best supporting actress winner, and a best picture winner based in Mumbai, India and directed by a Scotsman Englishman.  I'm just saying that the most globalized sectors of the economy are usually the most efficient and productive.
2. There needs to be a word for a cultural trope that manages to attract admiration from both genders and both the gay and straight communities.  Whatever that word is, Hugh Jackman seems to embody it. 
3. Is it me, or is there an iron law of Oscar shows that decrees that the last third of the show must drag on to the point where it sucks the life out of the show? 
4. The Academy could save everyone a lot of time and angst by assigning hosting duties next year to Tina Fey and Steve Martin.  They were funnier than any of the comedy clips. 
5. No nominations for Salma Hayek?  So what if she did not appear in a motion picture this year? 
6. Waltz with Bashir did not win Best Foreign Film?  Where's that damn Israel Lobby when you need it?!
7. Call me schmaltzy, but I did like the idea of having former Oscar winners praise each nominee.  The nominees really seemed to go for it, too. 
8. For just one day, I would like to be able to pull off the Mickey Rourke look.
9. Best Visual effect of the show -- Sarah Jessica Parker in her gown, as well as her ability to smile while sitting next to Matthew Broderick. 
10. Among those who got jobbed by the Oscars this year:  the adult actors in Slumdog Millionaire, especially Dev Patel;  Both WALL*E and The Wrestler should have been nominated for Best Picture, and one of them arguably should have won. 

I think that's it.