Oscars: I didn't watch, so if I missed anything shocking or interesting in the telecast, forgive me. I was cheering for LOTR: ROTK and was glad to hear that it won. Eno may be a little jaded by the "post-Lucas world of bloated, slightly ridiculous trilogies," but I thought each of these movies was fantastic. Lucas' Star Wars downward spiral of vapidity is even more awful when it stands next to a work of fantasy that doesn't treat every viewer like a child even when they're making pretend. As for "Oscar worthy," I think the bar was forever lowered by Titanic and ROTK cleared it with no trouble.

Lost in Translation and Master and Commander were both very good films, but neither one engaged me like ROTK. "Lost" was just a little too narrow in scope for a Best Pic winner and "Master" lacked the love story that Oscar insists upon (and Peter Jackson tossed in as a bit of a sop to the Academy). I didn't see Mystic River or Seabiscuit (I think the latter was thrown in purely to give Billy Crystal plenty material) but it seems most of the accolades had to do with the performance of Penn and Robbins, who each won in their own categories.