The 98th annual Academy Awards take place tonight.  This used to be one of the biggest events of the year for me (strictly as an observer, mind you), but in recent years my interest has waned (as it seemingly has for many people, probably for many reasons).  This year, for the first time since the 1980s, I believe, I missed the nominations announcement.  Just missed it; didn’t know about it until later that day.  I knew it was coming up but hadn’t pinpointed the day the way I normally would (and previously always did).  It just didn’t seem as important anymore, a feeling which is highly disturbing to me.

When I first formed Filmbobbery back in the late 1990s, it was made largely to celebrate the Oscars.  Two of the four issues of the year focused on the Academy Awards.  One beforehand, with previews, statistics and trivia of every category, with my own predictions, of course, and one afterward, trying to make sense of who and what had won and why I had not been able to predict them correctly.  Statistically I had the best Oscar coverage available, better even than “Entertainment Weekly,” although that magazine had excellent features on the performers and the human side of the equation.  My coverage has not translated to the internet, and I have gradually drifted away from most things related to the telecast, including actually seeing the nominated films and performances.

I find this hard to explain.  I still love watching movies; for 2026 I am averaging better than one a day, which is always my goal (rarely achieved in recent years).  But most of what I see how is older, or, for the purpose of my “Recent Releases” category, films of the past five years which I should have seen but have not, until I do and then review them.  I have interest in what the Academy nominates, of course, and yet I no longer go out of my way to see those titles.  Of 2025’s nominee list for Best Picture I have only seen three of the ten.  Part of that is lethargy or inertia; part of that is opportunity.  Part of that is aggravation: where is Nuremberg?  How is Nuremberg not one of the ten best films of last year?  No nominations?  That’s outrageous.  When something that I and many other viewers think is that good, its complete absence from the results indicates either a deep flaw within the nominating process, or a huge gap in viewer tastes.  And if it is indeed the latter, I’m not sure that the Oscar process is worthwhile anymore.  To totally ignore such a powerful, important movie tells me that voters no longer know what they are doing — or else they treasure traits that I do not recognize.  To be fair, I haven’t seen seven of the selected movies, so perhaps that is true.  Maybe they are all better than Nuremberg.  But I doubt it.

The real issue is that I have slowed down my own participation so much.  I haven’t been excited about these films, the allegedly Oscar-w0rthy dramas, for some time.  Somewhere along the line they lost me.  Go through my reviews and see for yourself how largely unimpressed I have been with Hollywood’s output for the last several years.  Sure, there are plenty of three-star reviews; I still like movies and enjoy recommending those that I have liked.  But the big “important” ones?  The ones that win awards and are supposed to be the best of the best?  Meh.  Again, I haven’t seen them all.  But when I do, it seems like half of the acclaimed titles every year fail to impress me at all.  Great ones, the real gems, are few and far between.  Movie making itself is not what it used to be, and perhaps I fail to really appreciate or understand or care about what is being produced.  Am I the only one?  Based on attendance numbers at local theaters, I doubt it.

Anyway, I will be fascinated to see what wins tonight.  I have made my guesses, though I expect no better than half right.  I think Sinners will be the big winner of the evening, though I don’t expect a sweep; other movies will win awards in major categories as well.  Hopefully the telecast will be entertaining, respectful and funny.  I hope they fully explain the new Best Casting category (I’m treating it as an Ensemble Cast award at this point) and that it won’t bother me that I will have seen so few of the winning films and performances.  But that’s on me.  And I hope you enjoy the show, too, even if you, like myself, don’t have very strong feelings about what will or should win.  It’s still history being made right now — it’s the Oscars!