Please indulge me for a a bit here while I take a break from writing about politics to talk about Sunday night's Oscar Awards ceremony.

Actually, I don't think I'm dropping politics, since being a political animal, it's this space's contention that everything is political, and that includes what the country deems as its Best Picture, as chosen by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Being an inveterate filmgoer who attends to the cinema at least once if not twice a week, I have a particular interest in how these affairs turn out.

Regular readers of this space might recall I published a Top Ten list of the films of the year back on December 17. The date is notable because it was before many of the major Christmas releases were distributed, many of which have the Oscar scent (presumably) wrapped around them.

Since that time, I must say there were only two films that I would add to that list of all those heavyweights released: that being David O. Russell's The Fighter, which I rank right up there with 127 Hours as the two best films of the year that were nominated to the now expanded 10 film category.  The other would be Blue Valentine, a searing portrayal of a relationship that turns realistically bad.

Of course, all the Hollywood hype is that the Best Film race is between the English release The King's Speech, and the David Fincher/Scott Rudin/Aaron Sorkin early fall release The Social Network.

Can I just say flat out that I found The King's Speech to be colossally overrated? Everybody has conceded that Colin Firth will take home the Best Actor for his work in the film, which to this writer is a year too late (I'm talking about his performance in Tom Ford's A Single Man,  not to be confused with the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man).

It's all subjective, but I'm hoping The Fighter can maybe somehow get enough votes to take home the prize for Best Film.  And speaking of the Coen Brothers, I finally got around to seeing their adaptation of the Charles Portis novel (and remake of the 1969 original) True Grit, which has become their biggest box-office film ever.  Yes, bigger than the Oscar-winning No Country For Old Men (which if you'll recall was in a Nirvana/Pearl Jam like competition in 2007 with Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood).

And yes, it's even done better at the box-office than their 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski.  Not to mention 1991's classic Barton Fink. Why? Maybe because it's not as good as those original classics?

This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2011.