Let the bitching begin . . . this years anti-Departed backlash reminds me of last years Crash-bash. Folks are saying it’s an inferior remake of Infernal Affairs, that it wasn’t the best movie of the year, that it wasn’t Scorsese’s best by a mile, etc., etc., etc. . . .

I find it ironic that a lot of the criticism I’ve read so far has compared it to a film that wasn’t even nominated, and wouldn’t have been competition for it anyway. If Infernal Affairs were to have been nominated at all, it would have been as “Best Foreign Film.” Why not compare The Departed to movies that were nominated in its category? For my money, it was the most entertaining of them all — a slick, sly, and fast-moving thriller that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Unlike Babel, the film a lot of other folks thought should win, which I found to be a self-important excercise in “message” filmmaking. Beautifully shot and well-acted, it nevertheless struck me as hollow in its forced, arbitrary connections between the four stories that make up its narrative. And as much respect as I have for Stephen Frears, I thought The Queen not to be in the same league with Dirty Pretty Things, High Fidelity or The Grifters. If it weren’t for the standout performance of Helen Mirren, it would have been a pleasant, but thoroughly ordinary, film.

Really, when has the best movie of the year ever won the Oscar, in recent memory? Every year we blow the Oscars way out of proportion. Don’t we always gripe and complain about how the Oscars trample all over our delicate sensibilities as film-lovers, and then don’t we always come back and watch them again next year? Talk about your abusive relationship . . .

Well, enough. I’m glad Marty won. It was for me the height of the evening, and now I’m going to watch one of his movies (one of his lesser ones, The Color of Money, I think) and then go to bed.