What do you think are the ...

• Mar 2, 2006 03:00 AM ET
• by Maitland McDonagh

Question: What do you think are the most overrated Oscar nominees this year?

Answer: You know, almost any other year I could have come up with a list a foot long. But the 2005 Academy Award nominees are a really strong bunch — among the major categories I can honestly say that there isn't a single one I strongly feel doesn't belong in the running. That said, I don't think John Williams merits two nominations in the category for best original score — for Munich and Memoirs of a Geisha. But I'm consistently at odds with the prevailing opinion on him. I find the overwhelming majority of his compositions overblown and totally ordinary — just because he can orchestrate up the yin-yang doesn't mean he has to do it every single time. He has 36 prior music nominations (all but three for original score), many of which represent two films in a single year; he also has five wins to his credit. I would never even try to deny that the themes for Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) are insanely catchy, but for my money the rest of his work is glorified pseudoclassical elevator music. But maybe that's just me. Aside from that, the thing that really amazes me is that Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man didn’t make the cut in the documentary category. Don't get me wrong: Darwin's Nightmare, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, March of the Penguins, Murderball and Street Fight are all excellent films, but I think Grizzly Man is extraordinary, and, frankly, I think it should have had Murderball's slot on the ballot. But the year a documentary about physically challenged people overcoming their disabilities doesn't get nominated is the year I throw my hands in the air and admit I've learned nothing about the way things work.

And I think that, with the exception of Paradise Now, the foreign-film nominations are a pretty safe bunch of choices. But that has a lot to do with the way foreign films are submitted: Only one film per country per year can be submitted for consideration, and they have to be sent in by an official "organization, jury or committee," which means that crowd-pleasing movies that uphold the kind of image governments want to foster abroad dominate the category. That's how countries like France, which consistently supports the production and release of challenging and provocative films, wind up being represented by well-crafted treacles such as Les Choristes/The Chorus (2004) and this year's Joyeux Noel.