Here's a list of this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees:

• The Aviator
• Finding Neverland
• Million-Dollar Baby
• Ray
• Sideways

Two of those -- Ray and The Aviator -- are big-budget Hollywood films. The other three are more "independent," in that they weren't produced by one of the major studios (Warner Brothers, Paramount, Columbia [that's Sony]), New Line, or Universal). Guess what four of them are: biopics! These are all biographical films with some level of truth to them. Let me tell you about some films which didn't make it to the Oscars:

• Garden State
• Hotel Rwanda
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Kill Bill, Vol. 2
• House of Flying Daggers

Some of these films have been nominated for a few Oscars in other places (Kate Winslet of Eternal Sunshine is up for Best Actress; Don Cheadle of Hotel Rwanda is up for Best Actor), but for the most part, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the "Academy" in Academy Awards) played it safe this year. All of the above films were terrific, but they weren't biopics. I have seen four of the five above-mentioned films and none of the films nominated for Best Picture, so I suppose I have no grounds for complaint. Nonetheless, I can't imagine why a film as good as Garden State received no Oscar nominations. Neither did Kill Bill, Vol. 2, which was a fantastically-written movie. If you went to the first Kill Bill for ass-kickage, then you went to the second for great writing (normally, I hate Quentin Tarantino dialogue, but I actually liked it in Kill Bill, Vol. 2).

I suppose Hollywood thinks it's being "cutting-edge" in picking biopics for its awards (it's an unusual genre), perhaps in an attempt to appear cutting-edge. It wasn't that long ago (1997) that, for one year, independent (non-big studio-produced) films ruled the show. Only one Hollywood film, Jerry Maguire, was nominated for Best Picture, and it lost to The English Patient. The other nominees were Fargo, Secrets & Lies, and Shine. In practically every category, Hollywood films were shut out by small, independent films like Sling Blade, Trainspotting, Lone Star, and Michael Collins. Then Hollywood got its act together and started making better films (1997 was the Year of the Big Budget Action Spectacular: Independence Day, Twister, The Rock). Now, though, it decided to go the extra step and shut out the better films altogether. You see, the Academy is made up of anyone who is involved in the film business in Hollywood. If you're an actor, director, or producer, you're a member. They're voting for themselves! It's almost as self-congratulatory as the Screen Actors Guild awards, where members of SAG vote for their favorite members of SAG for the year ("We did such a good job, we deserve an award!"). The Golden Globes, on the other hand, are selected by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, people who don't have a stake in who wins or not.

I suppose if you vote for a mediocre actor and you want a little statue, it behooves you to vote for your own mediocre film instead of a better one. Not that all of the films selected were mediocre, but compared to the films that could have been selected, they're ... well, not as good.