hopelessly devoted to deconstructing popular culture and conventional wisdom, one blog at a time

Published Tuesday, March 07, 2006 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

LEAST POPULAR OSCARS, WHO WANTS A REPEAT?

My story in today's Herald only tells part of the story about the little movies that won all the Academy Awards this year, and what that may or may not portend for the year to come. As the end of my piece suggests, next year's award slate should include some more traditional Big Studio movies: The Da Vinci Code, The Departed, The Good Shepherd. And then there is Haggis. Paul Haggis. Could he three-peat? Haggis wrote Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Crash (2005) and has Clint Eastwood directing his Iwo Jima picture, Flags of Our Fathers, coming later this year. What could be more red-state patriotic than a movie about the WWII guys who planted the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima? As Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo told me on the phone Monday, who knew the Academy liked the taste of sheep intestines so much? "An obvious joke," Gray confided, "but he also made an obvious movie in Crash, so I'm OK with that."