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Losers: Religious Fundamentalists

As if the predominance of the above displays of affection were not enough to outrage the Jerry Falwell crowd, media coverage of the people picketing with less-than-tasteful signs about Heath Ledger's continued location in the afterlife was appropriately savage. And, worst of all, Bill Maher went on stage in front of hundreds of millions of viewers and openly mocked the idea of religion, stating "our silly gods cost the world too greatly".

Even Bigger Loser: Bill Maher

Politically Incorrect was a show ahead of its time, thought-provoking and challenging. After Maher's 9/11 statement regarding the bravery of suicide bombers effectively ended his network television career, something snapped in the comedian. Who knows? Maybe this had already happened when his movie career failed to take off after he appeared in such classics as D.C. Cab, House II: The Second Story and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. Maybe that's the case, but we didn't notice since we had no idea what a Bill Maher was. Under any circumstance, Maher's more and more desperate attempts to garner attention reached a crescendo last night with an intentionally incendiary statement utilized in a mechanical effort to market his documentary. He should have been sympathetic as the person forced to follow the parents and sister of Heath Ledger on stage. Instead, Maher somehow managed to become the most instantly disliked Academy Awards speaker since Michael Moore got political at the 2003 Oscars during his acceptance speech for Bowling for Columbine. He retroactively justified ABC's decision to bury Politically Incorrect.

Winner: Milk

While Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button were squaring off as the two major contenders of awards season, Milk was quietly building its resume as a political film whose main character's battle for homosexual rights was still being fought 30 years after his death. With Benjamin Button's meltdown last night, an argument could be made that Milk was the second most successful awards contender of the year. It was one of only four titles to win multiple Oscars (the others being the other two films mentioned in this paragraph and The Dark Knight). Even better, its two wins were in major categories, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay, the latter of which is historically oftentimes used as an apology for the silver medalist of awards season.

Loser: The Dark Knight

The outcries about the most popular film of 2008 failing to garner a Best Picture nod were overblown. It should have received a nod over The Reader, of course, but you could say that about almost any 2008 release since The Reader is such a terrible movie. The Dark Knight still received eight nominations this year, as many as Dreamgirls, No Country for Old Men or Brokeback Mountain had attained in prior years. It was far from ignored by the Academy in terms of Oscar nods. The problem people had largely stemmed from the Best Picture shunning, a nitpick of a concern. What happened last night, however, gives them more fuel for the fire. The Dark Knight won only 25% of the categories for which it received a nomination with one of those being its inevitable victory for Heath Ledger. The other was for the aforementioned Sound Editing category. What the Academy said last night is that Benjamin Button's aging technique was a better usage of Visual Effects than The Dark Knight. I'd honestly love for someone to sit on a panel and try to explain the justification on that one. Other technical awards The Dark Knight could have won but didn't were Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Cinematography and Art Direction. The three losses to Slumdog Millionaire could be justified as part of an Oscars sweep. That happens. The losses to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, on the other hand, feel like some sort of apology vote to Button for not getting the vote in the various major awards. The Dark Knight was a much stronger technical achievement and it deserved several of these minor awards yet the Academy en masse made a decision that copious amounts of box office revenue would be enough recognition for this one. I had thought it may experience the same success that The Matrix did in winning some of the smaller categories, but it was not to be. Maybe if The Dark Knight had been gay...

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