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What genuine fun there is in this year’s ceremony is the hope of a surprise. Even categories such as Best Supporting Actress seem less and less potentially shocking, with Melissa Leo once again winning for her role in The Fighter at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Leo, Christian Bale, Portman, and Colin Firth: these are your likely Oscar winners in the acting categories. Frankly, most of the categories are bygone conclusions. Sorkin’s script, Tom Hooper and The King’s Speech for Best Director and Picture, Toy Story 3 for Best Animated Feature, Roger Deakins for Best Cinematography. When it takes getting to the below-the-line categories like Best Sound Mixing to wonder about what film could surprise everyone, there’s little excitement to go around. It’s years like these where I have to wonder what ever excited me about the Oscars.

There was a time when the Oscars were a yearly treasure. When I was a kid - really - I got intensely excited for the Oscars, one of the few times in the year where I could stay up until midnight. I didn’t often know much about the movies - when Babe improbably got nominated for Best Picture in 1995, I was so thrilled to have finally seen one of the Best Picture nominees - but the glitz and glamour being had in the name of great filmmaking excited me so much. Nowadays, with the onslaught of film blogs and prognosticators throwing back the curtains to show us what goes on behind the scenes, it’s genuinely disillusioning, until I back up and remember that I’m not winning any awards, so I really shouldn’t care.

Does it break my heart that Christopher Nolan wasn’t nominated for Best Director this year? Of course. Having said that, even if Nolan had been nominated, I wasn’t expecting him to win. One year, that might happen, but Nolan’s award would have been a nomination from a branch of voters who are apparently always going to be frosty towards him. After my initial anger at this snub, I remembered that Toy Story 3, a truly moving and entertaining piece of cinema, got five Oscar nominations including a well-deserved Best Picture nomination. It won’t win, of course, but being honored is always gratifying. I still wait for the day when Hollywood realizes how much work goes into animating a single minute of film, and they start honoring animation in other notable categories, but this is a step in the right direction.

At the end of the day, what matters is what films we cherish. I may deride the existence of the People’s Choice Awards, but let’s remember that each of us is going to disagree about any awards. You may think The King’s Speech is the best film of the year whether or not you’ve seen the other nominees. You may think that Natalie Portman deserves her Oscar, but that Mila Kunis should have been nominated for her work in Black Swan. Differences of opinion are fine, as long as we hold the art that touches us dear. The Oscars will not be that exciting for this year, and one day soon, I may just stop caring about the lengthy awards season. What will never be anything less than exciting is the jolt I get when I watch Woody and Buzz say good-bye to Andy, or Joseph Gordon-Levitt fight in zero gravity, or Natalie Portman achieve perfection in Swan Lake. Let it be the same for all of you.

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