It’s that time of the year again. No, I don’t mean the coldest and most depressing month of the year… it’s Academy Award time! So roll out that blood-coloured carpet and keep your eyes transfixed to your nearest LED propaganda display unit, for tonight is the night when all the overrated yet under-skilled dicks from around Hollywood are rounded up into a dimly-lit auditorium for some televised back-slapping. Tune in if you want to witness an overblown work do, where a bunch of suits keep up the pretence that their involvement in the latest cinematic shit-fest is worthy of receiving phallic-shaped lumps of gold.

The Oscars are presented every year by some twerp who has never won an Academy Award in their life. This jester then proceeds to suck-up to row upon row of tarted-up twats by telling some PG-13 jokes, whilst crow-barring a few musical numbers into their lame routine for good measure. The Academy Awards has become one hell of a contrived and predictable show, and each year its overly-long, fake-happy style, complete with scripted presenter chemistry and various unfunny video montages, seems to be an attempt to show that The Academy is still relevant, but all these repetitive and tedious elements prove otherwise.

The Oscars’ exclusionary selections also confirm that they are one of the most corrupt award shows out there. Ever since its inception, they have systematically avoided awarding certain genres including Horror, Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller, and Comedy. So much so that the Oscars may as well be called the “Overrated Drama Awards”. They also strangely seem to turn a blind eye to every film released from March to November as if movies released during this time don’t even exist. Because of this, the winter season is the dreariest time to visit your local cinema with nothing remotely worth watching. Watch a movie during this period, and you’ll be confronted with pompously written, pretentiously directed films, and actors doing their best stern-faced and sobbing acting in the hope they’ll attain a gold statuette presented by their so-called peers.

If a good film or filmmaker does somehow sneak into the selection, you can bet your corrupt arse they won’t win. Each year, the winners all demonstrate the Academy’s classist, sexist, and racist ideas. If you’re an ethnic minority specifically, you’ll either be excluded altogether, or you’ll occasionally win as long as you play your race’s stereotype. Just take a look at all the black winners of the Best Actor and Actress categories… we’ve had Sidney Poitier playing an unemployed menial worker, Denzel Washington as a corrupt, drug-tacking cop, Jamie Foxx as a singer, Forest Whitaker as an African Tyrant, and Halle Berry as a poor, southern wife of a convicted murderer. To paraphrase Bowfinger, the only way a black person wins one of these gold statues is if they play the retarded slave role.

Update: before winning a Best Actor award for playing a musician, Mahershala Ali netted a Best Supporting Actor award for playing a drug dealer… two more black stereotype roles gaining Oscars.

Then there’s the same-same winners’ speeches; “I would like to thank The Academy”… yawn, “I would like to thank the Producer and my Manager”… yawn, “thanks to my family and God and country”… zzzzz. Oh shucks, there goes the lame music telling them to fuck off and oh look; there comes a film-student-cum-trophy-girl to guide them off the stage like a Mental Hospital orderly taking someone to electroshock therapy. From that moment onward, every shite film they take part in will have the words “Academy Award Winning” plastered all over the poster and trailer. In that sense, the show is basically a marketing tool, and what tools these winners are.

Then after a few more shit jokes, a few minor category awards, and a song-and-dance catastrophe, it’s over to the black and white sad bit, where a slideshow of dead filmmakers plays against a sombre bit of muzak. And while we pay homage to all those that have passed, I guess we should glaze over the fact that most of these actors, directors, effects-makers, and sound designers were by and large people the Academy forgot to award before they died; probably because they were too busy giving awards to hacks and sell-outs. Well that’s that, a quick blip of actual and forgotten talent, now on with the show…

Every year there’s something intended to “update” this tired-ass non-spectacle, like the cringe-worthy “youthful” duo of Anne Hathaway and James Franco completely failing at presenting a few years back. I remember thinking wow, having a thousand University Degrees to his name really has improved Franco’s public speaking ability… not. Then there was Ellen’s group selfie last year, and as the image made “The Most Retweeted Tweet In Twitter History” the whole world was supposed to sit in awe while this celebrity cabal tried to prove it was modern by confirming they knew what a “selfie” was (despite being a decade too late). What’s next, an Instagram banner image? My oh my, these Hollywood types are so up-to-date and in the know.

Now over to the sweeping camera shot intended to show the audience at home the level of celebrity on show. And as we sit watching in wonderment at the sheer importance of these propped-up corpses and crusty-arsed vampires, the camera pans left or right to reveal all the plastic surgery debacles of the past year. My, how skilled these Hollywood morticians, err… I mean plastic surgeons are; they’ve almost made these old gits look lifelike. The irony of this celebrity cesspool who are all obviously obsessed with looking young and yet every film in every category only appeals to dullards on the wrong side of thirty, is apparently lost on these A-List A-holes. And that’s not the only thing old, we also have Wolfgang Puck peddling his weirdly out-of-style Nouvelle Cuisine complete with gold-leaf on chocolate to resemble a goddamn Oscar… year after fucking year. The audience, the food, and after parties are about as imaginative and different as the films up for nomination.

But all that shite is nowhere near as vomit-inducing as the Red Carpet pre-show thingumabob, in which women who are draped in the latest overpriced (but free to them) designer dress, have some bell-end from E! Entertainment all up in their face asking them “who are you wearing?”. This convention makes about as much sense as some fashion designer at a fashion awards show carrying a hand-held TV and Giuliana Rancic asking them “who are you watching?”. This connection between a female actor being dressed by some over-inflated needle pusher and the film that they’re appearing in is so tenuous, but during an award show (or any red carpet event for that matter) the industry keeps up the pretence that the two things are somehow linked even though all common sense dictates that they are not. A male actor in a plain black suit, and their arm-candy, actress, W.A.G. being the centre of attention (at least until the Best Actor category) is one of the most sexist conventions of the Academy Awards if not all award shows of today.

The whole Red Carpet segment is so nauseating, that you should only watch it clutching a bucket. With a bunch of sycophantic tits stood outside cheering and commenting on overrated celebrities walking in, and with a queue of TV lackeys poking people with their mic; it really is the epitome of brown-nosing. “OMG, look there’s Bradley Cooper looking like he’s had a mental breakdown with a smiling yet tense expression, let’s see if we can’t ask him something completely irrelevant about his suit”. And then it’s over to someone like Kelly Osbourne to comment on the style of someone’s outfit even though her own unattractive pudgy physique looks like a pork chop wrapped in bubble-wrap; oh how qualified she is to be part of E!’s Fashion Police.

The Academy Awards is sold to the world as the most important film event of the year, and yet you cannot name a time in its history when anything eventful has ever happened. More importantly you cannot name the the last time when someone truly worthy of praise won an award. The various ploys, gimmicks, and contrivances of the Oscars are now so apparent, that they could air a re-run from any previous year and nobody would notice. Tune in tonight for three to four hours of award-giving, adulation, and arse-licking, although for all I care they can put that gold statue where the sun don’t shine (and I don’t mean the Dolby Theatre).

All That Glitters Is Not Gold.