I watch the Academy Awards each year just to see how long it takes to hand out 24 trophies. I had to go to bed around hour fifteen this year, about the time they had the montage of all the previous year's announcers announcing the guy who was going to be introducing the presenters of the Best Adapted Screenplay award. Whoopi Goldberg had only changed clothes seventeen times at that point and had only gotten to her ninty-fifth joke about black people.

The nominations for Original Song were very disappointing this year. We had Sting performing "Every Sting Song Ever Written Ever", Randy Newman performing "Yet Another Randy Newman Song That Sound Like All His Others", Enya performing "This Song Sounds Like All My Other Songs (remix)", Faith Hill performing "Generic Chick Flick Ballad", and Paul McCartney singing something that was rather mediocre. Honestly, I think they should have awarded the Oscar to "A Love Before Time" from last year's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

How to make an Oscar-winning movie:

First off, you have to decide on the main characters for your film. These decide who will get the Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress awards -- the actual actors sort of figure into it, but the characters are what will make or break your award chances.

Start with prostitute. Give her a sad, sad childhood, possibly a drug addiction. Have her try to get out of her situation, but keep falling back into drugs. It is obvious that she'll never escape her prostituting situation even though she makes half-hearted attempts to do so. She dies of a drug overdose at the end and it is Sad. There. Best Actress.

Now for the male lead, you've got to ally him with the Best Actress. He's also self-destructive, with some other non-drug related addiction (but not kiddie porn!). Or else he's mentally handicapped or has some sort of mental illness. Together with the prostitute, they struggle to survive in the City. If he is addicted to something, he'll fall back into it and betray her, which leads to the drug overdose. If he's got something wrong with the brain, he'll be the one who finds the Best Actress's body. There. Best Actor.

Add the Queen of England into the mix. Best Supporting Actress.

For the Best Supporting Actor, determine if your Best Actor is going to be addicted or mentally afflicted. Give the Supporting Actor the other role.

Now set the movie in a War Zone with your two main characters trying to survive. Lots of explosions and gun fire throughout the entire movie. Instead of dying from a drug overdose, the Best Actress actually does get herself clean of drugs and whoring and is about to get a new start on life as Queen of England when she is killed by a land mine. Or a mortar shell explosion. This is Tragic and Sad. Now you've won Best Sound, Best Sound Editing.

Do lots of fast cuts during the many battle scenes where people's heads keep getting being blown off. This will win you Film Editing and Visual Effects, especially if the heads getting blown off are fake-looking. Pan around the battlefield a few times to get the Cinematography award.

Make sure everyone is covered in mud and stuff throughout the movie and you might get the Makeup award (this is not guaranteed).

You're now a shoo-in for ten of the twenty-four or so Academy Awards. They'll have to give you Best Picture and Best Directing.

I'm not sure how to get a lock on Score, Song, or the two Writing awards (although with the above twelve awards, you'll probably pick up one of the Writing ones). You're not going to get any of the two Documentary awards nor are you going to get the Short Film awards, the Animated award, or the Foreign Language award.

-Faux "Just remember to thank me during one of the acceptance speeches" Pas