> You forget the year before, where it's not inconceivable he deserved an Oscar for "The Insider." Or two years before that, where I really think he deserved one for "L.A. Confidential." "Gladiator" is one of Crowe's weakest performances, IMO. Gah.

Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis won their Oscars for some of their weakest performances, too. I guess the thing to remember is that they compete with other performances of the year, not with other performances of their own in other years. Still, sometimes questionable things happen. Well, usually.

The 2000s just aren't shaping up right. All of the Best Picture winners of the 1990s (except, arguably, Unforgiven; and I haven't seen Dances With Wolves, so I can't make a call there) are worthy of it. Not all of them may have been the actual best movies of their years, but they're good enough to be recognized as great. But A Beautiful Mind is excellently done yet wholly unoriginal and manipulative. Gladiator wasn't even any good. I haven't seen Chicago, but from the sounds of it, it is colorful and fun but misdirected and hollow. If this is an accurate assessment of it, and it wins, that'll make three out of three 2000s Best Pictures that aren't even deserving of the award, ABM coming closest.

Is this natural fallout from the heightened campaigning of Miramax and DreamWorks, or is it an increased susceptibility to hype, or just bad luck?

It's not like this is a new phenomenon, I suppose. In 1936, "The Great Ziegfeld" won, in spite of the fact that its 180 minute length somehow still did not permit it time to delve deeply into the central character. It's arguably the first time the Academy was duped into thinking that epic glitz and glamor equates to substance. It's not a bad movie, actually, just not deserving of the Oscar. Anyway, I'm not sure that this isn't tangential to the question at hand, but it came to mind.

Another tangent: will the move of the Oscars to February next year, a month earlier, have an impact on how swayed voters are by hype? Historically, films released late in the year have an advantage, perhaps because they are fresh in voters' minds. Will the move to February skew the odds in favor of December films, or is it simply the timing of Oscar campaigns that drives the timing of the hype?