There were two major upsets in Sunday’s Academy Awards, “The Lives of Others” beating out “Pan’s Labyrinth” for Best Foreign Language Film and Alan Arkin knocking off pre-show favorite Eddie Murphy for Best Supporting Actor. The former may simply have been a case of one great film being honored in its sole nominated category over another great film cleaning house in numerous categories. The latter may very well be forever known as “The Norbit Effect”.

Many people (myself included, but not on this blog) postulated that the release of the low-brow comedy “Norbit” could negatively effect Eddie Murphy’s chances of winning the Oscar. This despite the fact that Murphy had already picked up the SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor. The SAG Awards are often pretty good harbingers for the Oscars; after all, actors comprise the single largest branch inside the Academy, by orders of magnitude over the next biggest branch, producers (almost three times as many). Statistically, this was a very good sign for Murphy. It’s not that the other branches couldn’t completely overwhelm the actors, but the odds were definitely in his favor.

As in any voting situation, multiple factors played into Murphy’s loss. Surely Alan Arkin was definitely a sentimental favorite. But one must wonder if the release or Norbit tarnished the memory of his “Dreamgirls” performance in the minds of voters. Memories are short lived–only the most recent stick.

Lesson learned: if you’re nominated for an Academy Award and you’ve made a terrible movie (forget the question of why you did so in the first place), do everything in your power to have the bad film’s release pushed until after the Oscars!

Jay Leno made a joke the other night about how the Brittney coverage was breaking into our Anna Nicole coverage–not on tabloid programs, but on supposedly real news desks. And then there was the “big” story on the Today Show about the girl who can’t stop hiccupping. Does anybody really care? Now the Today Show may not be as hard news as the Nightly News, but enough already! Is the war in Iraq over? Did we find a cure for AIDS and end the epidemic in Africa? Unfortunately, no. Instead, we’ve apparently achieved new societal lows in our fascination with celebrities, lack of world interest, escapism and avoidance of what really matters. It disgusts, both as a member of a society and as member of the media / entertainment industry parading this garbage as news.

Congratulations to the Indianapolis Colts on winning Super Bowl XLI. As a New England Patriots fan, I was rooting against them, but they played excellently and deserved to win. It was also great to see Tony Dungy finally win the big game.

My question is, why did Peyton Manning win the game MVP award? He wasn’t terrible but he was by no means great. Manning’s numbers were mediocre, even subpar for him, and by no means did he win the game for the Colts. That job was performed by the two running back Dominic Rhodes and Joseph Addai. The MVP award is not meant to be a popularity contest but a tribute to the game’s best player. So I propose that we start the first annual “Real” MVP award, to be decided by acutal game watchers who haven’t decided whom they’re going to pick before the game even starts. And to kick off the award, this year we have co-MVPs, Rhodes and Addai.

And now for the commercials. As someone who actually cares for the game, I feel that those people who are only watching for the commercials should just stick to the trash tabloid TV that would normally be occupying their little minds. To me the ads are a pleasant diversion in what otherwise might be snack or bathroom break time. That having been said… I believe the era of big-budget ads for the Super Bowl has passed. Overall quality has been declining for several years, and with ad time currently running about $2.5 million per thirty second spot, one gets the feeling that advertisers are skimping on the commercials just to afford the time spot. The SalesGenie spot, for example, had such horrendous acting that the commercial played like a bumper ad for a late-night infomercial, and Coca-Cola, one of the world’s largest advertisers, repurposed their movie theater spots! Sure, there will always be a few stand-outs, but the peak has passed.