Christopher Nolan, USA, 2010, 148 min.

This film is a spectacle. Momentous in its visuals, intriguing in its structure, surprisingly poignant in its characters. Its a big-budget film, slick solid and well-paced with a great original screenplay and high-caliber acting.

After flirting with greatness in his Batman films, Nolan has finally done it. He has made a Great film. I am not a Nolan-fanboy, blindly obsessed with anything he makes, but for 2 1/2 hours I knew what it was like to be one.

This film wins the award “Best Fight Scene” for Joseph Gordon-Levitt flying around a hotel in twisting aerial combat.

In no particular order:

• Pomp, circumstance and fashion are lost on me. I’m just here for the movies, dammit! Ebert derisively put it best in his live twitter:

“They pose the actresses in their gowns, ask them to pose, and let the camera lick them from toe to head.”

• I don’t pretend to understand cinematography (anyone who has seen my films can attest to that), but does lighting generated on a computer count? I’m surprised Avatar won.

• 10 Best Pictures? Including more films makes the category less important.

• Sandra Bullock did a decent and forgettable job in The Blind Side. She didn’t deserve the Oscar but she seems nice and had a good speech so good for her.

• The White Ribbon, my vote for best film of the year, did not win Best Foreign Language Film. I’m ashamed that was the only one I saw in that category.

• Pixar has done no wrong in the past few years, and the Academy has thankfully recognized that.

• Bigelow wins for best director! The Hurt Locker was directly very well, and she deserves recognition, but in my mind more for Point Break and Strange Days then for her most recent film.

• District 9 did not deserve any nominations, let along Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay? I don’t care what LCD says.

• I was voting for Carey Mulligan. Her performance was subtle and true.

• I happened to catch all of the 10 Best Picture Nominees and I give them a 60/40 good to bad ratio. The best of the lot was A Serious Man, which I saw too late to put on my Top 10 of the Year.

• I don’t really like John Hughes.

• If the Academy allows Foreign Language Films and Animated Features to be nominated for best picture, they are logically saying that all the Best Picture Nominees are better than all of the nominees from those other categories. That is why I don’t like the Oscars.