In Anticipation of Morgan Freeman Beating Thomas Haden Church

Murray & Hopper should have received statues for the films mentioned. Cazale should have won for either GFII or "Dog Day Afternoon". Of course, this is the Academy Awards we're talking about....

yeah they're great aren't they

Ah, screw it. I look forward the slow, inexorable crash of the relevance of the Oscars. The sooner they become as blantantly silly as the Grammys, the sooner we can all be rid of caring even the slightest bit.

In fact, let's actively root against the people who deserve them.

Church was the worst performance of the year (okay, Gwyneth in Sky Captain gets him off the hook). He was trying to be SERIOUS in that crying scene.

what did freeman win for?

"Church was the worst performance of the year...He was trying to be SERIOUS in that crying scene."
Choosing to show Church crying for his clip last night was definitely an odd choice--it runs totally counter to the way the character behaves the rest of the film--but even there, watching the scene again, I thought it was proof of how subtle Church's performance is. It wasn't Church who was trying to be "serious," it was his character Jack--Jack was trying to make Miles, Giamatti's character, believe that he was devastated. And because Jack is a hack TV actor, and because Jack's devastation is really just Jack's embarrassment and petulance at getting caught in a lie by Sandra Oh, he comes across as silly. He's supposed to.
I completely forgot about one of the main reasons I compiled the list above: #2 should be extended to "Jungle Fever."

It was Church trying to be serious. He said as much in an interview with a local critic (Star-Telegram) when Sideways was at some festival (Sundance or Toronto last year), and expressed surprise at how audiences were reacting.

Trust the tale, not the teller, or however that goes...Whatever Church was or was not trying to do, the scene's authentic. Maybe it's authenticity is entirely accidental: 1) Church is a basically a hack TV actor, 2) who's playing a hack TV actor, 3) and in trying to be serious (as you say was Church's intention) and not doing a convincing job of it, 4) he perfectly mirrors his character's attempt to "be serious," an attempt no more convincing than his own. Does that make sense? Whatever the case, it's one scene in a two-hour film--Church should have won last night for the rest of performance, which is as lunkhead-funny as John C. Reilly's in "Boogie Nights."

I agree that Church (who I'm not aware of ever having seen before) was splendid playing a two-dimensional buffoonish character, and that he's funny/pathetic in the crying scene rather than heartwrenching, whatever his intentions. That certainly exceeds the achievement of past winners (Jack Palance?), and I'm not sure it's not better than Freeman expertly modulating yet another saintly sexless sidekick, as Cintra Wilson described his M$B character in Salon yesterday.

Why do people still evaluate Oscar "shouldas" in terms of quality? Have you been paying attention?

Even though he was a co-lead, Don Ameche "shoulda" won his supporting Oscar for Things Change, not Cocoon.

I'm still convinced that the only category worth paying attention to is "Best Original Screenplay" (otherwise known as the "Citizen Kane Consolation Prize"). But even that one seems to be turning into the "oh, let's give it to the hippest indie moneymaker or critic's darling" award. I still think "Eternal Sunshine..." was deserving though.

You won't get an argument from me that the Academy Awards are largely meaningless--I more or less said as much in my original post. There was a brief interlude from maybe "Midnight Cowboy" to "The Deer Hunter" where really interesting films were regularly nominated and often won, and there was always some politically-charged controversy that made news. (And even there, there were bizarre reversions to form like "The Sting.") But there's still almost always one nomination rooting for in any given year, and for me, this year, that was Church. Ditto for Murray (twice), Forster, and Reynolds from the above list, which is why I singled out Supporting Actor oversights--I think it's been the most interesting and maddening category of recent times.