I didn’t catch a whole lot of the Oscars last night because who gives a ripe fuck? But I did see this morning that Marty won, at long last. Not having seen The Departed, I can’t say he does or does not deserve the little golden statuette, but I suspect he won it as a sort of lifetime achievement award. The Academy surely looks back at its blunders of days gone by and realizes that Dances With Wolves, a cinematic attempt to assuage the white-man’s guilt, really ought not to have beaten Goodfellas. I mean, the rest of the thinking world knows as much, so it’s time the Academy catch up.

So congrats to one of my favorite filmmakers, even if I haven’t seen any of his films since Kundun. I did catch about 10 minutes of Brining Out the Dead, enough to realize the book was better and that Marty ought to have passed on that project. The little bit of Gangs of New York I saw made me sleep. I avoided The Aviator completely. Still, the man made Taxi Driver and Mean Streets and After Hours, and to me those are about as good as American filmmaking gets. So good going Marty; please cast De Niro in something again instead of DiCaprio.