If You Read No Other Oscar Article This Year…

…Make sure you read this one. New York Magazine’s Mark Harris offers up the kind of writing rarely exhibited on the web, where the constant need for content often results in sloppy work (raises hand). But when you read this kind of story, and Damien Bona and Mason Wiley’s Inside Oscar, one is reminded that there are still very good writers covering this silly little corner of the world:

Which brings us to the moment, two weeks before balloting for nominations ends, when things get really rough-and-tumble. In the strange etiquette of Oscar competition, a hard-core, balls-out campaign to get Academy Award nominations is permissible, under the justification that everyone is just helping their movies, whereas pushing hard for an actual win not only looks narcissistically needy but also may be pointless, since most voters decide whom they want to win before the nominations are even announced. So the real work happens during a mid-January sprint, when actors, writers, and directors suspend their lives to embark on an ego-bruising bi-coastal nightmare carnival of awards and lunches, brunches and teas, screenings, Q&As and tributes, diving into the soul-depleting madness of what Evelyn Waugh long ago called Hollywood’s “continuous psalm of self-praise.” Movies that don’t join the fight get lost in the shuffle. And that’s why Bridges is the sheepish but willing star of “an evening with … ” himself, a service he will repeat the very next day at another venue.

A week later, in Los Angeles, I ask Bridges about how it feels to spend more time selling Crazy Heart than he did making it (the film was shot in 24 days). “And not getting paid for it, by the way,” he says with a grin, “which is funny, because this is harder work! The acting … that’s something I would pay them, at least a little, to let me do.” He makes these comments while standing on a red carpet, a location in which he will find himself four times in two weeks. “Is all this a good thing?” He squints bemusedly at the exploding cameras. “It’s a weird thing. I guess I don’t love the show-business aspect, the barker-at-the-carousel side. But with a movie you’re pleased with, and you want people to see, I’m enjoying it.” Bridges is an Oscar voter, and when I ask if he’s caught up on the dozens of DVD screeners that are vying for his vote, which he has to cast in just a few days, he laughs. “No way,” he says. “I’m way behind.”

Incidentally, this is the piece that goes with the photos we posted a bit ago. Do not skip this article. Read it now.