Is everybody over their post-mortem depression? Come to grips with your favorite movie winning or not winning? Boned up on your newest bits of Oscar trivia, such as “The Hurt Locker” and “Slumdog Millionaire” premiering a day apart at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival? I certainly hope so, because the world has continued to spin and “The Spy Next Door” has already kicked off the unofficial 2010 Oscar season.

Before things completely return to revolving around the gold-plated bald guy, I’d like to welcome you to the newest weekly column on In Contention that aims to bridge the gap between increasingly long and grueling Oscar seasons with a look outside of the awards bubble. Here, I will be spotlighting one film per year that received no recognition from the Academy whatsoever but still deserves to be seen and discussed, because let’s face it, sometimes they get it very, very wrong.

The format here will be two films per article, one from each year, in ascending order. Some of them will be stone cold classics that you simply must see and some will be personal favorites that strike a chord with no one but me. Hopefully all of them encourage you to think of cinema in the broader picture and instigates a desire to seek out titles beyond what one organization has deemed worthy of etching into history. So without further ado…

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Uncle.

I told myself I wasn’t going to write this column this year, let alone make predictions, but some of you were just too cute in your emails and Twitter DMs asking for something akin to my annual year-in-advance take on the race, so I struck a balance: a column and contenders list, but no charts and no predictions.  Fair enough?

The 2010 Oscar season looks, from afar, to be a muted affair.  Most of the films that look like competitors on paper have a distinctly “small” vibe.  Of course, no one knows when a film like “The Blind Side” will decide to come along and sweep the heartland and the Academy at large off its feet.  Maybe Tony Goldwyn’s “Betty Anne Waters” will play that role this year.  Maybe not.

There are a considerable amount of actors and actresses with multiple performances on the way, more than usual, I’d say.  And most encouraging, the original screenplay field seems to be much more robust than the adaptations.

Last year the big dogs looked to be “Amelia,” “Invictus” and “Nine,” and we all know how that turned out.  In fact, it happens with some frequency.  So why bother getting too deep into all of this now?  And to say nothing of the fact that, perhaps mercifully, nothing on the horizon appears to have that level of awards-baiting appeal.  No major filmmakers looking to cozy up to Oscar.  No big stars that seem overdue and are going for it with an obvious role.  None of that, really.

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Just … wow. From The Wrap:

Todd McCarthy, who has been writing at Daily Variety for 31 years, was fired on Monday along with two other critics, as the trade elected to cut costs and move to freelance reviews.

[McCarthy says,] “Everyone’s going to speculate, and all I can say, It’s the end of something. What that is I don’t know. I know what it means for me. I’ve been fiercely and proudly reviewing at full speed since all the cutbacks. I made sure we had no slippage in our festival coverage and film reviewing, I’ve worked hard in recent times to make sure nothing slipped. The reviews have been the most unchanged part of Variety, period. Forever.

What a sour note to follow the Oscars with. How Variety can call itself the leading trade voice in the business and not retain a staff film critic is something I don’t quite understand, but there you have it. Commiserations all round.

One of the most common lines (usually used in praise) on our newly-crowned Best Picture winner is that it’s deliberately apolitical, taking no sides in the Iraq conflict as it aims simply to present the soldier’s experience on the ground. Kathryn Bigelow herself dismissed that as something of a misconception in a recent interview with Steve Pond:

I guess my feeling is that graphic portrayals of innocent children killed by bombs, and soldiers incapable of surviving catastrophic explosions … I think that’s pretty clear. And then also, to add to that, the movie opens with a quote, “The rush to battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” So it’s definitely taking a very specific position.

Blogging last night on the Oscar race, Michael Moore says much the same thing — less tacitly, of course, than Bigelow:

The truth is “The Hurt Locker” is very political. It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this. That’s why the right wing has attacked the movie. They’re not stupid — they know what Kathryn Bigelow is up to. No one leaves this movie thinking, “Whoopee! Let’s keep these wars going another 7 years!”

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Like a Tiffany engagement ring presented in a Happy Meal box, sometimes the most beautiful gifts come in really cruddy wrapping. And such was the case with last night’s Academy Awards ceremony.

On the one hand, the show managed to delight (if not surprise) me with one of the unlikeliest sweeps in Oscar history, making history in more ways than one — and for a film that just happened to be my favorite U.S. release of the year. I can’t say that about every (or any) Oscar show I’ve watched in my lifetime. On the other hand, this remarkable turn of events was merely the silver lining to a confounding debacle of a ceremony, one of the most lazily conceived, sloppily staged and lumpenly paced efforts I’ve witnessed in two decades of Oscar-watching.

I’d dearly love to bring a sunnier perspective on the matter than that of Kris, but just as we were in near-complete agreement on our predictions (save for, ahem, Best Animated Short), I can only echo every gripe he expressed in last night’s wrap-up. Unlike many others, I wasn’t the greatest fan of Bill Condon and Laurence Mark’s streamlined, revue-style reboot of the Oscars last year, but it had a tonal consistency and moved at a clip that last night’s show could only dream of.

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Welcome to Oscar Talk, a weekly kudocast between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood.

This is the final installment of the 2009-2010 Oscar season, with nothing left to discuss but Hollywood’s biggest night. On the docket today:

• Anne was on the red carpet and in the press area at the show last night, so she offers some first hand perspective on the festivities.

• We dig into the actual telecast, which Anne caught in fits and starts, but I was camped out on a couch watching intently the whole time and had, well…issues.

• Anne turned up a tally of 16 correct guesses. I nailed down 19. We commiserate on our bad calls and discuss the various winners, some of which were quite surprising.

• Finally, we remember our personal high points from the season and let you know when we’ll be back (after a short hiatus).

Have a listen to this week’s podcast below, with a history-making moment leading the way.  Oh, and by the way, for our committed listeners, I thought I’d offer up this soundbite from one of our broadcasts of Anne wrestling with her microphone. It cracks me up every…single…time.

As always, you can subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.  We’ll see you back here in roughly two months.

Before we close the book on 2009, here’s one last rundown of our interviews with this year’s Oscar recipients.  It was lovely to meet with them all as this was truly, for the most part, a season of camaraderie.

“The Cove”
Louie Psihoyos (Best Documentary Feature)

“Crazy Heart”
Jeff Bridges (Best Actor)
Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett (Best Original Song)

“The Hurt Locker”
Mark Boal (Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay)
Chris Innis and Bob Murawski (Best Film Editing)
Paul Ottosson (Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing)

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And now for something completely different…

I stumbled across this at YouTube this morning and thought I’d share.  “The Hurt Locker” producer, as you know, was locked out of the Kodak by the Academy, punishment for EmailGate.  He attended a private viewing party for the film last night with friends and someone was shrewd enough to take a video, so if you’re interested, here are his sentiments and his list of thank yous:

I don’t know if anyone else felt the same way, but the “In Memoriam” segment last night felt extremely flat to me.  It’s not to say that it should be full of flavor and pizzazz.   Quite the contrary.  But there was just something sterile about the whole James Taylor sing-over same-old that didn’t sit well.

And then, they forgot to include Bea Arthur and Farrah Fawcett, which is a shame.  There were probably more.  But we remember you here!

Despite concern over how the telecast might be perceived, it turns out ratings got a boost this year, according to this Rick Kissell Variety story.  Much of that is being attributed to the presence of popular films like “Avatar,” but I think it’s also worth pointing out the role of hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin may have played here.  Their chemistry may have been a must-see for many.

Writes Kissell:

Oscar appears to have driven the “Avatar” express to strong numbers Sunday, with preliminary local-market scores suggesting ratings for the Academy Awards on ABC will come in up by double-digit percentages vs. last year. As a result, the show figures to have moved north of 40 million viewers for just the second time in five years…

According to Nielsen’s local overnights, which measure viewership in 56 of the nation’s largest markets, the “82nd Annual Academy Awards” averaged roughly a 27.4 household rating/41 share from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. ET, up a meaningful 20% vs. last year’s 22.9/36.

I still love the irony of the ultimate Best Picture winner in the face of all this clamoring for popular appeal.  And, I might add, it became a perfect symbiosis.  “The Hurt Locker” got to win in front of a large audience that will now give it a look.  Maybe it all worked out in the end.

Check out the rest at Variety.

Rogelio Tec was the big winner in our Oscar pool, correctly guessing 20 of the 24 categories and dominating the tie-breaker by guessing the show’s length within two minutes.

Dillon Green and Kevin Manganaro are the runners-up, also guessing 20 each, so I’ll offer up a prize for you guys, too.  If you’re reading, please email me with your contact information.

Thanks to everyone for participating and to the guys at Awards Picks for a truly great Oscar season service.

Anthony Breznican (who, by the way, won the Publicist Guild’s reporter of the year prize Friday) gave us a wonderful behind-the-scenes take on the Academy’s pre-nomination proceedings at USA Today back in early February, and he’s back this morning with a first-hand perspective from backstage at the Kodak last night.

Here’s a taste:

As [Mo'Nique and Geoffrey Fletcher] walked down the corridor to the elevator that would take them to the pressroom, Robin Williams jumped in front of them to lighten the mood, making “swish, swish, swish” noises as he swept an invisible broom in front of her slow walk.

“It’s curling, curling!” Williams said, finally getting Mo’Nique to laugh out loud.

Check out the rest at USA Today.

• Melissa Silverstein with a personal reflection on those four words: “the time has come.” [Women & Hollywood]

• Anne Thompson gets a nice soundbite from “Logorama” director Nicolas Schmerkin backstage: “It took longer than ‘Avatar.’  It took more directors than ‘Avatar.’” [Thompson on Hollywood]

• Paola Singer sits down with Best Foreign Language Film winner Juan Jose Campanella. [Speakeasy]

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From Salon, RE: that bizarre documentary short acceptance speech mishap:

What happened was the director and I had a bad difference over the direction of the film that resulted in a lawsuit that has settled amicably out of court. But there have been all these events around the Oscars, and I wasn’t invited to any of them. And he’s not speaking to me. So we weren’t even able to discuss ahead of the time who would be the one person allowed to speak if we won. And then, as I’m sure you saw, when we won, he raced up there to accept the award. And his mother took her cane and blocked me. So I couldn’t get up there very fast.