Category: When Oscar Shit the Bed

If you can imagine plastic and cardboard having a meet-cute, you can imagine Love Story. A movie where holding hands in the park and exchanging cringe-worthy banter constitutes great passion and defiance.

Not so long ago, in the Year of Our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Fifty-Four, Hollywood saw fit to release a major motion picture (MGM! CinemaScope!) that endorsed, sanctioned, and ultimately made light of kidnapping, rape, and deep, unshakable misogyny. Women as property.

The nominations for Sissy Spacek (Best Actress) and Tess Harper (Best Supporting Actress) are inexplicable enough, but to learn that this slapdash, magnolia-scented monstrosity also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1981?

One of these days, hopefully while I still remain above ground, someone will write the definitive tale of why, for what appeared to be a period of several decades from World War II forward, Hollywood was utterly, hopelessly, and reverentially obsessed with Catholicism.

Now imagine that what follows is a 103-minute motion picture where, for a good 102 of those minutes, no mines are seen. Not a Solomon in sight, let alone a King.