Josh Brolin didn't manage to blow away the Academy, either.Photo courtesy of Miramax

To: Lynda Obst
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 9:08 AM
From: David Edelstein
Subject: RE: No Country for Good Cheer

Dear Lynda,

Your evocative post of Tuesday last — which suggested that you and your Hollywood colleagues have not recovered emotionally from the writers’ strike — bodes well for No Country for Old Men, which in another year might only have been the first choice of suicidal depressives. You also shamed me. Having had my critical say on the nominated films in this magazine, I was eager to talk Oscar politics and to snigger at Academy voters’ middlebrow taste, while you — the big-studio producer — insisted on addressing many of the nominees’ artistic merits and reminding me that there is, in fact, little difference this year between the critics’ favorites and the industry’s. Sure, I thought Atonement was weak tea and would have liked a little Best Picture love for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But even there the directing nod for Julian Schnabel suggests the votes were close. And Diving Bell is in French, and no one could tolerate a French picture (even with an American director and a Brit screenwriter) taking home the grand prize. (Has that ever happened?) I apologize for my condescension.

Screw it. He's gonna smoke your pipe tobacco, too.Photo courtesy of Paramount Vantage

To: Lynda Obst
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 12:38 PM
From: David Edelstein
Subject: No Country for Good Cheer

Dear Lynda:

Well, well, well, we do get to talk about the Academy Awards this year. Despite the cancellation of the Golden Globes ceremony (quel agony!), there was no way that Hollywood could have gone without its annual orgy of self-congratulation — the best incentive from a public-relations standpoint to settle the strike. For moviegoers, a year without Oscar is unimaginable. So little in our culture has value on its own terms: Without the opening of the envelope, there is no climax, no catharsis.