Oscar nominations; "Lost"

Oscar nominations were released this morning, to which I'd like to offer a big-fat "who gives a crap?" As you have probably noticed over the past couple of years, my interest in Hollywood's most prestigious award show has waned over the years (may my Oscar party RIP...) as the Academy increasingly chooses to honor the obscure and radical films and talents over the more mainstream fare. This has never been more apparent than this year, where the Academy inexplicably overlooked the critically praised and commercially unstoppable force that was The Dark Knight. Just because it's a comic-book movie or a sequel should have no bearing on its merits as an influential and important piece of filmmaking. I'm happy to see Heath Ledger honored, and not surprised to see the film picking up nominations in the technical categories, but the Academy's choice to ignore the film as a whole (or its visionary director/screenwriter, Christopher Nolan) is a travesty.

Instead we get major nominations for Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Reader? I'm sure these are all very well-made films, and maybe even excellent ones. But with the exception of Button, which is a moderate commercial hit, none of these films has yet been embraced by a mainstream audience. I'm not arguing that awards should be granted based on a film's commercial success, but I sometimes wonder if films like The Dark Knight or Wall-E (two of the most critically-acclaimed and commercially successful films of the year) are snubbed solely because of their mainstream appeal. Could it be that the Academy is a group of elitists that don't feel like they can legitimately honor a "populist" film?

Either way, it's just one more year where I think I'll be skipping the ceremony and reading about it afterward. With the Academy Awards telecast increasingly losing viewers (and arguably, relevance), it's clear that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
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In other news, I watched the Lost season premiere last night and had mixed feelings about it. As excited as I am to see things moving quickly on the show, and as great as it was to reconnect with Hurley, Jack, Locke, Kate, etc., I'm tired of feeling constantly confused by the show. Yesterday's two hour episode was action-packed and good-looking, but almost completely incoherent. I couldn't remember who half the characters were, what they'd been doing, or why I cared. At one point I think we were jumping between 10 different characters/settings/time periods...it just all gets a little overwhelming.

Lost will never lose me as a viewer--I'll stick with it until the bitter end next year--but I would love it if they would try a little harder to keep me engaged without requiring a textbook of notes on previous seasons or a bottle of Motrin for the incomprehensible time-jumps and space-time-continuum ripples. It's a delicate balance, I know: either we're complaining that too little is happening, or we're complaining that too much is happening. And I realize that I'm basing my complaints on one two-hour block, which had the uneviable task of reintroducing the world to the complex universe of Lost without trying to recap four previous seasons of content. So of course I'll be there with bells on next week. I just hope I understand what I'm watching.

Did anyone else feel this way about last night's Lost?