The statues are all distributed, the corks are all popped, and now it is time to talk about the 82^nd Academy Awards in the past tense. We’ll get to who won, but first off I’d like to talk about who lost: the viewing audience. This has to be one of the worst awards broadcasts in recent memory. Overlong and underwhelming, the only thing interesting in the show was actually finding out who won, which is weird because that often takes a backseat to the rest of the spectacle.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were charming, albeit neutered, hosts. They farmed the opening number out to Neil Patrick Harris, which was predictably fine, but it seemed like a complete redux of his bouts as Tony and Emmy host. On paper it sounds poignant, but in practice it felt stale. I long for the days when Billy Crystal would superimpose himself into the top nominated films. I can understand the new hosts wanting to move forward with an original spin, only this felt like a step backwards. Read on…

I’ve been mostly quiet on the subject of the Oscars this year. Instead of throw my hat into the race, I’d like to offer up what I’ve noticed of the ways my friends and colleagues have approached the subject. After all, it is basically the Super Bowl of film events. So insane has the madness surrounding the Oscars become, that there is an entire swath of calendar, getting longer and longer every year, known as “Awards Season”. In the end, I encounter a few interesting characters in real life and on the web every year surrounding the Oscar madness. Here’s a peek at who they are. Read on…

Lee Daniels’ Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire is difficult to talk about, let alone sit through. Part memoir, part fantasy and part social deconstruction, the film deals in a grab bag of hot button social mores: poverty, racism, rape, incest, epidemics and education reform to name only a few. The director is literally playing with fire, yet, somehow, he has managed to make a feel-good movie. You heard me right.

Clarice Precious Jones lives in Harlem with her abusive mother. The year is 1987 and she is pregnant with her second child by her father. At 16, Precious is still in junior high school, until her pro-active principal recommends her for an alternative schooling program called Each One Teach One. It is here, with the help of a self-assured teacher and a hood-bred cadre of girls, that her journey of self-discovery begins. What does she discover? The same thing we know about ten minutes into the film: that her mother is a big ol’ B-word. Read on…

The voting is over and the results are in: for the first time in 65 years the Academy Awards has ten films contending for the Best Picture statue. Wow, that’s twice as many movies as before; how can we make sense of all of them. Of course you should see all ten films and make an informed decision, or just read what the candler blog has to say about them. In the meantime we’ve parsed a bit of data and laid it out for you in colorful glory. I’ll let the graphic speak for itself, so take a peek.

Click the image to view full size:

That’s a lot to take in at once. No matter how much data we can look at, from a film’s gross to Academy voters’ tendencies, the truth is that most voters work hard to inform themselves and make the decisions they feel are right in their hearts. We’ve got a whole month of speculation ahead of us, but feel free to leave your gut reactions in the comments. Happy Awards Season.

Click here to download the massive, printable version of this graphic. Feel free to plaster the web with this thing, just don’t forget to mention your friends at the candler blog.

The candler blog was born in March of 2009. In the past year, we’ve written a whole lot about cinema, and I’m proud to say we’ve covered most of the top 2010 Oscar contenders on these pages. We even had a strong opinion back when AMPAS upped the number of Best Picture nominations to 10. There are still some holes and we’ll fix that soon. For now, catch up on our thoughts on the year’s biggest films and share your what you think in the comments. Read on…