Best Excuse for Bin Laden
Newt Gingrich
According to ex-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, al-Qaeda’s hatred of the America is inspired by American movies. “The problem may not be in Washington at all,” says Gingrich. “Instead, think Hollywood.” Gingrich reasons that our pop culture — including our films — “rather than foreign policy, is the true culprit of anti-Americanism.” Right. And terrorists are just movie critics with a serious ax to grind.

Matthew Sheppard Memorial Award
Eminem
8 Mile
Rough trade rapper Eminem’s agent has apparently advised him to nix the gay-bash rhymes. In his debut film, 8 Mile, the “chocolate or plain peanut man” actually has a pleasant conversation with someone he would have called “faggot” during his enfant terrible period. This Calley-winning scene creates that inner glow you feel when you hear a serial killer has been born again.

Best Pre-emptive Deception
Brendan Fraser
The Quiet American
For one-half of this movie Fraser’s character appears to be an innocent American in Vietnam. Then with one quick turn, we realize he’s a CIA operative capitalizing on a terrorist attack to manipulate the press and overthrow an unfriendly government — qualifications that would make the Bush dynasty swell with pride.

Trent Lott Humanitarian Award
Halle Berry’s Acceptance Speech
2002 Academy Awards
If the tables were turned — if African Americans had been the slave owners — Berry could have been the first white actress to win an Academy Award. Then half-white Halle could have said her Oscar was “for every nameless, faceless woman of non-color who now has a chance." As it is, Berry’s Oscar moment was a victory for gorgeous well-connected white-looking black women everywhere.

Best Spinal Tap Impersonation
Wilco
I’m Trying to Break Your Heart
We loved the band Wilco until we saw their pathetically pretentious documentary. Like the semi-fictional self-aggrandizing parody band Spinal Tap, these boys think they’ve hung the moon. It made us wonder "What day did the Lord create Wilco and couldn't he have rested on that day too?"

Best Simulation of a TV Show Pretending to be a Movie
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Fat Wedding is a Love American Style rerun with a phyllo -thin plot and acting so bubbly it made us belch —— all the ingredients for a hit network television series.

Collateral Damage Award
Spirit of America
This Hollywood-produced 3-minute patriotic movie montage trailer was designed to bring out the feel-good war mongering in all of us. "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed!" we heard George C. Scott say in a clip from his notorious Dr. Strangelove speech advocating nuclear retaliation. What we didn’t hear was Scott’s deranged character’s continuation: "But I do say, no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops!"

Best Anal-Retentive Disaster Movie
Lost in La Mancha
Do you want to watch a film self-destruct? Director Terry Gilliam is so obsessively compulsive that most of the disaster recorded in this documentary about his failed attempt to make the movie Don Quixote is his own doing.

Best Reason To Hate Nationalism
Divine Intervention
This Palestine-produced winner at the Cannes Film Festival was NOT nominated for an Oscar. Why? Because according to Academy rules, Palestine is not a country. Never mind that it has held observer status at the UN since 1974 and is recognized by more than 115 countries. Never mind that the Academy accepts films from Taiwan and Hong Kong when neither are states. It makes us wonder — hypothetically speaking — what would happen if Palestinians ran Hollywood?

Best Supporting Body Part
Nicole Kidman’s Nose
The Hours
Academy members have a habit of confusing physical transformation with good acting. That’s why Nicole Kidman should thank her paste-on nose if she wins an Oscar for her flat-footed comical performance in The Hours. And since Kidman’s character — Virginia Woolf — suffered from mental illness (another quality that Academy members confuse with good acting) Kidman practically owns the Oscar already.

Best Pre-pubescent Flick
Gangs of New York
Martin Scorsese said he wanted to make this movie ever since he was a seven year-old boy. Given the glittery knives, axes and blood flow in Gangs, it appears he made a film FOR seven year-old boys.

Most Shameful Performance
Bowling for Columbine
Charlton Heston and Michael Moore
Twenty-five years after receiving the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, Heston plays an Alzheimer's stricken President of the NRA in Michael Moore’s Oscar nominated documentary. Unfortunately Heston is playing himself, giving the ever-opportunistic Moore a free-pass to ridicule. By the time “Bowling” was over, we — gun control advocates all — couldn’t tell who we liked least, Heston for his dubious politics or Moore for his tactlessness.