Tonight is the twilight of the Awards season! That’s right, folks – the Oscars. Yay!(?). More like “eh.” After years of undeserving winners and inexcusable snubs – dating back long before I got my hands on a movie theater stub – I see it as nothing more than another TV time slot to fill. Passing entertainment? Sure, but some of the real cinematic winners largely go unnoticed by the commercial awards organization.

So, it goes without saying: talking about the Academy usually brings a lot of opinions into the mix. No doubt, and there may be ones worth paying more attention to. Award shows are annually hosted by other unions in addition to the Oscars, such as the half-dozen guilds that represent specific roles in filmmaking – director, actor, screenwriter, you name it. And the winners of these organizations rarely match up with the Academy’s. Now, which one seems more valid – praise from a selected membership of professionals in that particular field or from a 6,000-plus group of supposed elites?

But I’ll stop myself before this becomes too self-satisfied. If people are interested in watching the Oscars for discovering new movies, I’d also recommend for them to check out “Cosmopolis,” “Holy Motors,” “Damsels in Distress,” or “Cloud Atlas.” I’m not sure how much I like all of these choices, if at all, but they’re all unique from each other and wildly different than the “mainstream,” something the Oscars advertises itself as above and beyond. The nominations aren’t all bad – far from it, even. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find many years in the Academy’s history when some of the most challenging and bold movies were recognized.

Jean-Luc Godard, a famous French filmmaker considered by many – the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese among them – to be one of the biggest pioneers in the medium, was nominated for a lifetime honorary Oscar after decades of being ignored by the organization. Godard denied the nomination, claiming he was too old to make the trip from France.

Tonight, instead of watching the Oscars, I’ll be on a bus coming back from the 70 Millimeter Film Festival program at the Music Box theater in Chicago, where movies will be exhibited on a celluloid gauge much higher in picture and sound resolution than the once-standard 35 millimeter format. Now, there’s something that should be sacred to movies.