by Patrick Goldstein.
The front-runner in this year’s Oscar race is, by a narrow margin, “The Artist,” a stylish French-made drama about a silent movie star at the dawn of the talkies that has virtually no dialogue and is shot in black and white. If it wins the Oscar for best picture, it will join a bevy of recent winners, such as “The King’s Speech,” “The Hurt Locker,” “No Country for Old Men” and “Crash,” that earned their statuettes for being the epitome of what Hollywood’s ruling class of academy voters viewed as high art.
The academy is so obsessed with artistry and seriousness of purpose that some of the best-made films of the year – “Super 8,” “Contagion” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” – aren’t even remotely considered serious best picture contenders, despite representing Hollywood filmmaking craft of the highest order. It’s hardly a stretch to say that every moment of David Fincher’s work on “Dragon Tattoo” is as vivid and absorbing as anything he did on best picture nominee “The Social Network” last year, yet “Dragon Tattoo,” largely because of its subject matter, has none of the Oscar buzz that “Social Network” enjoyed.
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