I thought I had good news for you this week, but then the good news got moved to next Friday and that leaves us with three—well, not that exciting-looking movies opening on Friday. Try as I may, I can’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for Battle: Los Angeles, Mars Needs Moms, or Red Riding Hood. Maybe I was spoiled by last week.

Probably no genre of filmmaking is so generally disdained as the biopic. It’s actually less the films themselves than it is their often somewhat-to-extemely dubious veracity. I would not deny this aspect of the movie versions of the lives of the great. It’s certainly there, though most times I’d argue that it’s no worse than your average high school history book, especially as concerns older biopics where anything too disturbing tends to be given as fine a coat of whitewash as Aunt Polly’s fence ever saw. But it seems to me that even these films served a function in terms of general knowledge that was not without its value.

Well, here it is—Oscar weekend—and what had started out as a seemingly predictable year at the Oscars now looks a little less predictable, and has also become one of the most promoted ceremonies I can recall. It’s certainly evolved into the busiest Oscar season I’ve ever had since I’ve been Svengali’d into—along with Justin Souther—this Oscar party at The Carolina on Sunday night.