It's Oscar time again! And all I can say this year is that the Oscars are rubbish.

I dunno what it is about the Academy. Every year they try and retool the event to attract bigger viewing numbers for the ceremony, and every year they make it worse and worse.

A couple of years ago they increased the number of films nominated. That came after a year when a whole lot of ‘smaller' and British films were finalists. One even had subtitles. Since (apparently) Americans don't go and see such films it was assumed this so-called ‘elitism' was wrecking the awards – people simply hadn't heard of the films so they didn't watch.

And they changed the format.
Now there are a whole pile of films so that there will be some ‘popular' ones that ‘everyone' has heard of.
And now – like some hapless reality show – presenters stand and embarrassingly recount to acting nominees just what wonderful people they are.

It was pretty awful when Anne Hathaway and a (quite possibly stoned) James Franco did it last year. The numbers went down again. This year even the presenter bailed. The guy producing the show, estimable film director Brett Ratner, got fired for alleged gay slurs. Presenter Eddie Murphy walked in sympathy.

So this year it's back to the future – Billy Crystal has been disinterred: everybody party like it's 1999.

Usually I spend the column before the Oscars – which, by the way, are live on telly on Monday afternoon – predicting who will walk away with the little gold fellas, but this year I have few sensible predictions. The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo or Moneyball should win best picture. Because, of the nine films, they're the only ones that should have been nominated and I don't think even Hugo or The Artist are Best Picture material, despite the fact that I enjoyed them both immensely.

But the big money was spent promoting The Artist and it will probably take the award along with that for Best Actor, which is kinda criminal. Best Actor? Pitt and Clooney are both superb in their respective films (as is Gary Oldman in his supremely controlled turn in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). But where is Michael Fassbender for Shame? I've seen a host of other performances in ‘small' movies that stand alongside those and weren't considered.

For that matter, why aren't TTSS and Shame up for the best film award when you have such mediocrity as War Horse, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Help? Even Woody Allen's latest, Midnight In Paris, frothy fun though it is, is hardly Oscar material. Like Scorsese's Hugo it would barely count in the director's top five films.

In the women's category, it's hardly worth predicting since everyone is likely to be disappointed if their name isn't Meryl. Another great performance in another tragically average film. Nice to see Rooney Mara nominated for her brave transformation in Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (but why was that not a Best Picture nominee?). The great Tilda Swinton was robbed, with no nomination for her role in We Have To Talk About Kevin.
There is silliness and inequity pretty much wherever you look. What the hell happened to the animated films? Tintin didn't get an Oscar nod? Cars 2 didn't get a nod? But Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots did? Has the Academy gone completely crazy?

In the documentary category there is no Senna, no Cave of Forgotten Dreams. But there's Undefeated, a cringe-worthy hagiography made to praise and flatter Sarah Palin. Is it just there so attendees have something to laugh about on the night (Billy Crystal notwithstanding)?

And the songs… There are only two songs nominated. Since one is by Bret McKenzie that's good news for the New Zealand contingent. But seriously… two songs? It seems voters give the entrants a score of one to 10. To get a nomination you need to score an average of 8.5. If only one song gets 8.5 then the next highest gets in as well. So they thought there was only one (or possibly two) songs good enough in the whole year? A pity that logic wasn't applied to the ‘best' films.