Blind side

If it's time for the Oscars, you know it's Schmaltz Season. Academy members live their working lives in a make-believe world. In their world view, audiences only go to a multiplex or rent a movie so that they can share a cry, gasp and laugh for close to two hours. To prompt such audience emotions, many movies -- from Hollywood to Bollywood, Nazi propaganda and soap operatics to BBC period dramas -- present larger-than-life appeals to heartstrings, funny bones and community loyalties.

Sometimes the Academy recognises movies that also appeal to viewers' intellects and souls. They even acknowledge foreigners. When a foreigner is an icon of schmaltz, like Robert Benigno, the Academy voters will abandon their usual preference for all-American schmaltz. Some years, the sentimental stuff is a shoo-in.

For the 2009 Awards, Crazy Heart covered C&W music and generation gaps; Jeff Bridges romped home, playing himself. In The Blind Side, college football and inter-racial relations formed the winning all-American team to rush Sandra Bullock over the line. She played a very dominant rich suburbanite. Judging by her other starring roles, she may also have been playing herself.

Hollywood is less schmaltzy than it used to be and must be praised for realising that neither film should win any other major gong. It would be nice to think that the Academy has not forgiven itself for over-honouring Driving Miss Daisy.