Carr Returns to Outlandish Productivity, Suffering Californians

As promised last week with the type of robust anticipation usually withheld for the annual availability of Girl Scout cookies, David Carr returned to the NY Times' Oscar beat Sunday. And if he was fatigued at the end of last year, he is not showing it over the last 48 hours. Just check the output from the Father of The Reeler: Sunday's Holiday Movie section anchor about New York's role in the Oscar chase; a video dispatch from Times Square; a brief history of the long odds a Best Actress Oscar winner's marriage faces; and finally, this instant-classic encounter with Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu:

"The air that we are breathing right now was taken in by someone in Japan yesterday," he said, leaving the Bagger struggling to shake off the feeling that he had just taken a huge bong hit instead of oxygen. He laughs with just a trace of bitterness when the mixed critical reactions to his film are brought up.

"We are not telling stories in the way that your Grandma did," he said. "It is not fluff to be rationalized."

Exactly. It's just fluff -- no rationalization required. Old news, but thanks anyway, Ale.

Meanwhile, out in Los Angeles, leave it to Anne Thompson to get all propietary:

In Sunday's NYT feature on East Coast Oscar parties, NYT media reporter David Carr, who filed an excellent Oscar blog last year as The Carpetbagger, makes the mistake all New Yorkers make: they think they're the center of the universe. When it comes to Oscar, I can safely say, they are not. Of course, the LAT's print and online versions of "The Envelope" and this NYT Oscar-hooked blog are designed to do the same thing: sell Oscar ads.

Golly, such cynicism. And it's only Nov. 6! This will get great around February.

Posted at November 6, 2006 2:28 PM