The Statue Made Us Do It—Our biggest Oscar package ever!

What a revoltin' development! This Academy Awards piece is supposed to be about the worthy films the voters snubbed and the stinkers they rewarded with undue praise, but alas: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, perhaps chastened by its failed campaign to deprive critics of DVD and VHS screener tapes, turned in a decent group of ballots.

The math holds up. Best Picture nominations for Lost in Translation and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which were—who'd've thunk it?—actually the best films of 2003. Acting nominations for Bill Murray, Samantha Morton, Johnny Depp and Whale Rider's Keisha Castle-Hughes. High tide for Master and Commander and Mystic River; cold derision for the dirt-stupid Cold Mountain. And any year in which Julia Roberts gets shut out of the acting categories amounts to the best of times.

Still, though many of the deserving were justly rewarded and the undeserving justly punished (not even a technical nomination for The Cat in The Hat, though the godawful Mike Myers comedy had been nominated for a cat-buttload of Razzies), there are always oversights—the films, actors and technical achievements that deserve recognition, even if categories need to be created to fit them.

I hope the Academy will forgive me for making my own Oscars and Special Achievement awards (the trophy given to those grossly wronged by the institution to mollify the Academy's guilt over that party's usually impending death, and to the hardcore gearheads who figure out how to create sound effects for George Lucas without asking themselves why they should).

But we won't dwell on that. Tonight is a night for glamour, for achievement, for Botox! Live, from the beautiful Weekly Pavilion in downtown Henderson, it's the first and last annual Supplemental Oscars!

I'm not just saying this because I've shaken hands with her dad. Jamie Lee Curtis did a fantastic comic turn in a movie that hardly deserved one: a remake of a Disney comedy from the studio's first Dark Age. (Unless Michael Eisner is replaced, the studio will surely remake Gus, the 1976 groaner about a mule that kicks field goals—this really happened; look it up.)

Curtis so thoroughly emulated the speech and mannerisms of a 16-year-old girl—and played the gimmick to so many genuine laughs—that she elevated Freaky Friday in much the same way as Johnny Depp elevated Pirates of the Caribbean. She deserved a nod, but I'm guessing the Academy didn't want to cut Disney that much slack.

I would say, Come back, Dana Carvey, all is forgiven, but he did come back, and the only positive thing I can say about The Master of Disguise is that it wasn't The Cat in the Hat. There are persistent rumors floating around Hollywood about what a control freak and garden-variety dickweed Mike Myers can be, and it's a real pleasure to see Room at the Top, Studio 54 and two unfunny sequels to Austin Powers not only catch up with the one-note comic, but run his lame ass over.

Schweet!

Toni G was Charlize Theron's "personal makeup artist" on Monster, and deserves at least half the credit for Theron's Best Actress nod. Theron's nervous, curiously sympathetic turn as serial killer Aileen Wournos was well-realized, but Toni G made it easy: He put enough prosthetic devices and pure lovin' latex on Theron's fashion-plate faccia to make the actress unrecognizable even to herself. Unfortunately, no amount of makeup could make co-star Christina Ricci look less like a bobblehead.

A straight-faced "Christmas comedy": trouble. A script by Haunted Mansion scribe David Berenbaum: trouble. Will Ferrell in an elf suit: trouble trouble trouble. Yet Elf's only failing was that it didn't give enough screen time to Peter Dinklage, whose hilarious cameo was just one funny moment among dozens. Director Jon Favreau, best known for his sad-sack role in Swingers ("You're like a big bear, man!"), has proven himself a true actor's director: He gets level, understated and honestly funny performances out of everyone in Elf, from Ferrell to Bob Newhart to Zooey Deschanel. This one will show on TV every December until the end of civilization, and we'll be happy to see it every single time.

This category honors those films that make use of Our National Brand. You would think I'd give this award to American Splendor or American Wedding, but no: I'm giving it to American Bukkake 20, because the title of this very, very pornographic motion picture (unseen by me, I should hasten to add) manages to make the name of our country look somehow exotic.

And it's metaphorically apt.

I'm not even going to try. The aforementioned Peter Dinklage plays Finbar McBride, a reclusive railroad aficionado who happens to be a dwarf. He inherits an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey and moves into it, and in the process collects a group of friends he didn't know he wanted: an embittered divorcee (Patricia Clarkson), an unflappable Cuban barista (Joe Oramas), a comely librarian (Michelle Williams) with romantic notions of him, and a young girl (Raven Goodwin) who shares his enthusiasm for trains. As these characters work their way through McBride's defenses, The Station Agent works through yours: You soon forget that the movie doesn't really have a plot to speak of, and allow Dinklage and company to befriend you, too.

Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) directed this film adaptation of Louis Sachar's novel for Disney, and while the studio gave it a respectable push, it wasn't as successful as it should have been. Holes is a smart, edgy family film with an involved plot that demands your full attention—but unlike the attractive yet soulless Harry Potter films, its seemingly disparate story threads actually weave together in the end. Its stars—Sigourney Weaver, Tim Blake Nelson, Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf and Khleo Thomas—inhabit their characters as wholly and completely as they would in a so-called "prestige" picture. In fact, I found Holes more challenging than Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain, though that's not saying much; the latter film was the It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of 2003, complete with pointless celebrity cameos.

This publication gave a four-star review to Spy Kids 3-D, so I feel I can relax a bit here. Rodriguez put out two movies last year (the Spy Kids sequel and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, a sequel to Desperado) and grossed a combined box office of $167 million domestically—a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that he only spent $67 million to make both pictures, or half of what it cost to make Bad Boys II. And he did it with Sylvester Stallone in one film and Mickey Rourke in the other. That's not talent—that's heroism.

I'll put it this way: If Rodriguez were to produce the Oscar telecast, the show would cost half as much, run a quarter as long, and pieces like this probably wouldn't be necessary. And I'd get all the damn screener tapes a man could stand to watch.