AND THE WINNER IS…

The 475th annual Academy Awards—that globally-televised extravaganza in which an incestuous group of overpaid egomaniacs gather to heap further praise upon themselves—takes place tonight in Hollywood, California. But the ceremony poses a logistical problem for Spaniards, as it starts at 2am Central European Time.

I therefore decided to create a parallel cinematic lovefest that citizens of Spain could enjoy prior to—rather than three hours after—their normal bedtimes: The 1st annual Virtual Tapas Bar Movie Awards!

Unfortunately, the VTB Awards cannot choose its winners from the same pool of nominees as the Oscars, because I only saw three movies during 2004. But we won’t let that triviality stand in the way of our fun.

So without further ado (whatever the hell “ado” means), the winners of the 2004 Virtual Tapas Bar Movie Awards are:

BEST MOVIE: The Incredibles.

BEST ACTOR: Hellboy.

BEST ACTRESS: That nutty Korean chick from Sideways.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: (Three-way tie!) The Incredibles, Hellboy and Sideways.

What? You say that neither The Incredibles, Hellboy nor Sideways qualify as a foreign language film? That’s odd. When I saw these films at the Guadalajara Cineplex Odeon, all of the dialogue was in Spanish.