Otherwise, it was an unusually flat show, even for the Oscars. With Jamie Foxx’s big win — and the substance of his acceptance speech — a generally foregone conclusion and Chris Rock apparently shackled by the middlebrow reality of the gig (even Robin Williams was told that his big planned anti-censorship number was a no-fly zone) what was there to get excited about? The Academy hitched its hopes to Black America so transparently that the move came across as not so much misguided as outright cynical, with Rock’s taped bit at the Magic Johnson multiplex illustrating the gap between the Oscars and everyday moviegoers so eloquently that it functioned as autocriticism.

So how can the Academy square itself with the rest of the populace and reconnect with ticket-buyers? And if those ticket-buyers feel the closest kinship with White Chicks, does the Academy even want to? If the new middlebrow prefers to watch its movies at home, and I think it does, maybe the rest of Hollywood needs to take its cues from Ray this year and Lost In Translation last year — two Oscar-winners that were rushed onto DVD in time for the ceremony, enabling at least some degree of water-cooler chatter from folks who just don’t head out to the theaters anymore, and who seem to represent the movie-watching demographic that Oscar may still appeal to.