Is the irrelevance of the Grammys a good thing?

[Alex]

Well, I obviously can't speak to the music part of it but I do have an opinion on the movie part.

I think there's room for both. There are plenty of people out there trying to make whatever movie speaks to them and if awards follow then great. But on the other hand, I'm glad that there is this awards infrastructure that drives studios to put some large budgets into less commercial films. While the academy award winning films are rarely what I would consider the absolute best of the year (though for me this may be a year of confluence if No Country wins big) they are rarely actually bad movies (though that happens too, cf Chicago and Tom Jones).

I think one difference between the movie awards and the music awards (as perceived by someone so far outside the music scene that Sri Lankan rice pricing policy is probably more relevant to my daily life) is that it seems that in the music awards pure commercial fluff is much more likely to be given the big awards. Whereas in the movie industry, no matter how commercially successful it is Ironman has no chance at winning Best Picture next year.