The Academy Awards are Sunday (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC), so let's talk about them. Also, please check and comment on my previous three blogs, all about "American Idol":

1) The new Oscar producers are out-and-out loony. (You'd tell me if these were too harsh, wouldn't you?) They won't say who the presenters will be; they don't even want the presenters to walk the red carpet. This is sort of like good show business, but the opposite.

Time does funny things in the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." By the time it was done, Brad Pitt's character seemed 80 years younger and I was three hours older.

The result -- flaws and all -- is terrific.

In some ways, this is your standard, give-me-an-Oscar epic. It's long (two hours, 50 minutes), richly capturing a variety of eras and places. Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump"), the master of the mega-fable, adapted it with Robin Swicord.