So, Hollywood has decided that sixteen is the new fourteen. A movie called 'Sinners' has just broken the record for the most Oscar nominations ever. It is a wonderful moment for people who enjoy watching millionaires give each other trophies for being very good at pretending to be other people. I suppose we should all act surprised, but that would require more energy than I am willing to give to a group of people who think 'long history' means anything that happened before the year 1990. It is the same old story. Every few years, the industry decides it has found the greatest thing ever made, and they pile on the praise until the rest of us want to go live in a cave without a screen.

Let’s look at the math here. Sixteen nominations. There are only so many things you can actually do on a film set. At this rate, the Academy is going to start giving out awards for Best Use of a Water Bottle or Most Sincere Look into the Distance. It is not about the art anymore. It has not been about the art since silent movies went out of style and everyone started talking too much. It is about the bureaucracy of the ego. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—a name that is at least two words too long—is just a giant office where people vote for their friends so their friends will vote for them next year. It is a circle of love that is as thin as a piece of paper.

And the title! 'Sinners.' How very original. Hollywood making a movie about sin is like a fish making a movie about being wet. It is the only thing they truly know. But they treat it like they have discovered a new planet. They think that by putting 'sin' on a big screen, they are being deep and brave. They are not. They are just showing us what their Tuesday nights look like, but with better lighting and a musical score that tells you exactly when to feel sad. In Europe, we have had sins for thousands of years. We have ruins that are older than the very concept of a movie camera. We do not need a gold statue to tell us that people are flawed. We just look at our history books or our neighbors.

But the Americans love a record. They love to say something is the 'most' or the 'biggest.' If a movie gets 14 nominations, it is a hit. If it gets 16, it is a miracle. It is all part of the same marketing machine. They want you to believe that this movie is special so you will pay fifteen dollars to sit in a dark room and eat salty corn. They want the actors to feel like gods so they can sell more perfume and watches. The truth is that the movie probably has four good parts and twelve parts that are just there to fill the time. But the Academy does not care about time. They love to waste it.

Think about the poor people who have to sit through the ceremony now. If one movie has 16 nominations, we will have to hear the same names called out all night. We will have to watch the same people walk up to a stage, pretend to be shocked, and thank their agents. It is a script that is worse than the movies they are honoring. They will talk about how 'important' film is. They will tell us that movies change the world. Meanwhile, the world is doing just fine—or just as badly—without them. The only thing a movie changes is the bank account of a few producers in California.

I told you this would happen. Every year, the spectacle gets bigger and the meaning gets smaller. We are living in a theater of the absurd where the actors have forgotten they are wearing masks. They take themselves so seriously that it becomes a joke, but they are the only ones not laughing. They think 16 nominations means they have reached the top of the mountain. In reality, they have just built a slightly taller pile of gold in a very shallow valley. It is all very tired, very loud, and very predictable. But please, let us all clap. It is what they expect, and it is the least we can do for people who have worked so hard to tell us how many sins they can fit into two hours of screen time.