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My take on the Oscars: 2011 was not a great year for movies. The Academy’s decision to increase the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten has never looked more pathetic. Especially since they could only come up with nine this year.

That said, I thought The Artist was clever, but ultimately little more than a bon bon. I’m hard-pressed to understand the lavish praise it got. Tree of Life was ambitious and had some sparks of brilliance, but in the end it didn’t work. The Descendants was good; mainstream but good. However, it was a little too overtly manipulative for my taste. Midnight in Paris was a cute trifle, but just a trifle. Moneyball was very good, but just a little too ordinary to play in the big leagues. I didn’t see The Help, War Horse, or Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

By process of elimination, that means my pick for Best Picture this year is…..Hugo. I didn’t like all of Hugo, but I liked a lot of it, and if the Academy is going to give the big prize to a valentine to Hollywood, I’d pick Hugo over The Artist. Needless to say, I expect to be pretty disappointed this evening.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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