Today the IMDB home page (Internet Movie Database) asked this question: "How could the Academy have voted the entertaining lark Shakespeare in Love as Best Picture of 1998 over Saving Private Ryan?"

I'm probably reading far too much into this, but it seems to me it suggests that love is less important than hate, life less important than death. It implies that the latter film, Saving Private Ryan, is a better movie. Well, sorry, but after the visual masterpiece of the first 30 minutes it is really just another war movie, neither rising above the usual nor sinking below it. In terms of writing, Shakespeare in Love is a much wittier script and the parts cohere far better than those of Saving Private Ryan.

It never occurred to me to compare the two movies - frankly, I think it's an idiot's exercise. But I do find the notion that love and comedy are less "serious" than war and other tragedies to be, from the artistic view, even stupider. And sadder.

Bollocks, I say!