stupid statue anyway.No joy for the Wel­ling­tonista present at today’s Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Taika Wai­titi’s bril­liant short film Two Cars, One Night lost out (as Taika him­self pre­dicted in a TV inter­view we saw a couple of days ago) to Brit­ish dir­ect­or Andrea Arnold ‘s film Wasp. And the Weta guys had no luck for their spe­cial effects in I, Robot. Still, elev­en last year, so can­’t com­plain.

Any­way, we’ve seen this story about the Oscar nom­in­ee’s gift bags on the night around a couple of places now. The CBS News one is a bit more hys­ter­ic­al than some of the oth­ers, but cap­tures the tone…

You’re up for an Academy Award, or “just” a presenter, or per­former. You’re big time. Sought-after, adored, cel­eb­rated, rewar­ded. You’ve got it all. So why do you need more gifts? What’s with the free spa treat­ments, free TV’s, and $1,500 steak din­ners? Why do you get over a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars worth of stuff and not have to pay for any of it? And you can way pay for it. Even free satel­lite cable for a year. You can­’t pay for your own cable? That’s just greedy.

But, of course, the thing is, among all the ‘greedy’ ‘got-it-all’ US$20M-a-pop Hol­ly­wood stars is Taika (and pre­sum­ably his short-film mak­ing mates, as well as some of the doc­u­ment­ary makers). They must be stoked. Even if Taika sees even a half of the value of the rumoured US$100000+ that the gift bags are sup­posedly worth, he’ll be abso­lutely laugh­ing.

A lot of the value seems to come from the ‘street price’ for things like a three-night stay at San Ysidro Ranch, a pop­u­lar celebrity hon­ey­moon spot in Monte­cito, which is lis­ted as being worth $US3000. But still, we can think of worse things than to have a few weeks worth of free lux­ury liv­ing at exclus­ive hotels and resorts dot­ted around the globe at our dis­pos­al. Nice work.