David Freeman, the author and screenwriter whose latest Hollywood novel It's All True is about to be published, puts the Oscars into a little local perspective in Sunday's LAT Calendar section.

One of the virtues of tonight's little hootenanny is it means the voting season is over — the various guilds and of course the academy can finally get back to being out of work.

Freeman served on the Academy's foreign language subcommittee this year, which means he was supposed to view 18 films for his vote to count. He writes: "I didn't even come close..."

Also in Calendar, new New Yorker staffer Caitlin Flanagan opines on the differences between Lost in Translation and Something's Gotta Give in exploring the attractions that occur between men and women of different ages. She concludes: "Lost in Translation is a movie constructed of perfectly realized moments, made powerful by their suggestion of forbidden and secret ground. If this isn't great filmmaking for the adult sensibility, nothing is."