Tonight, millions of people will be tuned in to their TV sets to discover the winners of the annual super stakes we call the Academy Awards ostensibly for the motion picture industry’s brightest and best. We who’re hip to the trip, though, know all eyes glued to the boob tube will be watching for more: we’ll be watching the red carpet to pay homage to some of the West’s Most Beautiful People. I admit it: I love, love, love red-carpet fashion. Both men and women. I know it’s infra dig to say this and I can imagine cinephiles rolling their eyes right now. It’s not as though I’m ever going to wear a signature Lupita Nyong’o gown that will make me the toast of the town anytime soon. (Were you as thunderstruck as I was the first time I took notice of her at the Golden Globes in that red Ralph Lauren cape dress?) Nor am I going to be picked up for a ball by someone who cleans up like Matthew McConaughey. (That guy seldom strikes a wrong style note, which is just as well because, what with his career resurgence, which started around the time of Lincoln Lawyer — by the by, have you seen True Detective??? — it’s only blue skies ahead for him, baby!)

Still, I find the spectacle of movie star-watching one that’s unparalleled. It’s like going to The Louvre and gazing at art. What the hell does, say, the Venus de Milo have to do with the quality of one’s life? On the surface, probably nothing. But there’s a school of thought that posits that, at its core, art – the search for beauty – is what elevates civilisation, by bringing emotion and intellect together to establish order out of the chaos of life. Therefore, we can look at the 6′ 8″ Greek marble sculpture of a woman missing her arms and still recognise it for what it is: the epitome of graceful female beauty.

Make no mistake: I love movies. Love ’em like how Jesus loves the little children of the world. Love ’em second to how I love books. But, in the end, what does it matter which film is flick of the year? And why should I take my cue from what the Academy endorses? The enjoyment of a movie is a subjective and intensely personal pursuit that affects each person in different ways. I mean, try as I might, I simply cannot understand all the hype about American Hustle. (Call me crazy, but I love my Best Picture winner to be something that I’ve never seen before, something that’s so visceral that I feel gobsmacked, the way I did when I watched Pulp Fiction or Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds — hey, hurry up and get back in the game, Quentin Tarantino!). Seriously, who hasn’t seen an incarnation of ‘Hustle’ already? In some other movie starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino or Ray Liotta? Big respect to the fantastic Christian Bale (holy foie gras and red wine, Batman, you’re positively brilliant in everything you take on, big screen-wise!) and his glorious toupée which, really and truly, deserved individual billing, and which one NYT critic hilariously described as a “torturously complicated comb-over that he arranges with the fastidiousness of a Michelin-starred pastry chef”, but how can that movie, a ‘truish’ story about the heartbreak of the American Dream, take the statue over 12 Years A Slave, another depiction of the American Dream gone awry?

And let’s pause for a moment on that frosh Jennifer Lawrence, shall we. Is it just me? If we’re going to rhapsodise about performances in that film, good God, let’s talk about Amy Adams’s, which was layered and a paean to refreshing restraint, a quality we tend to see mostly in our British actors. True, I cared not one jot for Lawrence’s character, but even the most unlikeable character (as Leonardo DiCaprio’s in The Wolf of Wall Street) has the power, surely, to captivate. I simply don’t think that this role comes close to her performance in the movie I first noticed her: Winter’s Bone. Every time Lawrence came on the screen in ‘Hustle’, I found myself irritated by her character whose name I didn’t even bother to learn.

On the other hand, take a smaller film like Nebraska, which is a long shot for Best Picture, but it was a perfect gem that was exquisitely cast. Who knew Saturday Night Live alum Will Forte had that emotional depth within him? And June Squibb as the mother was, well, are there even words? Or Philomena, another less hyped picture that made me genuflect to the peerless Dame Judi Dench. Will it win Best Picture? Probably not. But is it worth the watch? A thousand times, yes! And August: Osage County. A melodrama, to be sure, rightly not nominated for Best Picture. But what an extraordinary performance wrought by Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts playing against each other! (Cate Blanchett was flawless in Blue Jasmine, but Streep should, in my opinion, get that Best Actress statue.)

But I digress, don’t I?

Listen, if movie star-gazing seems a superfluous pursuit, it shouldn’t be. Think about it: what’s the point of the movies? To find beauty amid the abject misery, hopelessness and despair of this life. That’s what the wretched families in Nebraska and August: Osage County, embarking on their journeys, subconsciously though it may have started out, wanted. That’s what Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity, petrified and thrown into one of the worst possible situations a human being can find themselves in, wanted. That’s what those miserable, soulless, drug-addicted slobs in The Wolf of Wall Street wanted. Hell, that’s what we all want: to find beauty amid ugliness. Who better than the good-looking men and women of Tinseltown to help us do this? It’s weird but true. Don’t believe me? Who could have brought the killer Aileen Wuornos more satisfyingly to the screen but that classic South African beauty Charlize Theron in 2003’s Monster?

That’s why on Oscar night, I bow to the beautiful ones.

In the Best Supporting Actress category, Jennifer Lawrence could perhaps win tonight (please God, no, not when there’s that rigorous beauty Lupita Nyong’o in that category, or even the wonderfully irrepressible June Squibb), but who cares? Would it be a travesty? Sure. But then, these peccadilloes on Oscar night are par for the course. We forget about them a day later. One thing that won’t disappoint, however: my guys and gals of the red carpet are going to make me believe that life is indeed beautiful. They’re going to take my breath away.