Hell Portal.

Roger Ebert is on a mission to get Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby crowned Best Picture on Oscar night. He's written a number of annoyingly earnest pieces about the purity of the film and how its makers aren't going out of their way to campaign for it (Ha!) and how it's just the wittle engine that could. Spare me. He also uses his TV show to push for it and, in the past three or so weeks, he's brought it up every time and always mentions that the film "doesn't rely on fancy special effects."
This has become something of a mantra and I am sending it straight to the Whine Colored Sea Hell Portal.
I hate knee-jerk technophobia and that's what that statement is. "Oh, don't you remember the good old days...?" As if your film is automatically better or more sincere or pure or whatever if you don't have special effects. It's bullshit. I'm not going to deny that there are a lot of really awful movies that are just long CGI parades; Yes, those movies suck. But a memo to Mr. Ebert: you're not allowed to make a big fuss about a movie's quality in relation to its lack of special effects when you called Spiderman 2 the fourth best movie of 2004. Or when you called Dark City the best film of 1997 and Minority Report the best film of 2002. (Out of respect for Mr. Ebert, I won't bring up the fact that he called the cinematic abortion that is Spawn an "experimental art film" and compared it to Lang's Metropolis... Oh, oops, I just did. Sorry, Ebs.)
Clearly the Ebs is really down with special effects, which makes his harping that much worse. He's pandering to old, curmudgeon-y Academy voters who buy into that crap (people like Clint Eastwood, who is now using that very line in TV spots promoting the film).
End of rant. Just rest assured that that sentiment is currently burning in the flames of the Whine Colored Sea of Brimstone.