For this week the center of my universe is basketball, movies

Sinclair TV stations want to know what scares you so they can scare you

My two passions this time of year are basketball and movies.

While it's playoff time for the local high school teams, I'm also rushing to see all of the Academy Award-nominated films.

After watching the Glens Falls boys extend their unbeaten streak to 21 straight games at Siena College Saturday, I stopped in Saratoga to see the Best Picture nominee The Zone of Interest. It was the last of the Best Picture nominees I had to see.

It's sort of a Holocaust film, but it isn't.

The movie explores the family life of the Auschwitz commandant as they go about their daily lives oblivious to the guard towers, belching smokestacks, gun shots and occasional screams next door.

To give you an idea, the movie starts with a picnic by a lovely river. When they return home, there is a concrete wall topped with razor wire that seems out of place in their backyard garden.

But what makes this stand out is not the visuals, but actually the sound. From the birds chirping as the family picnics in the opening, to the arriving trains and the occasional screams from the camp next door, it's that sound that stays with you.

The Zone of Interest is an important movie for that reason, but not Best Picture worthy.

My fascination with the Academy Awards goes back to my youth and in recent years I have attempted to watch every nominated film, even those vying for makeup and hairstyling awards.

In recent years, the Best Picture category has been expanded to as many as 10 films even if they are not worthy. The real goal is to drum up business for a few lesser films.

Of the 10 nominated films this year, I consider just four Best Picture-worthy. In the grand scheme of things, that is not terribly important unless you really care about quality film.

I'm still surprised Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer continue to draw so much attention. Both are ridiculously long - Flower moon is 3 hours, 26 minutes and Oppenheimer 3 hours - and both could easily lose an hour in the editing room and be better for it. Yet, they continue to rack up the big awards.

Poor Things, sort of Frankenstein remake, has great performances by Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo, but it is just too weird to be Best Picture.

Past Lives, Maestro and Zone of Interest are good movies, but not great. They will be forgotten about quickly.

If you are looking to be better versed for the Academy Award show on March 10, then be sure to see these four films:  American Fiction, The Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie and The Holdovers. They are all streaming somewhere and all are enjoyable.

When Barbie came out this summer, I had no interest in a movie about a toy. But while traveling this fall, I had time to kill and found it to be a totally entertaining and refreshing movie while trapped at 30,000 feet. It had something important to say about men and women.

I found Anatomy of a Fall fascinating as well - although you do have to read the subtitles for much of the film - for showing how different the French legal system is to our own.

I'm happy to report that this year's crop of movies is far better than last year, but ultimately I still find the documentaries more entertaining, more significant.

But I will save that discussion for another column.

Playing up bad news

The axiom many of you may have heard over the years about television news is: If it bleeds, it leads.

Years ago, I stopped watching local Albany news because of its incessant crime coverage.

Apparently, it was good for ratings.

But Sinclair Broadcasting has taken it a step further. Sinclair, a conglomerate of 185 television stations across the country including WRGB-TV in Albany (Channel 6), regularly conducts short surveys with viewers with one key question: What are you most afraid of?

Based on the answers, the Sinclair TV stations tailor their coverage to scare viewers and show cities in a generally bad light. Cities like Albany.

The American Press Institute reported this past week that Sinclair's executive chairman, David Smith, is a Trump supporter and insists his station include messaging that Democratic-led cities are dangerous and anarchic.

It is more important than ever to choose your news sources carefully.

Hometown Teams profiled

The Post-Star profiled the Chapman Museum's "Hometown Teams" exhibit this past week. If you're a hockey, football or baseball fan, you should check out the latest exhibit. It will be featured through May 12.

Problem with newspapers

The Poynter Institute reported this week that the better business is in a community, the better its newspapers will be after reviewing the State of Local News Project's latest report.

The Northwestern University study found that the biggest challenge facing newspapers is the migration of advertising revenue from the newspaper to digital sources. That decline in advertising revenue in communities with declining business interests has led to cuts to staff and the product.

"In communities with little disposable income to put toward news subscriptions or donations and no local philanthropies, cost-cutting becomes the only option," the Northwestern report said. "This creates a self-reinforcing spiral of lower quality and declining readership and, ultimately, closure."

The data showed that counties where the average household income is more than $80,000 can support 10 or more news outlets where counties with household incomes of $54,000 or less are more likely to be news deserts.

Most of our local communities fit into the latter description.

That's not good if you value local journalism.

Clinton County scandal?

The Clinton County sheriff is facing some adversity according to the Press-Republican in Plattsburgh.

According to the Press-Republican, a former female employee of the Sheriff's Department created a petition last month alleging sexual harassment, gender discrimination and retaliation within the department signed by 500 people.

It also reported several women have filed federal lawsuits against the Clinton County Sheriff’s Department for how they were treated.

Clinton County Sheriff Dave Favro told the Press-Republican the allegations are false. The Albany Times Union reported the state attorney general's office is investigating and has interviewed four former correction officers who worked at the county jail.