Oscar gets a recount

What if you stripped away the aggressive military-precision multimillion-dollar campaigns, the industry buzz, the pressure to Say Something Timely, and The Harvey Weinstein Factor.

What would you have?

Not Oscar season, that's for sure.

A number of people, notably Spike Lee, claim the Academy does make-goods. You know, giving an award for a somewhat undeserving movie/performance as a way to smooth over a prior snub. (Scorsese for "The Departed" when he'd clearly been dissed on "Raging Bull" and "Goodfellas," for instance).

Entertainment Weekly, per Anne Thompson's blog today, wants to go the whole hindsight thing one better by allowing people to re-vote on Oscar winners of the past. Do they still hold up? Or was their Golden Guy a result of skillful PR, heavy ad spending and zeitgeisty subject matter?

It won't be the same people voting this time (though there's likely to be some overlap). So, will these 7,000 EW-handpicked industry heavyweights decide that Marisa Tomei ("My Cousin Vinny") really should've won over a quartet of British A-listers (Judy Davis, Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave)? Or that Clint Eastwood ("Unforgiven") rightly lost to Al Pacino ("Scent of a Woman")? This was the 1993 Oscars, one of the years that EW will re-do.

And of course there's the age-old "Saving Private Ryan" vs. "Shakespeare in Love" debate. It'll get settled by this group, but it still won't change the Weinstein-generated tsunami that nabbed the Golden Guy for the affable period piece over the seminal war drama. (No one will have to give back their Oscars, no matter how many of these voters think they didn't deserve them in the first place).

Participants will start receiving their "Recall the Gold" ballots soon (six categories, five Oscar derbies, five years apart), and results are expected to be published in January.

Gives all those "Crash" haters something to look forward to.