http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BF0E978EE%2D7C32%2D4F68%2DA17F%2DBA381BBD494A%7D&siteid=mktw

If this past weekend's box-office numbers are any indication, Sunday's upcoming Academy Awards telecast could be one of the lowest rated ever. One critical reason: "Brokeback Mountain's" paltry $2.3 million take, placing it 14th on the box-office list for the Feb. 24-26 Friday-to-Sunday period.
That's the worst showing by a top-ranked Oscar nominee at this stage of the awards season over the last decade.

I've also read similar reports that this upcoming Oscar's ceremony could be one of the lowest-rated, primarily because many of the movies up for awards are smaller/independent in nature (Capote, Brokeback, etc) rather than what we saw the last few times (Lord of the Rings comes to mind).

Not sure about reading too much into Brokeback Mountain's take for that weekend though, considering as of March 2, the movie has grossed $76,391,758 domestic, $51,000,000 overseas, for a total of $127,391,758 on relatively fewer screens compared to other, larger budget movies. Budget was listed at $14,000,000.

All the movies I really love have never been huge successes whereas there have been more movies than I can count that have made hundreds of millions of dollars and have been mediocre in my opinion. I'm not saying the Academy are suddenly becoming the mark of quality but the box office isn't either.