Some Notes on the Oscars

Pretty run-of-the-mill ceremony this year, even though it is the award's big 8-0. Jon Stewart was occasionally funny and kept out of the way, managing not to mince around and embarrass everyone and himself, as seems to be the Oscar tradition going back to the Billy Crystal days. When jokes fell flat, it usually wasn't Stewart telling them. There was also no interpretive dance, though having to listen through three songs from "Enchanted" was a bit of a trial (no Celine Dion though, and thank you Jesus for small mercies).

It helped that the movies nominated were at least good-to-great this year, and there was nothing on the odious level of "Crash" or "Gladiator" floating around, causing me to go into spittle-flinging rants.

Here are a couple of stray observations:

-Michael Moore did not win for best doc, so we can all just go back to pretending he doesn't exist.

-The fucking penguins did not win an Oscar.

-The Foreign Language award went once again to what was reportedly the worst of the candidates, carrying on the long running Oscar tradition of making sure that the only foreign films most Americans hear about are the shitty ones.

-Now that Diablo Cody has won an Oscar, maybe she'll go on to write something with multidimensional characters who don't speak in inanely quirky dialog.

-Weird how everyone who won the major acting and directing categories, even the best film, seemed to deserve it.