Thoughts on Oscar Night

Best Picture: The Departed was certainly good, but not as good as Letters From Iwo Jima. But Clint’s won plenty of awards, and Scorcese was due, so it was no surprise. I didn’t see The Queen or Babel, and thought Little Miss Sunshine was vastly overrated.

Best Director: What goes for picture goes for director.

Best Actor: I can’t quibble with Forest Whitaker taking the award for The Last King of Scotland, which Robin and I saw just earlier today – but I had hoped Peter O’Toole would get it (talk about being due!) for Venus. But then again, I haven’t actually seen Venus; the old-man / sweet-young-thing subject matter is shopworn and unappealing, and a lot of voters may have felt the same. I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was good in The Departed, and excellent in Blood Diamond; he’s finally matured enough to inhabit his characters, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him win an Oscar in the years to come.

Best Actress: I hadn’t seen any of these performances! Robin and I usually make a point of seeing most, if not all, of the top nominees, but this year we blew it. By all accounts, Helen Mirren deserved the Oscar for The Queen.

Best Supporting Actor: I’ve always enjoyed Alan Arkin, and he was certainly the highlight of Little Miss Sunshine, so I’m happy to see him get the award. But I would have flipped a coin and voted for either Mark Wahlberg (The Departed) or Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond). I haven't seen Little Children or Dreamgirls.

Best Supporting Actress: The only performance I saw in this category was that of Abigail Breslin, the kid in Little Miss Sunshine. She was fine, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me to nominate her for an Oscar.

Other awards: Why do they keep torturing the viewing audience with the 5 “Best Song” performances? Why does the Best Song category even rate inclusion in the live telecast? This award, along with Best Makeup, should be relegated to the banquet where they award Best New Camera Lens. It’s been years since there was a halfway memorable song in this category, and to give the songs more air time than any five other categories is ridiculous. The medley of three boring, overwrought songs from Dreamgirls was enough to send everyone I know to the kitchen for snacks, and as much as I liked An Inconvenient Truth, and Melissa Etheridge, her song didn’t make the least impression on me during the movie.

The ceremony in general: Ellen DeGeneris was okay, moving things along, doing her job – far better than the disastrous turns by David Letterman and Chris Rock – maybe even better suited to the task than last year’s John Stewart (who I prefer in every other way). But the master emcees of Oscar history remain Bob Hope (as much as I hated his politics), Johnny Carson, and Billy Crystal.