Oscar Recap

After running around all over town Sunday, including a trip to the doctor upon the realization that our youngest had pink eye, I settled in early to watch some red carpet action before the 81st Oscars telecast. We had a lovely finger-food meal of stuffed potato bits, lettuce wraps, stuffed mushrooms, steak bites, and chicken nuggets. We even got the boys to bed before the show started! I was very excited.

It began. I really liked the opening number. I watched it again today and laughed again. I think I liked it because Hugh Jackman's recession-themed number is just like the shows we did as kids and my kids do now (a batmobile out of milk jugs?! brilliant). In many ways, I think it might inspire people to have fun and be theatrical. Unfortunately, the big "Musicals are Back" number was poorly orchestrated and fell down despite Baz Luhrman's creativity. And poor John Legend having to make his Wall-E ballad flow with the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack ...

The show moved on. When five previous winners came out to present Best Supporting Actress, I thought, oh no ... we will be here forever! But I ended up really liking the presentation for the actors. I think it gave each one of the them a moment of glory (especially when the presenter practiced their speech and it seemed sincere. Shirley MacLaine made Anne's night!). Nice change.

The montages: I actually liked the idea of showing some snippets from good movies of all genres from 2008, but I think they fell short. The were not terribly inclusive and the editing and filming was awkward.

Funny: Tina Fey, Steve Martin, Ben Stiller, James Franco.
Can stay home next year: Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston, Zac Efron.

The winners: nothing really surprising. I did a fantastic job of predicting the winners (I missed on foreign language film). Who wasn't crying when Heath Ledger won? And good speeches ... Mr. Roboto!

*We also spent a lot of time looking up facts during the show. (How many times has Phillip Seymour Hoffman been nominated? When did that come out? What did she win for?) God bless Wikipedia!