The Oscars

I didn't have anything going on last night (surprise!) so I figured I'd catch up on my email & RSS feeds with The Oscars on in the background. Then a few minutes before the show I remembered that Jon Stewart was hosting so I decided to watch it and do my email during commercials and boring parts of the show. While usually I've only seen half or less of the movies nominated for the major awards, this year I haven't yet seen a single one of the movies that were nominated for the major awards. But based on good things I've heard / how much I've liked the director's previous films I have been really looking forward to seeing:

Juno
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

And to a slightly lesser extent:

Michael Clayton
Eastern Promises
Into The Wild

Back on the have seen side, my list is still pretty short even for movies nominated for the lesser awards:

No End in Sight
Sicko
The Bourne Ultimatum
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Once
Transformers

But even though I've seen so few of the nominated movies, the show was pretty good. A few of the highlights:

* Steve Carell presenting the award for animated feature, deadpanning his intro implying it was for documentary feature. I would love to see him do that deadpan thing for an entire episode of The Office, not unlike the time Dwight got a concussion and was nice & funny for an entire episode. Maybe Michael Scott could get his own concussion, or have some sort of minor aneurysm, or something like that.

* When troops stationed in Iraq announced the award for Best Documentary Short and the award went to Freeheld, a movie about lesbians being denied basic rights. How crazy it would have been if they also announced the award for Best Documentary Feature and No End in Sight had won!

* Katherine Heigl in that red dress presenting the award for something or other.

* While I have not yet seen No Country For Old Men, it seems likely that at least part of the reason it got so many awards last night is because of the way Fargo, one of the best movies of the '90s, got stiffed for Best Picture, and the Coens got stiffed on the Best Director award that year (at least they won for Best Original Screenplay and Frances McDormand won for Best Actress), not unlike the way The Departed won so many awards last year in no small part because they've failed to recognize Scorsese so many times over the past 30+ years. Sure it was a great movie, and probably the most deserving, but it was a remake for goodness sake.

* Jon Stewart did a pretty good job hosting, although he wasn't as good as I remember him being when he hosted 2 years ago.

* By far the highlight of the show for me was when Jon brought Markéta Irglová back on stage so she could give her acceptance speech after she won for Best Original Song along with Glen Hansard for "Falling Slowly" from Once. I was so pissed when the music cut her off, and so happy after the commercial when Jon brought her back on. Her acceptance speech ended up being the best of the night. Here is the video in case you missed it:



As I said before, the show was pretty good, but I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more if I had already seen more of the nominated movies.