Obligatory Oscar Posting

This is the long and short of the Oscar broadcast.

Scorsese wins! Yay! Of course, this was like twenty five years too late. Jennifer Hudson wins. Simon Cowell scowls as Hollywood says we know talent better than you.

The Inconvenient Truth wins (twice) despite inconvenient facts after Jerry Seinfeld mocks the audience for being a bunch of self-important hacks who rely on the goodwill of others for their immense wealth. Al Gore tries to be funny (and succeeds the first time he appears, not so much the second). Melissa Etheridge wins for best song for Inconvenient Truth despite inconvenient facts (thanks Al Gore), showing that the Oscar voters are tone deaf. Did they actually listen to the songs, or just read the lyrics? The performance by Beyonce and Hudson of their songs was joyous and impressive. Etheridge? Not so much.

Whitaker and Mirren won, so no surprises there. Alan Arkin won for best supporting actor, which was a bit of a surprise seeing that many were pegging Eddie Murphy to win.

The rest of the evening? Largely a snoozefest. Ellen was okay as a host and her two funniest bits were when interviewing Scorsese, with whom she dropped off a script for him to review, and then with Clint Eastwood with whom she took a couple of photos courtesy of Steven Speilberg to whom she gave directions on how to make the shot.

The one portion that I thought was controversial was a movie montage of views of Americans through the movies. There are a series of movie clips, including one from Dr. Strangelove where George C. Scott laughs off the fact that the US might lose 10 to 20 million in a nuclear exchange with the Soviets as acceptable losses, but then closes with a re-edit of a famous scene from Saving Private Ryan. The scene originally has Tom Hanks' character asked whether he'd ever seen anything like this before - and the camera pans to the immense landing force coming ashore at Normandy - thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of men coming ashore to liberate Europe from the Nazis. Instead, in last night's clip, the movie focuses on a different scene of dead bodies floating in the blood red water after the assault on the beaches.

Does Hollywood forget that without such heroism that Europe would have been still under the heel of the Nazi boot? Is the anti-Americanism so reflexive that they cannot show Americans being heroic?

UPDATE:
The critics have spoken. Dull. Lifeless. Boring. This reviewer found the Ellen aisle bit tiresome. That was the best part of a lame show. It's part of her schtik from her tv show. And yet the show still a 42 share, which is a big number but sucks when compared to other Oscar shows. This would be the third lowest rated show (2006 and 2003 being even worse). (via Drudge)