Dumb, Stupid, Boring OSCARS!!!

Million Dollar Baby was the best movie of the year? Are you kidding me? Ok, to be fair I haven't seen MDB but I know what it's all about (I read all the plot spoilers...) and honestly I don't see how it could have possibly topped The Aviator. Makes you lose what little respect you had for the Oscars, if any! (And Martin Scorsese losing out again? I really don't want to talk about it!)

The new Oscar format wasn't all that great either. Getting the contestants to come on to the stage made it awkward for those who didn't win the award. Other time saving efforts were pretty terrible as well. You know when the band begins to play to signal that time is up for the award winners to make their speeches, I hated that, I've always hated that! It's really disgraceful when you are supposedly rewarding people for doing something exceptional and then you go ahead and expect them to summarise their feelings within 30 seconds! Really smacks of hypocrisy!

Coming to Chris Rock. I thought his opening monologue was quite funny but it all went downhill after that. I don't think he was given enough time to get into his groove and I also got the impression that he had more material written but wasn't able to perform them because of...time constraints! (My funniest moment of the evening was Robin WIlliams doing an impression of Jack Nicholson as Bugs Bunny!)

The Oscars this time were booooooooring mainly because, as many people have pointed out, there wasn't this one big movie to root for. I also think the songs nominated this time were pretty ordinary, the only performance I listened to was Counting Crows' "Accidently in love" from Shrek 2. Speaking of which, it was a pity that Shrek 2 lost out to The Incredibles in the Best Animated Film category not because Incredibles wasn't the better of the two (It was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay and won for Best Sound Editing !), but because Shrek 2 was such a terrific movie! Hmm, if only the other categories had such competition.

The winners themselves: Aviator won most of the tech awards which was expected. The acting awards, well, I was rooting for Thomas Haden Church to win Best Supporting Actor for Sideways and Virginia Madsen for Supporting Actress (she positively glowed in the movie!). But alas, the awards went to the "popular" choices! Best Actor, Best Actress, I guess everyone knew who was going to win those. For Foreign Film, from what I'd read, I felt that Downfall from Germany, chronicling Hitler's final days in a bunker could pull off a surprise. It didn't of course! This was not the Oscar of surprises, of disappointment mainly!