Oscars

I thought the Oscars were pretty fun this year. I won my pool, guessing all but three awards; Sound Mixing, Foreign Film and Documentary Short.

Slumdog was the big winner with 8 awards out of 11 nominations. Benjamin Button which had 13 nominations only got three awards (Art Direction, Makeup and Visual Effects) and two each went to Dark Knight (Supporting Actor and Sound Effects Editing) and Milk (Actor and Original Screenplay).

They made a few changes to the show this year and I think they worked well. The most noticeable was that for each acting award they brought out five presenters and had one say something about each of the performances. The nominees seemed to appreciate the praise from their peers and I think people got to hear explanations of what was special about the performance.

I also really liked that they didn't cut people off during their acceptance speech if they ran a little long. Why cut someone off to save 20 seconds? It's just disrespectful and this worked much better.

Hugh Jackman did well as host. The opening monologue was fun and didn't run too long. I really liked his bit about The Reader, that he hadn't seen it. I thought the dance number with Beyonce as a salute to musicals was a bit extraneous but was happy with the rest.

Tina Fey and Steve Martin were very funny presenting the screenplay awards, particularly when Martin said "Don't fall in love with me"

Jack Black and Jennifer Aniston presented the animated film awards. Black had a funny line about how voicing animated films pays him well, "Each year I do one dreamworks film and take all the money to oscars and bet it on Pixar". They also had a video clip of WALL-E finding an Oscar in the garbage. Kunio Kato won for best animated short "La Maison en Petits Cubes". His english wasn't very good but he was very funny ending his speech with "Domo arigato Mister Roboto".

Natalie Portman and Ben Stiller presented for Cinematography. Stiller spoofed Joaquin Phoenix's appearance on Letterman. As it continued into Portman's announcing the nominees I thought it was a little rude, but she did say "You look like you work at a Hasidic meth lab" which was funny. The award winner seemed to think it was fun.

Seth Rogan and James Franco did a short spoof of their Pineapple Express stoners with various film clips and also a guest appearance by two time oscar winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List). Then all three came out to present best live action short. Kaminiski was the first cinematographer ever to present an award

Danny Boyle won best director for Slumdog and I liked his speech a lot. First he jumped up and down like Tigger because years ago he promised his kids he would if he ever won. He then praised the show this year and gave thanks for the awards the film had won so far. He then thanked many people and apologized for leaving a name off the film's credits for the choreographer of the final dance sequence. And he finished by thanking Mumbai.

Kate Winslet's speech was good but the most fun was when she had her dad whistle so she knew where he was. Sean Penn's speech was the most fun of the evening. He thanked "you commie homo loving sons of guns" and said "i do know how hard I make it to appreciate me often". He told people that voted for proposition 8 to reflect on what they did, which was appropriate given the subject matter of his film. I also liked his line, "I'm very very proud to live in a country that's willing to elect an elegant man president."