Nope

Yes I am watching. Its been great. Very entertaining evening filled
with memorable moments and performances.

Whoa! Jack's head was shiny! Good on Forrest for his win. "The Departed." Is it on video yet?

Yes.

What's it have that no other mob movie has? I burned out on "The Godfather" and all that.

Really, I wanted "Little Miss Sunshine" to win. That movie was hilarious! But then again, comedies are known to not win best picture.

Ellen was funny. Jack's bald head was distracting...

I missed Melissa Etheridge thanking her wife and four kids after she won the Oscar. I missed her kissing her wife too. And all that occurring on prime time television with children watching!

Damn! What the hell is this country coming to? :p

Top ten Oscar highlights:

1. 'An Inconvenient Truth' (Al Gore) won Best Documentary.

2. Forrest Whittaker won best male actor for 'The King of Scotland'.

3. Helen Mirren won best female actor for 'The Queen'.

4. Scorcese scores.

5. Beyonce's dress.

6. Jack's head.

7. Clooney: the king of cool.

8. Beyonce singing.

9. Best Foreign Film

10. Beyonce

The rest, particularly Ellen, was really tacky.

The what?

Is that the one for music or the one for movies? I don't really follow that stuff at all - mostly agree with legion that all those industries are pretty much do-nothing, overpaid, self-promoting phonies. I really couldn't care too much about it either way.

Jennifer Hudson's been a nice story.

I don't know...not the same w/o Billy Crystal hosting, IMO.

Way back when, in the early 90s, Ellen Degeneres was hired to be the
entertainment at a fraternity event at my college. It was a very small
audience of just a few hundred people. She bombed and was pretty much heckled off the stage by the people in the front rows.
Funny or not, she has come a long way.
Says something about sticking with it and perserverance.

I liked Seth MacFarlane's cameo on Fox: "It would appear that you're not watching the Oscars; Congratulations! You're not gay!"

Nope, I don't watch any sports, either...

I've been watching these things for 55 years, and they are always too long. How they can push winners off the stage if they talk too much, and then kill precious minutes with Ellen Deg earning her pay with a lot of dull junk is beyond me. That's entertainment? Who dresses her/him? Ugh.

As far as I can see, Hollywood has lost a lot of class vs the old studio days--and that's reflected in the Oscar ceremonies. There simply aren't that many stars left. The talent is probably still there, to an extent, but there are so fewer movies made these days there's hardly anyone left with any star quality. Just a few sitting up front: Streep, Mirren, Arkin, O'Toole, Jack N., a few directors, maybe a few others, Leo Dicaprio among the better new ones. Heck, the audience used to be studded with stars in the old days--all big screen names. And many big directors.

Cable TV has really buried the hatchet into Hollywood.

Now, all you have is Streep, who just has to make a movie to get nominated. And the annual Clint Eastwood vs Martin Scorcese Director duel. Jack is too busy watching the Lakers to be serious about movies anymore.

Highlights for me were Helen Mirren winning (one of my favorites), Arkin (a surprise) and Scorcese finally beating Eastwood. A shame that Mr Chips O'Toole didn't get it. He probably won't get another shot.The rest of them are 10 minutes of fame types. The music was atrocious--except for James Taylor and the award to Enio Marricone. His best movie theme was for Cinema Paradiso, and they didn't play it. Wow.

I agree Hytem - sort of.

I don't get Ellen. I don't get what is funny about her blather, or the skits with the vacuum cleaner, or the script, or the photograph of her and Eastwood. It's such infantile stuff - and yet it seems people liked her. At least that's what the morning papers said.

Jennifer Hudson gets the Oscar? How daft is that? Yes, she can sing - but comparing her acting ability with Kate Blanchett or Judy Densch? Holy crap!

And I think they should prohibit winners from reading out long lists of thanks. The price of an Oscar should be an extemporaneous speech - or just sit down, shut up and be glad you won. That would speed things up a lot.

But I do think there is some awesome talent out there. Absolutely awesome.

That's too bad. Politics trumps facts. As long as an opinion piece is shot in a documentary style, it is classified as a documentary. We can thank Michael Moore for this.

A couple more things:

Another highlight of the Oscars was Clint Eastwood giving the special Oscar to Enio Marricone, for his great film scores over the years. Marricone gave a long speech in Italian, and Clint would translate portions of it to the audience between pauses. Eastwood apparently knows Italian from his spaghetti western days. And he plays the piano, and is a jazz composer. And a former mayor of Carmel. And actor/director...Wow.

I also watched the Independent film awards on IFC, which were given the day before the Oscars. Different, funky laid back format, casual dress, round dinner tables in audience. There's loads of young talent out there in Hollywood making Independent films--and there is some overlapping with the Oscar mainstream types. Their God was/is Bob Altman, whose films I always enjoyed--starting with the great "Mash."

This is becoming such a fragmented society... and the
effects have causes well beyond Cable TV.

Whats going to happen to the Oscars in 30 years when half
of these stars are dead or incapcitated...?

Will they be handing Lifetime Achievement awards to
Mark Wahlberg?

Anyway... the golden years of days gone by are long gone...
there is no mystery or innocence left... so this watered down
show is what we have to look forward to....that is if we were to
choose to honor those that are at the "top" of the artistic
craft known as the movies.

by the way, yeah... Ellen is a Lesbian...but should could dress it
up just a bit couldnt she? It wouldnt hurt for her to try and be
a little bit glamourous...

As long as Anna-Nicole Smith's funeral is reported as "over the top," we know where our celebrity priorities lie. :rolleyes:

wow, some of you guys think like old farts..."back when I was young..."

We are almost constantly in the "golden age" of film. Just the players change. Go back and watch some of the films from the 40's and 50's. Not just the top handful from the era, but the next teir. Not great stuff. You weren't getting Casablanca and Citizen Kane every week.

Right now we have Spacey, DeNiro, Foxx, etc. Eastwood, Scorsese, etc. And you have the cable networks turning out stuff like The Sporanos, Six Feet Under, etc. wtf do you want?