10 Things About the Academy Awards

1. Jennifer Aniston seemed very nervous when she was presenting.  Conspiracy theory: I bet the producers had her present with Jack Black so they’d have an excuse to cut to Angelina and Brad while she was on stage. 

2. Sophia Loren has the glam bitchface down.  When she was talking about Meryl Streep during the Best Actress presentation, it actually sounded like she was being snide, even though of course she wasn’t and was saying very nice things.  It made me wish I had the presence to go through life as a glamourpuss so people would never really know if I was being nice or mean. 

3. Did anyone watch the Barbara Walters Special?  It was very odd.  The Jonas Brothers disturb me a little with their gigantic hair and their purity rings.  Also, Barbara forced Hugh Jackman to give her a lapdance.  And she was wearing a jacket made out of doilies.

4. Hugh Jackman is a great host.  He makes it feel very natural and effortless and he has a very old Hollywood class about him onstage.  I especially enjoyed his dance number about having not seen The Reader.  I thought the Baz Luhrman number was completely all over the place, which is no surprise since I usually find Baz Luhrman projects to be kind of all over the place.  It was like, wait, what? Hugh’s singing “Maria”?  And now Zac Efron and Lilly Kane are there?  And now “Singin’ in the Rain”?  And uuuuugh … Beyonce’s singing “At Last”!  OH SNAP ETTA JAMES! Can’t they just sing more than three words of one song? However, it looked like they were having fun with it.  When they cut to Penelope Cruz after the number ended, she looked confused.

5. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the Slumdog songs.  Jai ho!

6. Robert Pattinson looked like he was biting the insides of his cheeks to make sure he appeared as broody as possible on camera. 

7. I liked when Reese Witherspoon explained to ”those of us at home” what a director is.  Because really, in all of these years of Academy Award-watching, whenever they reached that Best Director award, I’d think to myself, “What IS a director anyway? I guess I’ll never know!”  So I’m really glad she cleared up that mystery. Gee, thanks, Reese! “He’s like the CEO, the head honcho!”  (Except he’s really not because he ultimately works for the producers.)    

8. I am surprised that the Academy included Cuba Gooding, Jr. in this affair, as I would think they’d like to treat his actually winning as a random drunken night of shame, like some guy you totally regret making out with in a club or something.  I mean, dude was in Radio.

9. Not a lot of (…or any) surprises with the winners, but I actually did enjoy most of the performances and films they honored, and it was fun to see the kids from Slumdog livin’ it up.  And of course, Kate. I thought Penelope Cruz was great in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but I thought it was interesting that she thanked Pedro Almodovar in her acceptance speech more effusively than she thanked Woody Allen. (Did she even thank Woody Allen? I don’t remember.)  Either way, I am sure she is thankful that things did not work out with Tom Cruise and that she is winning acting awards rather than shuffling zombie-like around New York City with bad haircuts, pegged jeans,  and a fake daughter. 

10. Did anyone else get this dumb ABC commercial right after the show ended where they were like, “And now ABC takes you to the Oscar parties” but it was just an extended commercial for upcoming ABC shows with the actors standing around with martini glasses where they had to be in character as themselves which, incidentally, is a huge pet peeve of mine?  DO YOU THINK YOU CAN TRICK ME, ABC?