I’m glad I didn’t have any money riding on my Oscar predictions, as I only nailed two out of the five categories I considered, namely Best Picture (Million Dollar Baby) and Best Actor (Jamie Foxx for Ray). These two were, of course, the safest bets there were in the major categories, at least according to what little pre-Oscar buzz I heard. However, I think I can salvage a little of my credibility by pointing out that in the remaining three categories, I did narrow the field down to two choices, and, in each case, it was my second choice that took home a statue. Also, my last-second thought that Sideways would grab the Best Adapted Screenplay award was correct. For whatever that’s worth.

I’m generally pretty content with how things turned out, even if the majors did go against my predictions/wishes. Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman were certainly deserving, and even though I would’ve liked to see Virginia Madsen earn some recognition (and a ticket out of the B-movie purgatory she’s been stuck in since the ’80s), I’m okay with Cate Blanchett’s win. I’m also okay with Eastwood taking Best Director. I realy enjoy his work and he personally seems like an all-round decent human being (I liked how he kept his own comments brief while accepting for Best Picture and then stepped aside to let his co-producers have a chance to say something).

However, I really wish the academy would break its usual pattern of awarding Best Picture and Best Director to the same project. Dammit, Marty Scorsese ought to have an Oscar. Even though most viewers would agree he’s lost his edge in recent years, his worst work is still a quantum leap beyond a lot of people’s best, and in his heyday there wasn’t anyone doing more personal, more visceral, more inventive, or more exciting work. It just isn’t right that he has never been properly recognized. He lost for the fifth time last night to a man who has already had the honor and, while I have nothing but admiration for Clint, it just isn’t right. I really think it would be a lot more fair if Best Picture and Best Direction were required to be split up. Some may say that doesn’t make sense, since it stands to reason that a Best Picture would of course be the Best Directed film of the year, right? Not necessarily… I don’t believe the two categories are as inextricably connected as most people think. For example, I personally think that Star Wars was the best film of 1977 (far better than the hopelessly dated and terminally annoying Annie Hall, the actual Oscar winner that year), but George Lucas’ direction probably wasn’t the reason why. (I would say SW’s artistic success is more a result of editing than on-the-set direction.) By the same token, I’ve seen films that are beautifully made but really don’t inspire or thrill the audience in any meaningful way — Scorsese’s own Age of Innocence comes to mind. I truly think it’s possible to say that a director did a brilliant job with a particular film, but that the film failed to meet whatever subjective criteria we use to determine “best picture,” and, in those cases, the director ought to receive the statue regardless of which film gets the big prize at the end of the night. Marty will probably get an Oscar eventually, but it will be one of those lifetime achievement consolation-prizes that get handed out to people who the Academy never got around to honoring properly when they were still working. Hopefully it won’t be presented posthumously.

One final thought on a winner in an individual category, specifically Charlie Kaufman picking up the statue for Best Original Screenplay (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind): I don’t get it. There’s been a lot of griping on a couple of the online forums I frequent about this movie deserving Best Picture, Kaufman being the greatest writer ever, blah blah blah, and I just don’t freakin’ get it. Eternal Sunshine was an okay movie, but it wasn’t that great, and all of Kaufman’s movies scream “gimmick” to me. He is, as Moe once said on The Simpsons, weird for the sake of being weird, and while that does indeed set him apart from the crowd, I don’t think it necessarily makes him good at teasing out any kind of truth about the human condition. I’ve never understood the fuss made over Quentin Tarentino and his writing-workshop-stunt Pulp Fiction, and I don’t understand the fuss made over Kaufman and his bizarre, self-absorbed, recursive little exercises in playing with an audience’s head. Surely there’s still something to be said for good, old-fashioned, straightforward, unironic storytelling?

Now, as for the Oscar show itself… oy. The more they try to streamline this thing, the worse it seems to get. For one thing, the device of handing out the tech awards from the audience didn’t work and only served to reinforce the dunderheaded notion that the movie stars are more important than the craftsmen who actually make the movies. If the producers of this thing are so concerned that the TV audience doesn’t care about the tech awards or that the show runs too long because of all the speeches by people whose faces we don’t recognize, then maybe they ought to seriously consider broadcasting only the last hour of the ceremony, when the most celebrities are likely to be seen. It wouldn’t be fair, of course, but it would address what somebody somewhere seems to consider a problem, and it would do it more efficiently than the dumbass measures they were trying out last night.

Then there’s the problem of the Best Song performances. Never my favorite part of this show, I thought they were downright painful last night. Who the hell decided that overhyped “diva” Beyonce would be the official voice of most of the nominated songs? Why don’t they have the original performers who recorded these songs for their respective films do them? Why were P. Diddy and Prince presenting when neither of them have much of anything to do with movies? (Aside from a cynical and lame attempt at making the Oscars “hip,” of course, and that’s a laugh in the case of Prince, since he’s about two heartbeats away from “oh, is he still alive?” status.) And for that matter, why do we keep this lame category anyway? The vast majority of songs written exclusively for films are uninspired and instantly forgettable, and that includes last night’s winner, a song most people will never hear on the radio, taken from a film most people will never see. And speaking of the winner in that category, what was with the writer of the song singing his acceptance speech instead of talking? Not to mention that he was singing in Spanish. At the risk of being inflammatory and un-p.c., somebody should tell that dude that most people outside of Los Angeles and parts of Arizona still speak only English. (Not to derail this post with a political hot-button issue, but the creeping Spanishification of America is one of my pet peeves…)

Finally, Chris Rock was possibly the least charismatic host in recent memory. I even liked Letterman’s disastrous appearance a few years ago better than Rock’s turgid, unfunny, hamhanded effort. I don’t know if everyone in the audience was nervous about him saying something to bring down the dreaded FCC obscenity cops, or if Rock himself was nervous or otherwise constrained in what he could say, but he just wasn’t generating any laughter. When something boomed backstage and Jeremy Irons quipped, “I hope they missed,” I thought a more appropriate comment would’ve been, “Ah, another of Chris’ jokes just landed.” There were a lot of thuds heard throughout the night, actually. Get some new writers, people, or, better yet, free the host and presenters from the tyranny of the TelePrompter and let them improv a little. Even if you have to keep a finger on the censor’s button, I think the results would be an improvement…