So, in spite of my previous protest of indifference, I actually did end up watching the Oscars last night. Well, to be more precise, I had the show running in the background while I sorted books and various other tasks related to trying to put my basement back together. But I was paying some attention to the proceedings — I just can’t resist that whole Hollywood thing, I guess — and naturally I have a few thoughts:

• Is it just me, or was this year’s Oscar telecast one of the more inept ones in recent memory? It seems like there were flub-ups every few minutes, ranging from cameras not being sure of where they ought to be pointed (why were we looking at Morgan Freeman hanging around backstage during someone’s acceptance speech?), to physical mishaps (Jennifer Garner tripping over her own dress, although I give her kudos for a graceful and good-humored recovery), to the heartbreakingly bad line-reading given by the eternally classy, she’s-better-than-that Lauren Bacall (my guess is that there was a problem with the teleprompter, and it threw Betty off her stride; I suspect people were much better speakers before those demon things were invented, back when speakers relied on notecards held in their very own hands).
• Speaking of Jennifer Garner, motherhood agrees with her very well, if you happen to be an admirer of, shall we say, prominent feminine attributes. Or, to put it another way, Holy Mammaries, Batman!
• Hottest woman of the evening: Selma Hayek, who chose a flattering gown in a bold color that went well with her skin tone and hair color. She simply looked great. Also notable were the aforementioned Jennifer Garner, who is always adorable even when she’s staggering around trying not to fall on her butt, and Reese Witherspoon, who has never done much for me but who looked classy in a very pretty, old-fashioned movie-star dress.
• The montages sucked. All of them. And they’re normally one of my favorite parts of the Oscar broadcast. (Yes, I am a genuine movie dork in that I actually enjoy seeing disassociated film clips; I like to play “Name That Flick.”) But this year they were uniformly uninspired (and uninspiring, since none of them managed to build any actual emotional thrust), and even downright strange in some of the choices of clips. Whose bright idea was it to place a clip from the goofy disaster film The Day After Tomorrow in the same montage as one from Schindler’s List? As if those two films even come from the same universe… not to mention the fact that the montage was for “issue films,” i.e., stuff that supposedly hits hard against social injustices and such. The only injustice associated with TDAT was the way that movie assumed that Americans are scientific idiots. Oh, wait. Well, never mind that argument, but I think it’s obvious that these two films aren’t in the same genre or league. And since when is Grease classified as an “epic?” It’s a likable little film, but “epic?” I wouldn’t even call it an “epic musical,” if there were such a thing. (I’m not being snarky here, but as far as the musicals I’ve seen, they seem to be much too intimate in scope to really qualify as any kind of an epic. Feel free to provide examples that disprove me.)
• Never one of my favorite parts of the telecast, the musical performances this year were… eccentric. The rear-projected image of a burning car during the song from Crash gave me the willies, and, I’m sorry, but the winning song about how tough life is for them big-hearted, woman-smackin’ pimps made me want to cover my ears and hum ABBA songs to myself. Rap is bad enough, but then you overlayer a bombastic, jazz-infused vocal that sounds like one of the worst of the James Bond themes, and you’ve got something more irritating than that thing they use to fend off pirate attacks. I know a lot of people see this song’s win as some kind of victory for black people, or a validation of rap as a genre, or at least as something other than the same old sappy Phil Collins-Disney-movie tune, but I hated every damn second of it. Moving right along…
• Jon Stewart pretty much lived up to all my expectations, which is to say he absolutely failed to impress me. I just don’t think the man is very funny. I did like the political-campaign parody ad in which we learned the truth about Dame Judi Dench (which I assume is the sort of thing they do on Stewart’s Daily Show), but I didn’t so much as snicker at anything that came out of Stewart’s mouth. He seemed very much out of his element. Miscast, to use the Hollywood term. And why was his clapping so incredibly loud? Either his body mike was incredibly sensitive, or the dude’s got some kind of mutant super-clapping power. Sounded like rifle fire going off…  Actually, I’ve been thinking for the past couple of years that the Academy ought to get over this notion that the host needs to be a comedian. Why not have an actor or director or somebody like that? Hey, here’s an idea: why not ask Jack Nicholson to do it? He’s there every year anyhow, regardless of whether he has a film in the running, and judging from the reactions he was getting last night, everybody loves him. Or how about Martin Scorsese? Nobody loves movies the way he does, except maybe Leonard Maltin. He’d be good, too. Can you imagine the Oscars hosted by guys who really, really love movies, instead of guys who figure it’d just be a good gig that’ll net them some more exposure? I think it’d be great, just a night of really passionate fanboys sitting around talking about what was good this year… it’ll never happen, but a fellow fanboy can dream, can’t he?
• Finally, let’s talk about the big surprise from last night: is Crash really the Best Picture of 2005? I haven’t seen it myself so I can’t make a call as to the film’s quality (for whatever it’s worth, one of my three loyal readers has told me he thinks it was TFS, or Total F*%#ing Shite). Nevertheless, I personally suspect there was more than a little politics involved in the Academy’s choice. To put it simply, I think the folks who vote for these awards hedged their bets in an effort to avoid controversy. By giving the Best Director statue to Ang Lee but the Best Picture to some movie that was not about gay cowboys, the Academy simultaneously recognized the merits of Brokeback Mountain while shying away from any outright endorsement of the things Brokeback explores. Why Crash instead of one of the other nominees? Well, who really knows — as many other bloggers have pointed out today, we don’t see the vote tallies, so we have no way of knowing if it won by just a single vote, or in a landslide. But here, too, I have a theory, completely unsupported by any kind of first-hand knowledge or genuine insight: I think the other reason it won is because one of the lead characters works in the Industry, and Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood. Simple as that. But we’ll never know for sure.

And that’s that for another year. I see that there’s going to be a new trailer for X-Men 3 premiering on tonight’s episode of 24. The message is clear: Oscar season is over, time to get back to blowing stuff up. See you at the cinema!