Here are some thoughts on this year’s Oscars.

Cheers

• Tina Fey and Steve Martin – Their bit had me rolling!
• Queen Latifah – Her grace and excellent singing voice provided the perfect accompaniment to the memorial video.
• Beyonce – Girl can sing AND dance.
• Acting Presentations – I really liked seeing the past acting Oscar winners give a tribute to each of this year’s acting nominees. Although it could have been simple politeness or professional courtesy, I think many of the nominees enjoyed it as well. If you were an actor, how amazing would it be to hear Kevin Kline or Nicole Kidman tell you how great an actor you are?
• Winners – Overall I’m pretty happy with the winners. Honestly, I had only seen a few of the films and didn’t have many strong opinions. The only nominee I was really pulling for was the no-brainer: Heath Ledger for Best Supporting Actor.

Jeers

• Not Enough Clips – In years past they always showed lots of clips – for the acting awards, best picture, etc. I never get to see every movie that’s nominated, so the clips were the only exposure I had to some of the films. This year they left out much of the footage for some reason.
• Bill Maher – If he wants to make a movie criticizing religion and everyone who believes in any religion, that’s his business. But does he have to use one of the biggest platforms on television to criticize people of faith? His pushing of his movie Religulous during the presentation was also annoying. We got enough political messages from the people who produced Milk. At least their agenda could be considered somewhat positive.
• Best Song Performance – I must admit that the blend of three songs into one at the end did work pretty well. But I prefer for the organizers to have five nominated songs and spread performances of each song throughout the night to break up all the talking.

I want to see Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, and Tropic Thunder partially due to the Oscar factor. Many of them should be available on DVD/BR soon, so I hope Blockbuster will start mailing some of them to us in a few weeks.

What did you guys think of the Oscars?