Oscar [the Grouch]

Random Oscar™ness...

• I'm a Hugh Jackman fan, so would like to see him kick some Billy Crystal ass...not sure it's working out that way. Sounds like I missed his better moments.

• Steve Martin hasn't aged in thirty years...He's the new Gene Hackman. Tina Fey has chunks of Sarah Palin in her stool.

• Ben Stiller? To me, you're rarely "the funny guy." And tonight you are nowhere close. The people in the audience who appear to be eating this crap up? They're actors.

• Jack Black? Now THAT guy's funny, and seems like a cool guy to know. Stiller? Seems like he'd be a dick.

• Did they show anyone in the crowd besides Brad and Angelina when Jennifer Aniston was onstage?

• Advice to Sarah Jessica Parker: Avoid any kind of dress reminiscent of Glenda the Good Witch. Yeah, she was the good witch, but you should be avoiding anything witch-like, at all.

• "Domo Arigato, Mr Roboto," totally saved what could have been the most awkward Oscar speech ever.

• What was Jessica Biel thinking?

• I eagerly awaited "Pineapple Express" based on its hilarious trailer, but the reviews were not good. After watching that segment, I refuse to believe the film isn't totally hysterical—Franco and Rogan have too much chemistry.

• Based on the clips I've seen, (Seymour) Philip Seymour Hoffman is nominated in the wrong category. Or is everyone else relegated to Supporting status in a Meryl Streep movie?

• Obligatory Heath Ledger Section: I'm happy to say I was pimping his Oscar early. I am sorry to say I still haven't seen the movie—Mrs F is too creeped out by Ledger's Joker, and I feel like I need to set up the surround sound and be the only one home before I can rent it...

A good Joker clip is something I've been craving all night, and this stupid presentation format is screwing that up. You want to bring out former winners to introduce the nominees and go down on them, fine. But have them introduce a fucking clip already. Those clips are all I ever see of most of these movies and it's critical to me forming my snap judgments!

Good. After that intro by Kevin Kline, if Ledger didn't win the Earth would have tumbled off its axis...

Please put a non-Joker shot of Ledger onstage while his family walks up to accept his award? Please?

• "Benjamin Button" seems to be winning WAY too many awards. Frankly, so does "Slumdog Millionaire." Also, some guy associated with "Slumdog" looks like the bastard child of Rudy Guiliani and Martin Scorsese...

• In my mind, Gus Van Sant looks like James LeGros, not Oliver Stone.

• I am totally on the Mickey Rourke Comeback Bandwagon...

• This non-clip, former-winner ass-kiss format is getting even worse...What's more painful? Watching the Best Actress presenters gush over the nominees? Or watching the nominees awkwardly mouth "thank you", "love you..."

• Melissa Leo just got fucking robbed. Not because she should have won—that I can't say—but she's a comparative nobody who was nominated for FUCKING BEST ACTRESS alongside Meryl Fucking Streep, etc. She'll never be back there again, and that's her Oscar moment?

Any other year, there'd be some powerful scene shown, and everyone'd be all "Wow. That's pretty fucking intense/good/whatever."

This year? She gets Halle Berry reminiscing about how she was once in a little film. A total disservice to someone like Leo, who could use the exposure, and to the audience, who should get to see her actually, I don't know... act?

• Mickey Rourke knows how to play the awkward tribute off...a wave of the pinky ring mixed with a little Joe Biden finger-gun. That guy rocks. Kinda hoping he wins...I like the redemption angle here.

• I can't help thinking Hollywood is a little too in love with it's own liberalness with all this "Milk"-love. I'm sure Penn is great and all, Brolin, too. But this smacks of Prop 8 payback, and Penn's speech (and the writer's, earlier), while admirable, cinches it.

• After reading Rourke's wiki-bio, and how he slept in a closet with his dog—his only friend in the world at the time—and how he gave that dog mouth-to-mouth for 45 minutes when he died, kinda makes me wish he'd completed the comeback with the gold.

• I also think Hollywood is going overboard with this reward the alternative foreign film schtick with "Slumdog". I'd like to see it, but I suspect it can't live up to THIS hype.