I meant to take a short nap before the show last night so I'd be able to watch the whole show. Unfortunately, the last week caught up with me, and I slept until about 3am.

Glad to see Whittaker won, and Scorsese! Finally! I haven't seen Dreamgirls, and probably won't, so I hope J.Hudson's win was well deserved. Helen Mirren can do no wrong in my eyes. Arkin, I'm sure, gave a great performance. He's just one of those people I am very meh about, but it's the performance on the screen that matters.

Now I have to go search out the complete list of winners.

Was it me reading too much into things or did Beyonce seem severely pissed she didn't get any Oscar recognition for Dreamgirls? She seemed really crazy during the Dreamgirls sing-off. And none of those songs won.

Oh, she can say she's happy for Jennifer all she wants, but you KNOW she's terribly bitter about it. She's been groomed for fame and fortune since she was in diapers. To have that spotlight swiped from her by an American Idol loser? Yeah. You know she's not happy.

I love Jack Black, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, so I really loved their little musical number. How long did the awards go over, because I set my DVR to go 15 minutes over and I missed a lot of awards.

It went waaaay over. I think it was due to end at 11:30 PM EST, and the reality was more like 12:30.

ETA: I have the eyebags to prove it. I call them my scorseses.

ETA2: Ellen had a bit near the end where, after commercial break, she appeared with vaccuum cleaner in hand, tidying the carpet and asking the front row stars to lift their legs for clearance. As a past usher, the thing I took note of was all the glittering confetti fluttering down from the ceiling at the very end. More like 'littering confetti' - that shit is like sand at the beach, it's a bitch to clean up.

VOLVERINE!!!

I thought Ellen was excessively bland -- as safe as Billy Crystal, but at least Billy puts together a little act that is based on the nominated movies and isn't generic for use under all conditions. I didn't think she was anywhere close to Jon Stewart or Chris Rock (although that is a tough standard to live up to ((and although we're never seeing Rock host this thing again.))

I think Norbit doing well might have hurt Murphy rather than helped him, because it said "here's a guy who will cash in and not give a crap." Ultimately, though, I don't think he deserved it (too much of his SNL "Hot Tub!" routine), and the Academy clearly was not thrilled about the movie anyway (it didn't even win Costumes or Song!) I'm not sure Arkin deserved it either -- it was a small part. Based on the reviews, I suspect Haley did, although I have yet to see Little Children. (I'm curious to find out exactly how little they are.)

I have been skeptical of the "Beyonce is jealous of Jennifer Hudson" talk, but B. did make a fool of herself yelling and flailing her arms in her "big number." What the heck was that.

The ceremony was way too long. Just announce the awards, let people speak when they accept them, sing all the songs, tell us who died last year, and add in a bit of comedy done solely by the host. No more aimless montages or interpretive dance numbers!

Oh my god, I'm glad I wasn't reading too much into Beyonce's flailing and shouting. That was bad and funny because girl looked seriously pissed. I thought she was the worst of the three Dreamgirls. JHud was all right, but she seemed off somehow. The third Dreamgirl (I'm sorry, I don't remember her name) was fantastic. I was shocked a Dreamgirls song didn't win, but I wasn't upset.

I also agree with the length. I was bitching about that to my husband. It isn't the speeches that are the problem, it's all the other extraneous crap. Just have a tribute to those who passed and be done with the tributes. And they really should not have had that tribute be at the 3.5 hour mark.

Anika Noni Rose is the lovely "Lorrel Robinson."

Thank you. I remembered the "Anika Noni" part but wasn't sure about her last name. She was very good.

I thought we had ti-vo'ed this (so that we could forward through the commercials and boring parts), but we did somehow not. I just read the Fug Girls' blog of the Oscars on the New York site, and they mentioned that Jaden Smith was a presenter and was charming when he flubbed something. What happened? Heather and Jessica made it sound pretty cute.

Edited to add a link to the FUg Girls' Oscar blog.

The only award that I'm a little meh about was giving The Departed best adapted screenplay. If you're adapting another screenplay, how much work did you really do? I've never seen Infernal Affairs, so maybe he really did a rigorous rewrite.

It was such a boring telecast though. Boring, inoffensive patter for the most part, excepting when Ellen was mingling in the audience. Pilobolus? What is heaven's name was that? That troupe came to my high school years ago, and they were entertaining, but I don't think the show really needed them.

There just wasn't anything really awful except running an hour over time. No swan dress. No Soy Bomb. Loosen up, people! Meh, at least there was no piracy message.

He and the little girl from Little Miss Sunshine were presenting. They do their first schtick and list the nominees. Before they name the winner, Jaden reads his next line off the teleprompter, which is something about the list of nominess for the next award, which they were also presenting. The LMS girl kinda catches him then announces the first winner. It was cute.

I haven't seen any of the movies nominated (I rarely do) but stayed up past midnight watching this stuff anyway. Overall it seemed like a fairly watered down field, just based on the winners, and I'm not really anxious to see many of the films that won or were nominated.

Regarding the show, I enjoyed Al Gore's first appearance. But after a couple more times on the podium, it seemed he was trying a little too hard to be funny and hug-a-tree lovable and needed to get the hook to get him away from the microphone. I would truly be interested to see what made the Oscar presentations "Green".