Banderas was way too sweaty and cheesy on that song number. I had to switch him to the little window of my PIP.

Um, the show started at 5:30 instead of 6, and went to 8:40 instead of 9:10. Same amount of time as usual.


And yeah, lady in the red dress is the reason why the in-the-audience awards stunt should not be repeated. But I applaud the effort at trying something new.

This time around, I felt the overall event was just kind of "meh" to me. It seemed like they had handcuffs on Chris Rock, only "letting him out" for the opening monologue...

At least the food turned out well at my mom's house. Our family has this tradition where we all watch the Oscars together, starting at 3:00 p.m. with Joan Rivers and lots of champagne. :)

Instead of the usual carb-filled potluck, we went for "haute cuisine". My sister brought marinated shrimp for appetizers, my mom made a pineapple upside-down cake for dessert and I was in charge of dinner.

I made a butter lettuce salad topped with pears, walnuts and feta cheese (with some Newman's Raspberry vinaigrette). Then some Parmesan Chicken and baked potatoes. Turned out really well. Yay!

The only thing the group of us could not stomach was STAR JONES. Blech. How painful to have to turn off E! We all love Kathy Griffin but we couldn't take Star. And was Joan Rivers on some kind of drug? She's just getting odder and odder as she gets older. Maybe it's all that plastic surgery or sumthin'.... ;)

Thought Halle Berry's hairstyle was awful, loved Drew Barrymore's new darker hair color, but the hit of the night to us was Hilary Swank and her newly-chiseled body in that rockin' blue dress. You go, girl!

I heard some clips of her on Kevin and Bean this morning. Holy god, what is wrong with that woman? And what is wrong with the people at TV Guide channel to pay her 6 or 7 million dollars for that? She was an embarassment at best.

I thought Rene Zellwegger looked like Olive Oyl.
:D

Natalie Portman's dress -blech

Gwyneth Paltrow's dress - ew... icky color - at least on her
There were a few more people in similar color dresses that I thought the same thing. Color is better suited for someone with darker skin like Halley Barie (sp?)... at least to me.

Leo looked hot!

Seemed like there was quite a few "mermaid" style dresses.

Oh yeah, Natalie Portman was sporting, imo, the worst dress of the evening.

But say what you will about Halle Berry's hairstyle, I LOVED her gown. (And she had the best Chris Rock intro of the evening ... "star of the eagerly awaited Catwoman 2" - hahahahaha!)

More thoughts...

- Did anyone notice that they didn't play any film clips of the Best Picture nominees? I thought I always remembered them doing that in the past. I guess it could have been due to trying to keep things on schedule but it was weird that they weren't there.

In hindsite, I love Chris Rock's standup. He's one of my favorites. He was a very inappropriate choice for the show though. He just seemed out of place. I think there needs to be a certain element of classiness from the host of the Acadamy Awards and one of the things I love about Rock is his love of speaking his mind, no matter who it offends. Can't really do that on the show though, so his hands were pretty much tied.

Steve Martin was one of my favorite hosts. I thought he had the class thing going while being very entertaining. I wish I could have seen Carson doing it back in the day. I really enjoyed those clips.

I also enjoyed the trip to the Magic Johnson Theaters. It showed the vast disconnect between what has artistic merit and what is popular.

I thought Halle showed a lot of class showing up at the Razzies to accept her award for worst actress. I think it would have been great if she'd said something like "You hate me! You really, really hate me!"

But we got to hear "Pootytang" at the Oscars. Ya' gotta love that.