What was the "politics" Mo'Nique (is that how she spells it?) referred to in her acceptance speech? "This movie was made without politics" or something like that.

How about the hotties who were passing out the statues! yum!! :evil: (Not the celebs, but the silent gentlemen in tuxes who carried them on stage.) I don't often watch the Oscars*, but wasn't that job traditionally done solely by woman? Nice to see them mix it up.

WTF was George Clooney's problem? Did he have a giant stick up his ass or what? He never laughed and at one point he was gesturing to someone on stage to "move along" or something. Sheesh George, lighten up!


*Yeah, I'm gay, but I'm just not that interested in the Oscars. I only watched this year to see Steve and Alec host. Now the Tony Awards, that's a different story! Those I watch religiously, often multiple times.

Speaking of George...

Was there some movie tie-in to the bit where Alex & Steve repeatedly gave him the cold shoulder/evil stare during the opening?

Mystery solved. Sean Penn forgot to thank his wife in his acceptance speech last year and, in his opinion, the Academy "forgot" to nominate her for her role in an indie film this year.

Monique was referring to the politics of campaigning. There's a great deal of it and it very much affects how people vote, typically. In the past, those who didn't go out and "beg" for their Oscar consideration simply didn't win. She made a point of not campaigning, personally, and saying that she appreciated the nomination but she wanted the performance to speak for itself, not to speak for it beyond what she did in the film. A lot of the prognostication groupies believed that this would mean the Academy would snub her.

As for George, I think his humor is deadpan. I laughed at him several different times they cut to him.

And as for the glares at George, I took that to be a joke about how Baldwin was slated to be the dashing leading man, The idea of a "rivalry" between them would be humorous because Badwin's career took a turn away from the Clooney somewhere along the line and there is no such competition. (I personally love the turn his career took - he's terrific on 30 Rock.)

My favorite jokes were about sex with Meryl Streep. Alec and Steve, Sandra... mousepod, what were you saying last week about Meryl not being the sexy type?

I respect that more than what the screenwriter for Hurt Locker said. He talked about not having done any screenings for test audiences so that their film was "uncompromising" and "the film we wanted to make" and how happy he was that the Academy recognized such an "uncompromising" film.

You know, you made the film you wanted to make. Awesome. The members of the Academy happened to like it. Awesome. But implication there would be that the Academy would have been doing something wrong had they not recognized your film. If you're going to make a film with the attitude of, "We're not going to bother to consult with anyone to see if other people are going to like it. We're going to make it our way and public opinion be damned!" Then you'd better be prepared for people not to like it and be happy with that. Which is cool.

If he had worded it more like, "It's gratifying to know that the vision we had was something that connected with other people, because we were just making the movie we wanted to make, without focus groups or screenings," that would have been great. But it came off to me more like, "Damn right you'd better like our film!" Seemed arrogant.

I thought it was about The Politics of Dancing. The politics of ooo feeling good

Damn... Kevy beat me to it!

Hey, It's a valid use of the quote system. You said it.

No way, I KNEW that didn't seem right. Did y'all catch the weirdness during the acceptance speech for best short doc, Music by Prudence? The director jumped up immediately and practically sprinted from the cheap seats to the mic. We assumed it was because your speech timer starts once your name is read, so the faster you make it to the stage, the longer you have to speechify. But then some lady jumped on stage and just started talking. The director seemed a little weirded out by it, but not abundantly so, but clearly something was amiss.

Well, turns out she was a producer that bailed on the project a year ago but still wanted to take credit. Salon interviewed both of them.

I heard that Farrah Fawcett was left out of the memorial reel-