The Hurt Locker didn’t win tonight; Avatar lost. This means I get to uphold my vow and still get to watch the Oscars next year. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start at the beginning.

Aside from one or two jokes (The Jew Hunter being one of them) the duo of Martin and Baldwin was pretty yawn inducing. Actually, it was more cringe worthy, as I expected the pair to really bring down the house. Can no one see that an Oscar host needs at least 2 years in a row to get warmed up and comfortable with the position? Jackman got luke warm reviews last year, but he was much more charismatic, charming and fun than these guys. Heck, even Jon Stewart got really hot in the second half of his hosting duties a couple of years ago. But in all honesty, the Academy should do all it can to just bring back Billy Crystal. Steve, where was your banjo? Seriously. Not funny = boring. Neil Patrick Harris opening the show with a Broadway-esque bit of comedy was semi-delightful and at the very least much more in the spirit of the Oscar ceremony aura. Maybe they should’ve just stopped there and let NPH continue on with the hosting duties? It couldn’t have been much worse than what we got (and maybe Joss Whedon could help out with some of the scripting?). But hey, Alec and Steve were only on the television for a total of what, 45 seconds after their opening monologue dialogue? So let’s focus on some of the other, more fun aspects of the evening (what there were of them) shall we?

The Gowns

The red carpet might be the most important bit of the evening for a lot of people. They say first impressions are everything. If that’s the case, then the gown choices by the ladies means the world. It seemed to be accepted that red carpet mainstay Penelope Cruz and Anna Kendrick were pretty much the best dressed of all the nominated ladies; though cases could be made for Mo’Nique or the gorgeous Helen Mirren as well. Not nominated (first time in like 100 years?) was Kate Winslet looking completely fabulous. I’m no expert, but I prefer simple and elegant over gaudy and extravagant, so here are some dresses that were worn well and some of which I was appalled that someone might actually be seen in public wearing (seriously Charlize? You’re a beautiful woman; why wear a dress that screams, “look at my boobs!”?).

Classiest: Cruz, Mo’Nique, Winslet, Kendrick, Mirren, Mulligan, Sibide, Streep and yes, J-Lo.

Worst: Farmiga, Gylenhaal, Jessica-Parker, McAdams, Theron and Weaver

Of course there were a few dresses I can’t swing either way on. Not a great dress, but Diane Krueger wore this bantery, yellow number quite nicely and sort of goes along with her character from Inglourious Basterds in a way:

Awkward Moments

But enough of the fashion. Far more interesting things were happening inside the theater. Most noticeably was Clooney clearly not amused at some of the jokes on stage. In fact, he didn’t even look like he wanted to be there and made it very clear. Was he truly pissed off or just part of the schtick? I want to say the latter but as the night wore on and it didn’t look like he was getting any happier, I’m starting to think he wanted to be in Haiti helping with the cleaning rather than sit through yet another stuffy awards show in which he knows he’s not going to win.

Some more awkward moments came as Sandra Bullock wins best actress and as Streep goes to hug her, she’s completely dissed. It’s hard to tell what Bullock said to Streep before turning her back on her, but most likely it was an apology of some sort since later in her speech she mentioned Streep probably should’ve been the winner. Still the moment was odd and created great screen grabs like this:

And if you missed it, the greatest moment of the night was when short doc producer, Roger Ross Williams, began to give his acceptance speech, only to be interrupted by a crazy woman in purple. The woman was Elinor Burkett, a co-producer who left the production and was enraged about not being allowed on stage for the acceptance speech.

The Monatges

You know they’re coming. They happen every year. Though with all of the changes this year they’ve been scaled back a bit – or so it seems. The one we can always count on and which will never (and should never) be lost is the “in memoriam” montage that covers all those in the industry we lost over the past year. The music for the montage was live this year and provided by James Taylor. I’ve no feelings on this small deviation from years past one way or another. I do wish the split screen images would stay up a bit longer so I have some time to take in what I’m seeing. Also, a big controversy apperently arose in the Twitterverse (spurred on by Roger Ebert) when Bea Arthur and Farah Fawcett were not given a nod. And I think we all kind of scratched our heads a bit when we saw Michael Jackson pop on screen. Was Captain EO a big enough hit to consider Jacko a principal in silver screen history?

A lot of us thought it odd that John Hughes got his own separate montage earlier in the show and was MC’d by some of the stars from his work in the 1980′s: Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Jon Cryer, Judd Nelson and Macauley Culkin (all of whom have no movie careers to speak of anymore). At first I agrees this was a strange bit of sentiment. Then a couple of things dawned on me. One, in an effort to make the awards more mainstream and accessible, it makes sense to feature a guy from “the mainstream” that nearly everyone can remember and has fond memories of. Second, as I was watching all of the clips from the vast number of films, I realized once again that Hughes was an absolute genius. Every film that flashed on screen are unabashed new classics. From Mr. Mom to Ferris Bueller to The Breakfast Club, it’s clear Hughes left a mark on cinematic history bigger than most anyone else in that montage.

Last year I really liked the montage they did for action/speed movies that came about over the past year. It made sense to acknowledge some of the glossier, high octane cinematic moments from the past year (hey, they had to show Batman and Speed Racer somehow). This year however, we got an odd choice of a random montage: horror. I must’ve missed why they did a horror montage (my assumption was for an excuse to show Kristin Stewart and the wolf guy from Twilight), but I sure didn’t miss what was in it. Apparently Twilight and Bride of Frankenstein are horror movies now. Did they miss Near Dark? Which would’ve been apropos for obvious reasons would it not? How about Del Toro in Wolfman? While I liked some of the clips I guess, it wasn’t put together nearly as well as last year’s action montage and it also just didn’t seem to make any sense. There was no rhyme or reason for it; just a montage of “scary” movies over the past 80 years or so. Cool, but why?

This year it was also decided that the musical numbers must go. This caused a lot of mixed reactions across the webs. My personal opinion is that I like the songs – if they’re good. Sting performing a song from Leaving Las Vegas or Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansaard singing a song from Once is all good. As soon as “Three 6 Mafia” shows up to “sing” a song things go sour real quick. But what to do instead? Have an interpretive dance troupe come out and and loosely reenact scenes from the movie while the in-house orchestra performs the music. Now hey, I saw some talent in the dancing. No question these people are athletes and completely excel at what they do (those perfectly in sync backflips were quite impressive!). But it also ended up looking strange and felt out of place. Which again = boring. Play the songs or don’t. None of this visual poetry crap. Please.

The Presenters

Not much going on in this department this year. Probably the best (or at least the funniest – which isn’t saying much) came from Stiller (as he was the best of Friday before’s Spirit Awards as well) when he introduced the best make-up category in a full Nav’i getup.

I was most happy to see two of my favorite directors present an award. It isn’t often that a director gets to present. Usually it’s a big time star like Julia Roberts, Clooney or Jodi Foster. So nice to see the real craft makers get a say. Though it was quick, Pedro Almodóvar and Quentin Tarantino on stage for a few moments was kind of a nice treat for me.

I know one choice made by the Academy last year that is a real divisive issue for many fans is the use of the personal presentations for the lead actor and actress nominations. For the life of me I can’t figure out why. I think it’s a fabulous touch and really makes the presentations much more interesting and heartfelt. I guess if you’d rather see Chris Pine and Luke Wilson lazily listing off a bunch of names, that’s just like, your opinion man. But I’d much rather see a personal kudos to Jeremy Renner from a heartfelt Colin Farrel or Stanley Tucci recognizing Meryl Streep.

Last odd thing I noticed… or almost didn’t notice. After best director was announced and Kathryn Bigelow left the stage, I got up to refresh my cocktail and take a quick leak during the commercial break before the big award (and potentially disastrous moment) was announced. But wait, what this!? Here comes Tom Hanks (for whatever reason) to give away the big prize, I jump back into my seat quickly but before my butt has even hit the sofa cushion, BAM!, the winner has been announced. Wait… what!? This has got to be the second shortest Oscar presentation evening of all time. What’s the rush? You didn’t even re-cap us on the nominees. It was almost like the award for Best Picture was an afterthought. Did no one else notice this? Jeez.

The Winners

What’s to say? It was the most obvious Academy Award show in years. The Hurt Locker has won damn near every award show it’s been in over the past few months so is it really all that surprising it took home the big win here – especially with a woman director? Not really. Everything else was pretty much a lock in the bigger categories and Avatar took home most of the technical awards. There wasn’t much of a rout this year either. No film swept through the awards on a Titanic or Braveheart level; with The Hurt Locker garnering the most awards at six statues.

Probably the two biggest surprised were Up in the Air, which was nominated in six categories, getting completely shut out (maybe Clooney saw the results before everyone else which explains his bothersome look throughout the show?) and also The White Ribbon losing mysteriously to El Secreto de Sus Ojos in the foreign language category. Typical of the Oscars in this category; they get the nominations right, then fuck up on the winner.

All in all a very lackluster show. Without the egos on display there wouldn’t be much to talk about. It was obvious, not funny, and strangely disjointed. Bring back better host(s) next year and stick to some of the more old school ways of doing things. At least make it more fun somehow. Not necessarily funnier. Just more fun.

I’m out. What are your thoughts? What did I miss?