And The Oscar Goes To...

So I watched the Oscars, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Here's the summary of my experience watching the 81st Annual Academy Awards:

- Loved Hugh Jackman and his awesomely awesome musical numbers. Divine.
- Loved Anne Hathaway when she joined him. I knew she could sing. Why was everyone so surprised?
- Loved Ben Stiller's perfectly scrumptious impersonation of Joaquin Phoenix. I mean, the gum? Come on, that's priceless!
- Loved the stage. Hats off to the art director!
- Loved the presentation of each award in a setting that represents the award.
- Loved Kate Winslet. The fact that she finally won. Her dad. Everything.
- Loved Janusz Kaminski. No words.
- Loved Heath's family's acceptance of his award and the fact that he won.
- Loved Alan Arkin calling Philip Seymour Hoffman: Seymour Philip Hoffman. Lovely.
- Loved Dustin Lance Black's acceptance speech.
- Loved the acting awards being presented by five past winners. Very classy and I loved seeing talented faces we haven't seen in a while.
- Loved the little previews of up-coming movies during the credits. All my boys were up there: Public Enemies, Sherlock Holmes, The Soloist.
- Loved Jerry Lewis and his success in remaining coherent and giving a generally decent speech.
- Somewhat liked Tina Fey and Steve Martin. They were strangely amusing.
- Somewhat liked Jennifer Aniston and Jack Black. Why haven't they done a movie together?
- Somewhat liked Sean Penn's acceptance speech. I still hate him, but his speech actually meant something (even though he called the Academy "commie-homo-loving-sons-o'-guns" and forgot to thank his wife even though she was obviously waiting for him to mention her name).
- Somewhat liked the weird "Man On Wire" lets-balance-this-Oscar-on-my-chin-and-do-a-cheesy-card-trick guy...
- Somewhat disliked the fact that they didn't show a clip of each of the acting nominees in their relative nominated performances.
- Somewhat disliked the random genre montages of the movies of 2008. Wasted time.
- Hated Angelina Jolie. That feeling will never change.
- Disappointed that Peter Gabriel didn't win for his song "Down To Earth" from WALL-E.
- Disappointed that Daniel Day-Lewis didn't come back to present this year after winning Best Actor last year. Well, Javier Bardem didn't either, but I don't care about him.
- Noticed just how creepy Danny Boyle is. He was in every other shot, too. I think he's had his teeth filed into points like the lizard man.
- Noticed that Sophia Loren looks like the mummified version of herself.

There's probably more that I can't remember at the moment.

However, tonight I saw Slumdog Millionaire in theatres and it blew my mind. Absolutely incredible. The style and technique alone, imployed by Mr. Danny "The-New-Lizard-Man" Boyle, were extremely impressive. This is a work of extraordinary talent from many levels of the production and an unbelievably well-crafted piece of cinematic art. Completely deserving of the many Oscars that it won (except maybe the music ones, but I won't go into that). I give it 4.99 stars.

Well, I'm done. My last word is: go see Slumdog Millionaire and help them make as much money as they can because they deserve it.

Over and out.