Thank you!!!

Good to see A Separation win! The rest:

What with The Artist getting all the awards that count in its competition with Hugo and Iron Lady and Undefeated adding another three to his tally, Weinstein had a fabulous night. If only he wasn't such a cunt. Pity that Tree got locked out even for the cinematography but a win or loss doesn't take away from the greatness (or otherwise) of the film. Best moments: Plummer's acceptance speech and A Separation winning, the only award that felt like it really matters.

They didn't do the 5 presenters thing this year?

Word up.

Honestly I didn't really even want to watch the Oscars this year, but I always do and probably always will. Not even because of any particular nostalgic appeal - I don't think I watched my first full Oscars until I was almost 16 - but because I know how important they are in the industry, and for that reason I want stuff I like to win.

I wish the show cared more about the nominees, though. I remember when I was younger and they used to show extended clips of the Picture and acting nominees. Now the acting clips are shortened and Picture nominees barely get mentioned if it's not one of the contenders (to say nothing of the treatment of other tech nominees). You would think the Academy would want people to want to watch these movies, put the glory of Hollywood (as they see it) on full display, but in recent years they've gone more in the opposite direction, it seems. It really has gotten more like the Grammys in that regard.

At least this year they were less obnoxious about cutting off victory speeches.

No, thank God. I could see them going back to it next year just to alleviate the Dujardin scenario described earlier.

Best part of the night after Plummer's acceptance speech and "A Separation" winning Best Foreign Language Film (plus "Rango" winning Best Animated flick).

Only slightly less surprising than the fact that he'll always be introduced as "Oscar-winner Gore Verbinski" for the rest of his life is that Verbinki's wife might have been the most attractive woman at the entire ceremony (and I'm saying that despite being a huge fan of Portman, Mara, and Keibler).

Domino's description of Oscar night sounds pretty familiar for me, though the Oscars serve more as a strange-though-enjoyable event for my immigrant family. It's one of the rare annually-scheduled, non-holiday, occasions that I hang out with parents back at the childhood home.

Since they immigrated to North America in the 1980s, neither of my parents are particularly cognizant of pop-culture and have only a passing interest in American movies (they only go to the theatres 2 to 3 times a year, which usually coincide with when my sister visits and we use it as an excuse for a family get-together), so they generally have no real connection to any of the nominated films save for whatever movie we see as a family during Christmas holidays and they usually aren't really even aware of what's nominated. Nowadays, my dad always wants to order Chinese food right before the actual awards start, probably because I used to always make the same request every Oscar-night when I was a kid. We also didn't eat-out or order-in very often while my sister and I were growing up because, at the time, we couldn't afford to in our one-income household. Oddly, though he's really enthusiastic about watching the awards, my dad never gets the Chinese restaurant to deliver the food (I'm guessing because he doesn't trust delivery guys, or doesn't want to tip them, or had a bad experience 40 years ago ... who knows, cause he'll never tell me why), so about half-an-hour into the show, he has to leave to get the food and ends up missing most of the show.

When he gets back he asks my mom to tell him who won all the awards he missed, which starts out fine, until he invariably gets confused about the movies and the actors, at which point my mom gets annoyed with him. My mom also provides candid comments throughout the proceedings about which actresses she believes are dressing inappropriately (to this day, I've never heard her state that she thinks any actress actually looks attractive in whatever she decided to wear) and frequently asks me to explain some of the jokes (yesterday it was all the Kodak-related-corporate-sponsorship jokes). Whenever Meryl Streep is nominated, my mom will let us know how much she "can't stand how fake that woman is", which - obviously - happens quite often. I'm also fairly certain my mom always exclaims that Streep is just acting humble and surprised, but is in actuality really insanely vain and in constant acting-mode (over the years, I think she's slowly won me over with this argument). Then as we watch the last few awards, my dad will usually start telling us that a person on screen looks like some celebrity which he only has a vague recollection of, at which point we have to explain that it's actually the celebrity he's thinking of, or we begin a series of questions trying to figure out which celebrity he's thinking of, before telling him it's not who he's thinking of. Yesterday night my dad thought Kristen Wiig was either Laura Ingraham or Ann Coulter (my dad has an obsession/paranoia about right-wing political pundits), despite the fact that he watches SNL every weekend, even when it's a repeat of an episode he's watched already.

After they award Best Picture, if the movie that we all saw at Christmas didn't win Best Picture, my dad usually says something like "Hmmm... why didn't [the movie we saw at Christmas] win?" or "Hmmm... that film must have been pretty good if it beat [the movie we saw at Christmas]. Maybe we should see it?", at which point my mom usually asks me "Did you see that one? Was it any good?" I was far more frank about my opinions when I was younger, but nowadays I usually offer some generic comments like "I thought it was OK. A lot of people think it's pretty good", mostly because I don't want to risk diminishing their sudden enthusiasm for movies. If the movie we saw at Christmas did win, my dad usually says something like "Well, that worked out well" while my mom worries about the clean-up and the dishes. I usually help with the clean-up for awhile before leaving, though in recent years I've helped for about 5 minutes before rushing home to try and watch as many premium-cable shows as possible just so my PVR doesn't run out of space.

I've somehow avoided subjecting any of my former-girlfriends to this experience, which is probably a good thing. Admittedly, I actually don't mind this tradition that much. It's probably one of the more relaxing family gatherings.

On a completely different note, while the forum has been completely gripped with enthusiasm/anticipation over the potential screenwriting win for Jim Rash/Dean Pelton, I totally forgot that Nat Faxon has appeared in many of my favorite TV shows, included his great guest spots on Party Down, Happy Endings, and Mad Men (I'll have to check out that episode again, since I never noticed he was in that one).

Bejo was whispering in his ear while Portman was giving her scripted compliments of his work, so I'm fairly sure Bejo was acting as his translator for a lot of the ceremony.

It can't replace Tebow-ing soon enough.

I think Angie was doing an evening-long tribute to Joan Crawford in Torch Song (relevant scene 1:00 to 1:40 in this video).

I also think she had one of those canes that transform into a stool sewn into her dress in order to enable her to hold this pose all night.

Nat Faxon: Academy Award Winner, Party Down company picnic all-around champ three years in a row

Thanks for sharing that great story, Andre-- my mom always made similar remarks about the women she didn't feel looked "feminine" enough. Read: My mom loves huge racks!

Oh, and here's the entire absurdly star-studded Kimmel thing I was talking about, Movie: the Movie

No problem. Last night, my mom was greatly concerned about Angelina Jolie's health.

Your mom seems like a very wise, wise, wise woman. I guess she really appreciated Sofia Vergara during this past awards season.

That was a great story Andre. I think someone in Hollywood should definitely make a film called The Movie We Saw At Christmas, as I think my parents would be big fans of it too!

Echo. These long introductions for the acting awards, no matter the variant (5 or 1) are extremely irritating. It's just an acting job, not the Nobel. I hope they keep cutting it back.

Just as irritating is the media calling cinematography, art design, costume, and sound "technical" categories, as though they don't involve lots of creativity.

Personally, I think the Oscars should return to having 2 Best Pictures, like in the first couple of years - Best Artistic Achievement, and Best Production (for the popular films). And they should move all the Best Picture Awards later - Documentary, Foreign Language, and Animated.

Or that acting, writing, and directing don't require any technical skills.

I agree in many ways, but studio marketing wouldn't allow it as 'Best production' or 'Best artistic achievement' ('Uhh,' I can hear them say, 'art?') aren't as marketable as straight-out 'Best picture'.

Martin Short - still causing polarising reactions long into the new millennium!

After the acclaim he won for Damages, I made a bet that he'd gain second life as a dramatic actor and secure an Oscar nomination within five years...clock's ticking, Clifford.

Did it surprise anyone that the average voter is a 60 year old white male? John Waters admitted to being an academy voter, but I'm willing to bet that he isn't voting for the costume dramas and "retarded slave" roles.

I figured out the best "Original Song", it is a separate group of mostly musicians and they aren't sent screeners of the films, just the parts with the songs that meet certain qualifications. So a lot of the best songs are reduced to 20 sec clips, and that's what open and closing credits songs almost always win.