Oscars Shmoscars

With all of its "80 years of Oscar" historical posturing, this year's Academy Awards Ceremony was pretty low-key. Gone were the unnecessary (and mostly really stupid) skits and impromptu musical numbers, and the presenters pretty much stuck to business. Not that I'm complaining or anything. I like my results fast and dirty.
I felt good about all of the big deal nominees, despite having not seen La Vie En Rose (Who the hell is Edith Piaf anyway?). It's always a rare treat when there isn't at least one movie/actor/actress/director that I felt was way too sucky to be included with the "good" performers. It's also rare to see the movie that was actually the best win. By this I mean No Country For Old Men which is one of the best movies to come out in a really long time. I can't remember a time when a movie punched me in the brains and guts quite as effectively as No Country did.
Daniel Day Lewis definitely deserved his award for acting. I don't know of too many actors who can effectively capture the emotional depth of characters that are on par with the forces of nature. Every performance he gives is like a swirling vortex of cool that is impossible to escape. Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton, and big bad Javier Bardem were also quite worthy of their awards.
I thought that it was great when "Falling Slowly" from Once nabbed the Best Song award, despite the three nominations for Enchanted.
Now for the stuff that sucked.
Okay, war documentaries are all good and well (I especially liked No End In Sight), but 75% of the documentaries nominated fell into this category. This preamble is leading to my disappointment that King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters wasn't even nominated. I mean, it's important that there are documentaries that depress the hell out of us by sticking a camera right in the face of everything that is going horribly wrong in our world, but I felt that the nominees could have lightened up a bit. Plus, King of Kong was really well made and awesome.
And why the hell didn't Paul Dano get nominated for best supporting actor? Freaking' Hal Holbrook was only in that lame Into the Wild flick for like ten minutes, and he gets nominated? Stick a freaking veteran actor in your movie, have him or her waggle his or her jaw for a few minutes on poignant bit of dialogue that's supposed to be the emotional core of the story, and watch the Academy members crap their pants about it. Mr. Dano held his own in all of his scenes with Mr. Day Lewis, and I felt like he was royally gypped.
Oh, and why the hell was Miley Cyrus there?

I think that's about all that I really have to say about the show. Wait.... yeah. That should do it.

SWEDED!