First Impulse: Oscar Night Winners and Losers

Instead of just presenting my early unfiltered thoughts on last night's Oscars in a series of rambling bullet points, I'm giving you a rambling list of winners and losers.

WINNER: The Coen Brothers
--Well, duh. But still. They grabbed the biggest awards and provided likable acceptance speeches. It's the ultimate "Screw you" to everyone who hated the ending of "No Country." They've got a few big awards that say they did it just fine.

LOSERS: Cate Blanchett, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman
--"It's an honor just to be nominated." Sure, but it still must bite if you're nominated 3 times in the same category and still lose, a la Menken and Ashman for their "Enchanted" tunes. And while we all think Cate Blanchett is an incredible talent, she still lost twice last night.

WINNER: Those who had to get up for work this morning
--Anytime this broadcast ends by midnight (about 11:47 by my clock), it's a victory for the working stiffs who can't hit all those Oscar parties because, you know, they have to get up and make a living. This year's show was trimmed by the welcome exclusion of useless features like dance segments, multiple montages, and the redundant extended clips of the Best Picture nominees.

LOSERS: The telecast's producers
--Yeah, the show was only minimally over (and realistically not over at all), but let's not give the creative team too much credit. It was still a bland, uninspired evening.

LOSER: Jon Stewart
--Stewart wasn't offensive or anything, but he just wasn't very funny, and he must shoulder some of the blame for the lackluster ceremony. His habit of making postmodern little explanations on his own jokes seems out of place at the Oscars and weakened even his best lines. His political stuff wasn't even that good. The Gaylord Titler joke, though it seemed to get a good response in the auditorium, could have been written 6 months ago--and maybe it was.

LOSER: Ellen DeGeneres
--Seeing even one small clip of her vacuuming during a ceremony reminded me how unwelcome her shtick is. The effect was to make me think, "They invited HER to do this gig?"

WINNER: Chevy Chase
--Strangely, seeing several shots of Chevy hosting kind of elevated him. Oh, sure, the effect is to make one think, "They invited HIM to do this gig?" But it also kind of reminds you that, yeah, he used to be a big deal.

WINNER: Owen Wilson
--Not to sound melodramatic, but just the fact that he was on stage, looking like he belonged, and not in the "In Memoriam" segment is a victory.

WINNERS: Everyone involved with "Get Smart"
--To my eye, Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway looked like a winning comic team up at the podium. That movie could be big.

WINNERS: Everyone involved with "Once"
--Especially "The Guy" and "The Girl" (as they are called in the film's credits), whose performance reminded everyone who saw "Once" why they loved it. Their acceptance speeches, particularly hers, had to have charmed everyone who HADN'T yet seen the movie.

LOSER: Abstinence
--After all, there were a lot of pregnant celebrities there looking pretty good.

LOSERS: Documentaries you've heard of
--Doesn't it seem like in this and the Foreign Film category, every year, there are a handful of well-known contenders, and most of them don't get nominated, and none of them win?

WINNER: Daniel Day Lewis
--For a guy that sometimes sounds like a real pain in the ass to deal with, he sure was humble, and his playful kneeling to be "knighted" by Helen Mirren came off as spontaneous (even if it wasn't) and just irreverent enough to be funny but not at all disrespectful or goofy.