The 78th Annual Academy Awards

Jon Stewart, I suppose gave a good well done performance this year as MC of the 78th Academy Awards show. He's been known to be a lot funnier, but was a joy instead of seeing the usual regular hosts that normally include Billy Crystal, Steve Martin and Whoopi Goldberg. His funny remarks to the 'gay' films this year were funny though.

This year, the top prize of Best Picture was awarded to the independent feature 'Crash' starring Matt Dillion who also was nominated for Best Actor, but instead lost the award to the rather underrated character actor Phillip Seymore Hoffman for his role as the title character in 'Capote'. By far, I had actually expected that Joaquin Phoenix would win Best Actor for his performance as another title character this last year as legendary singer Johnny Cash in 'Walk the Line'. Nonetheless, his leading lady Reese Witherspoon gave a wonderful performance as June Cash in the film, which resulted her in a very much deserved Best Actress honor. For the supporting roles, Rachel Weiz got Supporting Actress, and George Clooney got Supporting Actor. Other films that got Academy Award notice included the gay romance film of two cowboys, "Brokeback Mountain" starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall, both were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively; Steven Spielberg's 'Munich' got Best Picture nod and one film that was particularly overlooked was the summer's blockbuster remake of 'King Kong' which got more of less of Special Visual Effects recongization.

The winner of Best Song was very very shocking, 'Hard Out there for a Pimp' was awarded to Three Hit Mafia and in turn it was quite an uproar as well.

The other annual events that are shown at Oscar included the honorary segment, this year awarded to director Robert Altman; legendary actress Lauren Bacall presented a tribute to film-noir movies from the 40's and 50's; as a tribute to the much controversial gay films done this year, the Academy showed clips of western films with funny gay themes just for laughs anyway, and then there was usual touching In Memoriam tribute paying respects to film industry members that passed away in the previous year which included: Teresa Wright, Pat Morita, director Robert Newmyer, Dan O'Herhily, Vincent Schivelli, director Robert Wise, Chris Penn, John Mills, Sandra Dee, Anthony Franciosa, Barbara Bel Geddes, producers Debra Hill, Ismail Merchant, Moustapha Akkad, Eddie Albert, Shelley Winters, Anne Bancroft and Richard Pryor, just to name a few.

This year was better then last year. Chris Rock, last year's host, was boring. Jon Stewart, this year's, was better. He wasn't hysterical, but he was funny and kept a serious face on whenever he gave his lines. The awards were well handed out I think, except for Reese Witherspoon, who made a complete fool of herself while she gave her acceptance speech. I liked that Dolly Parton came back with another good song to sing. Plus, it was cool to watch Three 6 Mafia sing the winning song "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp" from Hustle and Flow. The dancers that performed during that song number did a good job on their queues also. All and all, this was a better year then the recent.

Another year comes round and we find ourselves facing down the barrel of a long night of clapping and awards. However with Sky yet again buying the rights and sticking it on a subscription only channel, all I had was a two hour highlights show which I suppose is not too bad as it is long enough to get it all in but not so long that there will be loads of dead time to content with. After some time "interviewing" the stars on the red carpet we get into the opening sequence that, despite being a bit obvious was quite funny. From here on in we got into the awards, which I will get back to in a bit.

As a host Stewart did an OK job but I didn't think his style of humour suited that type of event; at times he did seem to struggle and he lacked the presence of, say, Billy Crystal. His material wasn't always the strongest but I like him enough to forgive him. The structure of the ceremony went well although I didn't like the fact that Nick Park and others looked like they were stuck on the very back row. The Sky highlights show did a good job of editing the ceremony together so that it moved forward well, although I know they cut a lot of Jon Stewart.

The winners were mostly worthy enough. Clooney deserved something even if Syriana wasn't anywhere near as good as his work in Good Luck, and Good Night; his acceptance speech was great and he marked himself out as a real gent. Hoffman gave a nice speech and given that he dominated Capote he deserved it (although I did think Howard was better). Crash was a surprise but then I had no problem with it or Brokeback winning. Wallace & Gromit was always going to win and rightly so. Other than Crash in fact there were no massive surprises and no one film dominated, which was good although the lack of shocks meant that at times it was a bit dull. The songs were a bit overdone and stagy and "hard out here for a pimp" was a surprise win (at least I thought so). Witherspoon continued the fine tradition of actresses giving overly emotional and rambling speeches and I did nearly laugh out loud when she said she was just trying to matter and make work that meant something.

The Sky presentation is as average as usual. I didn't see how they coped with all the breaks but judging by how they did the pre-recorded bits in the highlights show I can only assume they did a bad job. The links were filmed outside an after-show party and the sound quality was poor as a result. Jamie Theakston was poor on the red carpet and he was bland in the links. However he looks like a pro compared to the personality void that was Amanda Byram. I know the role requires her to look pretty and not much else but I was surprised by how poor she was – her red carpet chat with Clooney was just embarrassing and even the great charmer himself was showing signs of strain in talking to her.

Overall though a solid show with nothing much to really talk about. Bits were funny but I can't see Stewart coming back for a second shot on the strength of this. The awards were mostly deserved and, with no one film dominating the spread was good and the nominations provided interest in the "outsider" nominees. Not a great show but interesting enough but I hope to God that Sky do something worthwhile with it or let another channel have a go (I mean, don't they have Barry Norman under contract for goodness sake?).

It's not often that I give the Academy Awards 10/10; after all, what is it except self-congratulation? But Jon Stewart was the perfect host. He was exactly right in his question to Steven Spielberg when referring to "Schindler's List" and "Munich": what will happen to us Jews next?

The only problem this year was the final award: "Brokeback Mountain" was something new, while "Crash" was a little too safe. But other than that, I liked "The 78th Annual Academy Awards". Back in the days when only big, overblown, pompous musicals could receive nominations for Best Original Song, who would have guessed that there would be a winner called "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"? But, as Jon Stewart noted, it just got a lot easier for a pimp!

Anyway, I agreed with most of the winners, even if there were some predictable ones (but don't get me wrong: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Reese Witherspoon both did very well in their performances). And I laud George Clooney for encouraging Hollywood to make more movies about what's going on in the world, such as "Syriana". Knowing what a great host Jon Stewart was, I would like to see Stephen Colbert host the Oscars one year; in his persona, he could rant against Hollywood for hating America (let's face it: how many movies has Hollywood made saying anything good about the US of A?).

All in all, a great ceremony, especially with Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin overlapping their dialogue to award Robert Altman (RIP) his Honorary Oscar.

All I have to say after watching the 78th Academy Awards is: Good for you Oscar! After all of the overwhelming media attention received by certain movies, let's say Brokeback Mountain for example, the Academy proved itself better and didn't follow what everyone said was inevitable. After many years of having to admit some disappointment with the Oscar's I had decided that if it turned out the way everyone said it would I would have to give up on Hollywood. This was their final chance, and all signs pointed to them giving in to the pressure and handing out all the awards to Brokeback and TransAmerica.

But they were better!!! They went against what all the critics and all the press said and Brokeback was denied almost every award it was nominated for. Apart from giving just a great show, the Academy has proved that maybe, just maybe they have some goodness left in them. Was it the correct choice? It doesn't really matter, cuz it was the right thing to do. And that's something Hollywood has rarely been brave enough to attempt.

So way to go Academy! You've restored my faith in you at least a little longer, and you've shown that there may yet be some hope for Hollywood- maybe not much, but there is some still left.

Jay Addison