The 77th Annual Academy Awards

I firmly believe that the best Oscar ceremony in recent years was in 2003 for two reasons:

1 ) Host Steve Martin was at his most wittiest: " I saw the teamsters help Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo " and " I'll better not mention the gay mafia in case I wake up with a poodle's head in my bed "

2 ) Surprise winners: No one had Adrien Brody down for best actor ( Genuine applause ) or Roman Polanski for best director ( Genuine jeers and boos ) but they won

Last year's award ceremony wasn't too bad but there was little in the way of surprises and I was happy to see RETURN OF THE KING sweep the awards even if it wasn't the best in the trilogy ( FELLOWSHIP was much better )but what let the BBC coverage down was Jonathan Ross getting a few of his sycophantic mates round and pretending they were hilarious when they were anything but . So when I heard Sky were doing the coverage for British TV I was expecting Barry Norman and Mark Kermode to be doing the links , but instead we ended up with Jamie Theakston and Sharon Osbourne ! Oh gawd if British TV are desperate for film critics ( Obviously they are ) I'm sure both Bob The Moo and Theo Robertson will happily fly over to LA to give their honest opinions on the winners and losers

Chris Rock wasn't too bad , but he's no Steve Martin while the location seemed to resemble a sports hall with seats put in ! Not much of a glitzy arena in my opinion . The main problem I had with the ceremony was the format with the " minor " Oscars handed out to the winners who were sitting in their seats ! There's no such thing as a " minor " Oscar and just because the award is for Best Animated Short or Best Costume Design they're as well deserved as Best Picture or Best Director . All the winners should be allowed to march up to the podium . What a bunch of arrogant snobs the Academy are becoming and I quite agree with the comments that this format is disgraceful and if it wasn't for the surprises this could possibly have been the worst ceremony in history . As for the awards themselves

Best Supporting Actress - Cate Blanchett . No great surprise for a competitive category

Best Supporting Actor - Morgan Freeman . No real complaints since Freeman is one of America's greatest living character actors

Best Actor - Jamie Foxx . Most predictable award of the night . Yawn

Best Actress - Hilary Swank . Major surprise since everyone thought Annette Benning was going to win simply down to academy politics but Swank did deserve it and gave the best speech of the night

Best Director - Clint Eastwood . Major surprise since everyone thought Scorsese was going to get the award simply because he'd never won one . Actually I'm glad about this because if he didn't deserve it for TAXI DRIVER , RAGING BULL or GOODFELLAS he didn't deserve it for THE AVIATOR

Best Film - MILLION DOLLAR BABY . Again another major surprise since everyone thought the academy would split the awards for best director and best picture while I thought the Hollywood friendly plot of THE AVIATOR would have made it a dead cert for Best Picture while MDB's controversial subject matter would have turned a lot of voters off

What these awards perhaps illustrate is that this year the voters have decided to ignore Oscar politics and genuinely give out awards to people who deserve it something they haven't done in the past , I mean A BEAUTIFUL MIND beating THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING for gawd's sake ! And long may the academy vote with their heads instead of their hearts

I was a little concerned during parts of the show that it was going to be swept up by The Aviator, it seemed like just about every category was going to something from that movie. It is understandable since it is such a great film, but the competition for awards this year included an unusually high number of great films. The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, Finding Neverland, and Ray all deserved the Best Picture Oscar, for example. And so did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, by the way. Here's an interesting little factoid – Eternal Sunshine received six times as many votes by IMDb users for Best Picture than The Aviator!

Chris Rock delivered a completely unexciting performance as probably the most anticipated host the Academy Awards has seen in years, at least in terms of the potential for controversy. People were afraid he was going to do something obscene or vulgar, and all he did was get up there and make a lot of bland, dumb jokes like so many others before him. He had some moments, but I know that he is a much, much funnier man than the one we saw during the show. For much of the second half he seemed to disappear completely.

Pierce Brosnan was the only person forced to announce an award winner alongside a wildly unamusing animated cohost, which was one of the options that the IMDb gave in a daily poll that asked what event would make you immediately turn off the show. Interestingly enough, another option was if someone referred to Million Dollar Baby as some gigantic cliché like "a knockout," which strikes me as funny now because, in announcing the winners, the quote on the IMDb home page is "With a one, two, three punch Million Dollar Baby proved to be the one, the darling of the Academy as Clint Eastwood's boxing drama put the competition out for the count." Clever.

I was glad to see Eternal Sunshine awarded in the Best Screenplay category, although I think it deserved more. I also agreed with most of the main acting categories, which is rare, although I was surprised that Jamie Foxx won Best Actor, I was sure he was going to win Best Supporting Actor for Collateral, if only because I really think Don Cheadle deserves an Oscar for his performance in Hotel Rwanda, which was brilliant all around. But Foxx delivered an astonishing performance in Ray as well, and it was also good to see Morgan Freeman recognized for his work in Million Dollar Baby.

Troy should have won costume design over The Aviator, The Passion of the Christ should have won Best Makeup over A Series of Unfortunate Events, I, Robot should have won over Spiderman 2 for Visual Effects, and I really think SuperSize Me should have won Best Documentary, although I haven't seen any of the other nominees, so what do I know. These are just a few categories that I had other opinions on, but I really had a problem with the Best Foreign Film category this year. I haven't seen any of the films in the category, so I won't say that they don't deserve to have been nominated. I'm sure they do, in fact. But here are a few films that not even recognized – Hero, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Maria Full of Grace. What is that? The Motorcycle Diaries certainly deserved much more than recognition than Best Original Song. Catalina Sandina Moreno was at least nominated for Best Actress, but how about Hero for Cinematography or Art Direction? Anyone with me on this?

Oh, that's right. The Motorcycle Diaries wasn't exactly a foreign film, and Hero was originally released in 2002. But still.

Ah, nobody cares. The winners won and that's the end of it, I'm just another in an endless line of people who have to rant and rave about how it should have gone. But I should mention that while I disagreed with some of the awards this year, it's like that any year and I think that all of the winners this year deserved the Oscars that they were awarded. There were just so many other films and people that deserved so much more than they got. Just see them all, that's my solution.

1.Beyonce singing every nominated song was a bit irritating but then again you would be to if you had a voice like that...But her french was horrible"take some french lessons girl" 2.It was nice to see some DIVERSITY in the nominations believe race does matter in the academy.therefore it was great to see Jamie Foxx & Morgan Freeman walk away with the statues 3.It was high time the ever so great underrated Morgan Freeman get recognition and the brilliant Cate Blanchett as well 4.The lowest point was Hilary winning the best actress award,don't get me wrong she was great in the role but did she need a second Oscar especially for this role Imelda & Annette were way better in their performance than she is.Never had a false win made more angry than Nicole kidmans"The Hours" win over Julianne Moore"Far from Heaven" two years ago. 5.Chris rock rocked though

A day or two after "The 77th Annual Academy Awards", I read an article in The Wall Street Journal about how Uruguay's new populist president Tabare Vazquez had just been sworn in. But it said that the thing on the minds of most Uruguayans was not their new president, but what happened at the Oscars: Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler didn't get to perform his nominated song "Al otro lado del rio", so he sang a few lines when he won.

Aside from that, I wonder just what Martin Scorsese has to do to win an Oscar. I mean, "Million Dollar Baby" was good, but Clint Eastwood had already won an Oscar. As for the whole thing about cutting people off before they have a chance to finish their speeches, what are you gonna do? And I do think that Chris Rock was a pretty good host (but I liked Jon Stewart even better the next year).

All in all, passable.

I Just

Saw It and it was very very very good.

It was better than last year

This year was good because it had some good movies nominated but others weren't that good. I think the movie that won best Picture shouldn't of. The actress should have the actor should have. and i thought that CLint Eastwood did deserve to win again which he did. Hilary Swanks win for Million Dollar Baby was predictable and deserving Jamie Foxx' too predictable win was deserving. A nice little buzz was guessing whether Clint or Martin would win. I was glad to see Clint walk away with the prize. Virginia Madsen also deserved her Oscar and so did Morgan Freeman. The original Screenplay was won by Charlie Kaufman for a movie that should have taken home Best Picture but wasn't nominated, Eternal Sunshine. The Best Adapted Screenplay predictably went to Sideways and The Incredibles conquered the animation Prize. so you can go to sleep knowing that my information is correct because I can see into the future.