Awards Show Awards

A word of advice: don't watch any of the pre-show. Ever. I didn't and enjoyed the end result all the more.
Oh, and I apologize for the forced analysis of the best picture nominees in the last post. Just felt like it needed to happen when it didn't. Forget about it. I was still paying attention, and have the following awards to give out to the Academy Awards

Most Efficient Speech
Ari Sandel, West Bank Story. Introduced us to "Stick-to-it-iveness." Complete speech can be found here. Also, I'm mad I didn't know this existed. It's a musical about Israel and Palestine, who have gang fights much like the Sharks and Jets.

Coolest Thing Ever
The Sound Crowd. Yes, it may be an upset over the rolling shape-shifting shadow people (the closest to a real-life comic book villain you'll ever see), but the expressions on the faces of the hoard that imitated rockets and horses and Deloreans put them ahead. Officially titled "The Hollywood Sound Chorale's Sound Effects Choir," I doubt they existed before the show and they probably disbanded after, unless they have a weekly gig at the Church of Spielberg.

Best Subliminal Messaging
The theme of this year's Oscars was . . . words. There was the absurd montage of writers in the movies (which begged the question "who wrote this terrible thing?"). There was the game of foreign poet as Clint Eastwood took the Italian acceptance speech by Ennio Morricone and either directly translated or made up what he thought the English equivalent (he's Cling Eastwood for God's sake, so I'll bet on the former). The official poster was comprised of famous movie quotes (the U.S. societal currency) and, if you were fortunate enough to watch the broadcast in HD, those quotes appeared in the dark shadow box around the nominees as they were announced. During sound editing, there was one large-fonted quote to rule them all: "FRODO!" Proof that there will never be an Academy Awards ever again without the help of Lord of the Rings.

Unintentional Comedic Moment
James Taylor's performance of "Our Town" from Cars, immediately followed by Melissa Ethridge's song from An Inconvenient Truth that urges listeners to take action against high levels of carbon emissions from things like . . . cars.

Best Pairing
As obvious as anything, the winner is Leo and Al Gore. Anything Al does at this point is great (as the predominantly Democratic audience seemed to think), and Leo was humble in his presence, even saying "Thank You, Sir" to the veep. After the little gag about Al Gore's presidential announcement being cut off by the orchestra, they walked off with their arms around each other on the verge of cracking up. I bet they go to each-other's houses for board games.

Biggest Guilt Trip
If you weren't aware that An Inconvenient Truth was in a different category, or if you just weren't paying attention, you were probably worried as they announced the nominees for "Best Documentary Short Feature." "Wow," you said to yourself, much like I did, "Looks like I'm rooting against AIDS in China and people living in a landfill." Turns out, you didn't have to, and everybody wins/is going to die.

Best Quote at the Party I was at
As a flappy, bald, and raspier than usual Jack Nicholson (wearing red sunglasses) announced the winner of Best Picture: "It's like Satan doing a Jack Nicholson impression." (credit: Dartanion London)

Best Male Quote
Clint Eastwood, opening montage: "We're nominated for picture . . . director . . . things like that."

Best Female Quote
Ellen Degeneres, following the knock-out Dreamgirls music montage: "Wow, I'd hate to follow that." (Didn't she do great? She took nobody seriously - "Let's face it, without blacks, Jews, and gays, there would be no Oscars. Or anyone named Oscar, when you think about that," the little interactions with Marty and Clint, etc. - and was pretty dang funny at every turn. She out-did everybody.)