Oscars a pleasant surprise

It was a great year for movies, and it was a great year for Oscars.\nOn the whole, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this year's Oscars. Usually I'm falling asleep or wanting to do something more productive, but this year's show was entertaining. Let me say that while I might be -- well, am in fact -- biased in favor of Jon Stewart and his Midas touch, I thought he was a spectacular host who mixed the right amount of genial humor with back-handed insults at the Hollywood establishment. Naturally, Hollywood didn't much go for it, but I bet Stewart and his crack team of writers had a good time doing it. The "political ads" criticizing certain nominees were some of the funniest bits I've seen at the Oscars in the last decade.\nPerhaps one of the reasons the Oscars seemed to go so well this year is that they seemed to go pretty much as everyone predicted. I, and many others, correctly predicted all four acting categories and the best director in a feature that ran last week in the IDS Weekend magazine. Each of those winners were quite deserving. The only category I incorrectly predicted was the one most other critics got wrong -- Best Picture. "Crash" is certainly an upset win over favorite "Brokeback Mountain," but one that isn't insufferable to swallow. All five films nominated were, for once, all good films. While I much preferred "Munich" and "Capote," and while I contend "Crash" still has its stilted problems, seeing it carry away the Best Picture statue isn't an extreme disappointment. It was a good movie overall, and it certainly isn't as bad as "Traffic" losing to "Gladiator," or "Chariots of Fire" knocking off "Reds" in 1981.\nThe only other disappointments for me were: 1) that Kathleen York's song "In The Deep" for "Crash" didn't win for Best Original Song, instead losing to Three 6 Mafia for the song "Hard Out Here For a Pimp" they did for "Hustle & Flow" (hey, let the chips fall where they may); and 2) that "Good Night, And Good Luck" didn't squeak out a win for cinematography and art direction. (Instead, the flashy "Memoirs of a Geisha" won in both categories, when it was clear to me that the more subtle black-and-white feel of "Good Night, And Good Luck" worked more effectively.)\nI'll forever beat my chest that the Oscars should cut out the silly montages and cut out categories most Americans haven't seen (all of the short films, for example). That could at least bring the show's length from three and a half hours to a more reasonable three, and if they continued to cut out the more technical categories, like sound mixing and sound editing, the show could even get down to two and a half hours. I shouldn't have to sit any longer watching people get awards for movies that weren't nearly as long as the presentation of awards.