Bridget Nordquist

Days after Hollywood’s biggest event, I am still basking in the glow of Oscar glory. Well, maybe not, but I am able to look back in order to recap the event just for you. Overall, I found the 79th Annual Academy Awards to be mildly entertaining and mostly predictable. However, there were a few surprises and noteworthy laughs.

This year, Ellen DeGeneres hosted the awards. If you’re an Ellen fan, you probably enjoyed her performance more than I. Overall, I found her humor to be generally corny and at times almost uncomfortable. On a few occasions she went out into the audience and did impromptu interviews with random people. She couldn’t get Mark Wahlberg to shut up while Clint Eastwood proved less than talkative. Later, she was seen vacuuming the aisles around the celebrities. Please beg Jon Stewart or Billy Crystal to come back to host!

While Ellen was not my cup of tea, I did find a few other moments laugh-worthy. Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly garnered chuckles when they sang together about the sad plight of the comedic actor at the Oscars. Check it out on YouTube. Jerry Seinfeld introduced an award with some much-needed laughs added in. Al Gore acting like he was going to announce his candidacy for President, only to be cut off by the music, was hilarious.

The actual award winners were generally unsurprising. Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson all brought home their allotted awards. Scorsese finally took home the statue for directing and “The Departed” won Best Picture. “Pan’s Labyrinth” won three awards, although I was surprised it lost in Best Foreign Language Film to a German movie. “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Departed” won the writing categories. Al Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth” went home with the award for Best Documentary Feature.

Besides “Pan’s” not winning its big award, there were a few surprises. Eddie Murphy did not win for his “Dreamgirls” performance. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised when Alan Arkin came out on top for his role as the disturbed grandpa in “Sunshine.” “Dreamgirls” also lost in the category of Best Original Song even though it had three nominees out of five. Melissa Etheridge won for her song from “An Inconvenient Truth.” Good for her.

Overall, this year’s Oscars were sadly dull and drawn out. And although I managed to predict the most winners at my Oscar party, I hope next year’s award show proves significantly better … like, maybe actually entertaining.