don't wake me; i plan on sleeping

The Oscars! The Film Experience Blog pretty much captures my feelings about it. It was an international year, with all the acting awards going to (deserving) Europeans for small movies that nobody saw, so, naturally, I was happy. There was no Crash this year, or even a bloated, self-important genre picture like Dreamgirls or the Departed, to suck up some of the valuable energy and even-more-valuable awards.

The women generally looked like they had all received a memo from Gil Gates to participate in a virtual checkers match: half were black and half were red. My favorite from the red team was Her Majesty the Queen, Helen Mirren. I had no favorites from the black team. They were dull as dirt, even adorable little Juno MacGuff.

I was giggling at some of Jon Stewart's lines for a while: who, after all, can resist a good Gaydolph Tittler joke? He seemed to find himself pretty funny, too, or at least he seemed amused by the whole evening's endeavor, even as he was Trying more than he did in '06 to play the game. He was responsible for my single favorite moment of the evening, when he brought Marketa Irglova back onstage to give her short, eloquent speech about dreams.

Which brings me to the subtext of the evening. Barack Obama! Everyone was harping on "dreams" and "change," and what with the various languages and accents issuing from the microphone it really seemed to be his night.