The 78th Annual Academy Awards

For the first time in a long time, the Academy Awards have actually been funny, interesting, and unpredictable. From surprise Best Picture winner "Crash" to Ben Stiller in a green skin tight suit presenting the Best Visual Effects Oscar, this year was truly entertaining. The entire evening the Academy kept it interesting with film montages, funny jokes, shorter acceptance speeches, and fewer commercial breaks (it was a half an hour before the first commercial break). The funny thing is, is that I hadn't seen any of the Best Picture nominees so I was expecting to be bored, but I wasn't. Here are some memorable moments from Hollywood's biggest night.

-The opening number which consisted of previous Oscar hosts turning down the spot of emcee for the evening, was extremely hilarious. You missed out if you didn't see it.

-Pre-taped segments that poked fun at everything from the Best Actress nominee's names, to accusing Keira Knightley of "acting while beautiful". This was one of the reasons the evening was so fun.

-Ben Stiller in a green bodysuit insisting that no one could see him and stating, ''For the first time in Oscar history, an Academy Award will be presented by no one," while dancing around the stage with a "floating envelope".

-Will Farrell and Steve Carrell presenting the Best Make-Up award while wearing ridiculous make-up that looked like they put it on themselves. And Steve Carrell's fake eyelashes were something I won't soon forget.

It wasn't a perfect Academy Awards show though. One thing I hated was how the orchestra played music throughout everyone's acceptance speech, which was kind of like reminding them to "hurry it up". And while I liked the fact that the acceptance speeches were shorter, many people were cut off or didn't get to talk at all. Once there was two people on stage accepting an award, and after the first guy finished, the second guy stepped up to say a few words, but immediately the orchestra started up and the lights went down on the poor guy. This is their big moment, and the Academy kept cutting them short and making them go fast. It was not very courteous of them. And an upset for me was the group 3 Six Mafia winning Best Song for the film "Hustle and Flow". A song called "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp" won Best Song? Get real! And then the groups acceptance speech consisted of incomprehensible street jargon and a swear word that was bleeped out. Plus, they totally ignored the evenings black-tie dress code, with the group wearing huge coats, sunglasses, hats, and (gasp!) jeans.

Overall though, the night played out great, and the movies that I wanted to win, won. I think the Academy Awards have finally made their comeback from previous, boring telecasts. I applaud you Oscar! For a complete list of nominees and winners, go to Oscar.com.

Brian Ledtke,16, lives in Thomas Township.

Jon Stewart, I suppose gave a good well done performance this year as MC of the 78th Academy Awards show. He's been known to be a lot funnier, but was a joy instead of seeing the usual regular hosts that normally include Billy Crystal, Steve Martin and Whoopi Goldberg. His funny remarks to the 'gay' films this year were funny though.

This year, the top prize of Best Picture was awarded to the independent feature 'Crash' starring Matt Dillion who also was nominated for Best Actor, but instead lost the award to the rather underrated character actor Phillip Seymore Hoffman for his role as the title character in 'Capote'. By far, I had actually expected that Joaquin Phoenix would win Best Actor for his performance as another title character this last year as legendary singer Johnny Cash in 'Walk the Line'. Nonetheless, his leading lady Reese Witherspoon gave a wonderful performance as June Cash in the film, which resulted her in a very much deserved Best Actress honor. For the supporting roles, Rachel Weiz got Supporting Actress, and George Clooney got Supporting Actor. Other films that got Academy Award notice included the gay romance film of two cowboys, "Brokeback Mountain" starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall, both were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively; Steven Spielberg's 'Munich' got Best Picture nod and one film that was particularly overlooked was the summer's blockbuster remake of 'King Kong' which got more of less of Special Visual Effects recongization.

The winner of Best Song was very very shocking, 'Hard Out there for a Pimp' was awarded to Three Hit Mafia and in turn it was quite an uproar as well.

The other annual events that are shown at Oscar included the honorary segment, this year awarded to director Robert Altman; legendary actress Lauren Bacall presented a tribute to film-noir movies from the 40's and 50's; as a tribute to the much controversial gay films done this year, the Academy showed clips of western films with funny gay themes just for laughs anyway, and then there was usual touching In Memoriam tribute paying respects to film industry members that passed away in the previous year which included: Teresa Wright, Pat Morita, director Robert Newmyer, Dan O'Herhily, Vincent Schivelli, director Robert Wise, Chris Penn, John Mills, Sandra Dee, Anthony Franciosa, Barbara Bel Geddes, producers Debra Hill, Ismail Merchant, Moustapha Akkad, Eddie Albert, Shelley Winters, Anne Bancroft and Richard Pryor, just to name a few.

Not only was this is a good show to watch, also most of the winners were surprising. No movie swept away the awards and the 'big' Oscars were evenly handed among the favorite movies of the evening. It made it a very unpredictable evening and because of that it also was fun to watch. It's never fun to see one movie just win all of the 'big' Oscars, especially when the movie is not deserving enough of it. So, for the more neutral and unbiased viewer, like myself, this was a great awards show in which the Adademy Awards, for me, regained some of its credibility and respect.

The show was fast paced and there weren't any slow or distracting moments. All of the presenters were good and didn't try to be forced funny all the time, like often in the past was the case. As for Jon Stewart, he surprised me. I never really had been a fan of him but he was a great presenter of the evening. Unlike the other presenters from the past, he stood there as a presenter that told some fun jokes in between and not as a comedian who tried to make the audience laugh with basically every single sentence. Stewart never overdid things and because of that he was a great presenter that also was fun to listen to.

A bit disappointing however were the montages. I normally always enjoy the montages during the Oscars but the montages used this year contained some weird and unimpressive movie choices at times. It also got a bit tiresome after a while when they kept repeating to the viewers that they should watch movies in theater's rather than home on DVD or on portable-DVD. It felt like one big, unpaid for, advert that in my opinion also was just totally pointless.

As for the winners...Like I said before, it was a great evening for the neutral movie-viewer. It was a mostly unpredictable evening, with some great and also some surprising winners. The Oscars were handed out extremely even and fair this year. "King Kong" took home 3 Oscar, as well as "Memoirs of a Geisha", "Crash" and "Brokeback Mountain". "King Kong" won the most important technical awards, "Memoirs of a Geisha" the most important visual awards and both "Crash" and "Brokeback Mountain" won the 'big' important awards. So, it was a very balanced evening for most movies.

Not all of the awards were a surprise though of course. Most movie buffs already knew that it was simply bound to happen once, that Philip Seymour Hoffman would win an Oscar for best actor and it really was no surprise to anyone that he won this year for his role in "Capote". It also was fairly determined that Reese Witherspoon would receive the Oscar for best actress, which she also did. Judi Dench already had received enough nominations and credit, plus she already won an Oscar once, Charlize Theron already one won recently, Keira Knightley will almost certainly still win an Oscar later within about 5 or maybe 10 years, the way her career progresses at the moment. She's young, talented and beautiful, so she'll get there. And Felicity Huffman...yeah right, like she even had a chance. So no, also Reese Witherspoon was surely no surprise, also because she already had won many other big awards this year for her role in "Walk the Line". Also no real surprises were; "La Marche de l'empereur" for best documentary feature, "Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" for best animated feature film and George Clooney for his supporting role in the movie "Syriana". Clooney was nominated two more times, first best screenplay and directing for "Good Night, and Good Luck.". Three nominations, so he was almost bound to receive one. For best screenplay and best directing would had been too controversial, so giving him one for his acting seemed like a fair and predictable move. Clooney himself also knew that he wouldn't receive the Oscar for best screenplay or directing after he had one the best supporting actor award.

Of course biggest surprise of the evening was "Crash" winning the best picture award, especially after Ang Lee already had won the best director award during the evening. Everyone basically assumed that "Brokeback Mountain" would win best picture and most of the other important awards of the evening, with maybe "Good Night, and Good Luck." as the most important underdog. Yeah sure "Crash" had 6 nominations this evening but honestly, who would had ever expected it to win so many and important awards. The movie almost didn't seem to make a chance to win against "Brokeback Mountain" and any of the other movies nominated. But yet it won, which is good for the unpredictability, surprise and credibility level of this year's award ceremony.

All in all, "The 78th Annual Academy Awards" was an unpredictable and fun evening with a good presented- and fast show set around it. 2005 was a great and competitive year for the Oscar's. No one will totally agree with the Oscar's handed out this year but for the neutral viewer there was plenty to enjoy.

8/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

At the closing of the Academy Awards, I really enjoyed the music the orchestra was playing and I'm trying to find out what it was.

They actually played two songs, one while Jon Stewart was saying goodbye and then transitioned to another while the credits were rolling.

It's the second song that I'm interested in.

I've already gone to Oscar.com and the Academy Awards websites, but can't find anything there or where else to go look.

John Conti was the orchestra conductor.

HELP!!

All I have to say after watching the 78th Academy Awards is: Good for you Oscar! After all of the overwhelming media attention received by certain movies, let's say Brokeback Mountain for example, the Academy proved itself better and didn't follow what everyone said was inevitable. After many years of having to admit some disappointment with the Oscar's I had decided that if it turned out the way everyone said it would I would have to give up on Hollywood. This was their final chance, and all signs pointed to them giving in to the pressure and handing out all the awards to Brokeback and TransAmerica.

But they were better!!! They went against what all the critics and all the press said and Brokeback was denied almost every award it was nominated for. Apart from giving just a great show, the Academy has proved that maybe, just maybe they have some goodness left in them. Was it the correct choice? It doesn't really matter, cuz it was the right thing to do. And that's something Hollywood has rarely been brave enough to attempt.

So way to go Academy! You've restored my faith in you at least a little longer, and you've shown that there may yet be some hope for Hollywood- maybe not much, but there is some still left.

Jay Addison