And so the night proceeded with the same meandering tone as DeGeneres, inching toward nothing in particular. Instead of the usual policy of announcing a few major prizes at the beginning, the first supporting-actor award -- to Alan Arkin, who stoically read his acceptance until a mention of his family brought a crack to his voice -- wasn't announced until almost an hour into the telecast. That's just too much time to string us along.
The next crowd-pleasing award, the supporting prize to Jennifer Hudson, didn't come for yet another hour. And that moment, like Helen Mirren's similarly predictable win later on, was a letdown, only because we've already seen Hudson win so many prizes this season.
Oscarcast producer Laura Ziskin pulled out some old tricks -- very old tricks -- to distract us from the ticking of our internal time-clocks. We got a cutesy song and dance from Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly about how sad, angry, and envious comedians feel about the Oscars. It wasn't bad; it was charming; but still it felt like a stall. So did director Errol Morris's interviews with the nominees, which opened the night, as well as a performance in which a chorus created sound effects -- helicopters, cars, wind, water -- for film clips.
And then there was the montage about writing in the movies, and then there were the Pilobolus dancers making cool shadow shapes, and then there was the foreign film montage, and then there was the collection of Ennio Morricone music, and then there were the clips of American history seen through movies. They were minutes, many minutes, many late minutes, we will never get back.
Those of us looking for Oscar-worthy thrills had to settle for repeated shots of Peter O'Toole in the audience pretending he knew what was going on, or the odd glimpse of someone completely out of context -- Jerry Seinfeld? Larry David?
