Oscars 2010

Maybe I'm finally getting too old or jaded to watch the Oscars all the way through, because I have to say that I was more bored than usual with last night's show. It was obvious that some of the kinds of stuff included in past shows to try to make them more entertaining had been cut in the interest of this year's not dragging on for too long, but one thing I missed was a truly enjoyable host; I haven't seen any reviews of last night's hosts or the show altogether yet and will be interested in what the critics say. I like both Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, but they were hardly at all in evidence and only provided a couple of mild chuckles. I still miss Billy Crystal, my favourite past host. Well, on to the winners. No surprises in the main categories and, as I predicted, the films I liked best were almost totally shut out of awards. I'm still mildly (though no more) curious about "The Hurt Locker", but the more clips from it I see the more the topic and style just don't really interest me. The only winner who seemed to be a surprise, based on what I had heard, was the best foreign film; I haven't seen any of the nominated films in this category as they haven't been shown here, but I had heard it predicted a number of times that the German film "The White Ribbon" would win. I also haven't seen any of the documentaries except for the "The Cove", which won, and I'd very much like to see the others to give a fair opinion, but I didn't find "The Cove" to be nearly as compelling as other documentaries I've seen in previous years. To me, the most engaging part of the evening was looking at the gowns, which were almost all really gorgeous, and the set for the theatre, also very glitzy and beautiful.