4th Annual Oscar Blog

This is a kind of idea of my night building up to Oscar night. Currently being without Sky Movies I'm having to find a stream of the show. During the show the stream cut out which means I missed Sandra Bullock (wrongly) winning. I am therefore using my tweets to piece together the evening as well as a copy of the event which I have found online to jog the old grey cells. So without further a do, ladies and gentlemen please take your seats for Matt's 4th annual Oscar Blog.


10:30 pm - After finishing watching Stardust on Channel 4 I begin readying myself bringing a whole box of coke cans upstairs with me. Followed by some cheese crackers, a bag of marshmellows and a chocolate orange leftover from Christmas which is still in date.

10:45pm - Found a site on JustinTV that promises Oscar streaming and is at the moment showing the end of the Independent Spirit Awards with Laura Dern harping on about how good independent films have been and showing a montage which was basically Pulp Fiction, Blue Velvet and Lost In Translation.


10:47 pm - I arrogantly announce that I will begin tweeting shortly.

10:55 pm - I realise my computer isn't typing as fast as it should so I shut it down and reboot.

11:10 pm - After my computer fails to print my tweet I resign myself to the fact that the night may be tweet-free.


11:30 pm - Have realised that Word being open is effecting the rest of the programmes so shut it down.

11:41pm - Finally have relaxed enough, after making a cup of tea, to settle down and watch the E! pre-show in which James Cameron is banging on about how much people enjoyed seeing the film in 3D. Any avid blog readers will know my thoughts on the film and its gross really wasn't anything to do with the quality of the film but because of the intrigue of 3D. Hey I saw it twice and didn't think much of it either time!

11:42 pm - Maggie Gyllenhaal and a neo-nazi looking Peter Sarsgaard are possibly Hollywood's classiest couple. Ryan Seacrest interviews Gyllenhaal about her nomination but fails to mention Sarsgaard's starring role in An Education which is nominated for Best Picture.

11:44pm - Pretty blonde actress Elizabeth Banks, drew the pretty actress short straw and had to show all the nerds at the Sci Tech Oscars what a real woman looked like. It got me to thinking if the Sci Tech Awards had their own red carpet, what would it be like? You wouldn't be able to move for holograms and the What Are You Wearing Questions would probably be answered by - My Atari T-Shirt, Same as last year.

11:49 pm - Cameron co-conspirator Sigourney Weaver is no extolling the virtues of 3D. Wittering on about how it underscores the emotional journey of the movie. My Lord, Weaver, no it doesn't it simply underscores Cameron's wish to charge you a pound more when you go to the cinema to buy those stupid glasses which are easily smudged.

11:50 pm - During the Weaver interview there is a cutaway to Tarrantino, who has bought Inglourious Basterds actress Diane Kruger as his date and he seems to think gives him reason to mildly grope her.


11:53 pm - Co-Host Alec Baldwin's TV co-star Tina Fey talks about how nervous he is and also hypes her movie Date Night.

11:58 pm - Ryan Seacrest is now fauning over Sandra Bullock. But isn't mentioning her Razzie win for All About Steve the night before.


12:01 am - As an antidote to all this malarky I decide to watch Bullock's Razzie appearance on YouTube and it is a complete hooot as she hands out DVDs for All About Steve to the members of the Razzie voters.


12:06 am - Bullock's on-screen family, Tim McGraw and Quinton Aaron, are being interviewed now with McGraw cracking a joke about African Americans and coming off as some kind of racist redneck.

12:07 am - Cutaway to Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas arriving, Banderas seems to be sporting some kind of beard that should adorn a wise old professor.

12:17 am - George Clooney arrives at the Oscars sans date, or at least that's how it appears.

12:18 am - Katherine Bigelow is now being interviewed she is both classy and cool and very sexy. I cannot believe she is 58!


12:29 am - Clooney's on-screen now and his joined by his Italian date. He always seems to bring a different woman with him each time he's nominated during awards season. Last time it was some kind of Stepford Wife type and this time its this woman who doesn't seem to understand English.

12:32 am - Ryan Seacrest has a quick meeting with Meryl Streep she is above answering questions about dresses and dates and the like and promptly leaves.


12:34 am - Someone who wants to talk is J-Lo. Even though I'm not exactly sure why she's at a movie ceremony, she always brings it in the dress department. She talks about how there is no back-up plan in her marriage to Marc Anthony which begs the question, What Was Ben Affleck?

12:40 am - Seacrest hints that their are last minute tweaks being made to the ceremony, is it going to start with Best Picture and finish with Best Sound Editing so everyone can go home early?


12:44 am - More on these opening twists, I reckon they might kill of the nominee who got the least votes, hey it'd be a good way to guarentee Meryl Streep not being nominated for an Oscar next year. Ryan continues to tell us that the nominees will be lined up American Idol style and that someone who has hosted a previous awards show will come out and do something similar to what he did before. Does that mean that Ricky Gervais will be opening the show by not making anyone laugh?

12:51 am - Seacrest is now inteviewing the stragglers, Cameron Diaz is saying how this summer's Shrek film will no doubt be the last. She says though if Jeffrey Katzenberg wants to do another one she will because she will do anything for Katzenberg. She will also probably do anything that allows her to stand in a booth and talk while earning millions and millions of dollars.

1:01 am - As the Justin TV feed I have is from a British source I get to enjoy the Sky Oscar Panel. After the joys of Stephanie Beacham dissing Penelope Cruz, Seth Rogen and James Franco I'm hoping Celebrity BB's top dog is on it again.

1:05 am - Unfortunately no Beacham. Instead we get the very funny David Baddiel, the very sweet Ronni Ancona and the very unfunny, untalented but with a Sky TV contract Mark Dolan.


1:06 am - David Baddiel admits that he didn't realise A Serious Man was nominated for Best Picture, you think they would've at least got someone who had done their research.

1:10 am - The Sky Panel are chatting about who their favourite recent hosts have been and Claudia Winkleman bizzarely bigs up Chris Rock.

1:24 am - Having not watched Sky's pre-show coverage I was unaware that they had fielded Angela Griffin to interview stars on the Red Carpet. I'm guessing Tracey Shaw was busy.

1:30 am - The show begins with an arkward segment in which the five Best Actor and Best Actress nominees stand together on stage smiling. Their may be a voice announcing their names as the sound was bad all night, certainly there are claps and people acknowledge the people waving so its quite possible. Everyone on stage looks incredibly awkward apart from Precious' Gabourey Sidibe who I know love because she is so different from her character.

1:32 am - Thankfully no Ricky Gervais but instead Seacrest's earlier comment was a nod to former Emmy and Tony host and 'Gay of the Decade' Neil Patrick Harris who starts with a song called 'No-one wants to do it Alone'. Again the sound is really bad and half of the song is drowned out by the orchestra but NPH gives it his all.

1:34 am - NPH and the dancing girls disappear as hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin descend from the heavens. Baldwin and Martin do a comedy double act with Baldwin the straight man and Martin the funny man.

Here's some choice cuts from their opening -

"Steve I know you loved Invictus becomes it combines two of you favourite passions - rugby and tensions between blacks and whites."

Steve: Look there's that Damn Helen Mirren!

Alec: Steve that's Dame Helen Mirren

"Anyone who has ever worked with Meryl Streep always says one thing - can that woman act and what's with all the Hitler memorabilia."

"I love that Precious was nominated because to me it was the one film that really lived up to its video game."

Steve: "Wait a minute Al is that the director of James Cameron" (They both don 3D glasses), "yes it is."
After this the two of them are joined by those little flash tree nymphs from Avatar that were one of the main 3D items in the film. Martin dispenses of them with some fly spray.

(On James Cameron and Katherine Bigelow both being nominated):
Alec: She was so happy that they were both nominated together she sent him a gift basket with a timer.
Steve: And he reciprocated by sending her a Toyota

"In Inglorious Basterds, Christoph Waltz played a Nazi obssessed with finding Jews, (Steve then gestures his open arms to Christoph), Christoph - the Motherload." This joke is preceeded with the cameraperson desperately trying to find a laughing Jew, the closest thing is a smirking Ethan Coen.

During the opening Martin and Baldwin also have a staredown with Clooney twice, the second time prompts Alec to say let's start the awards.

1:47 am - Penelope Cruz is here to present Best Supporting Actor. It seems that this year, the actors and actresses' performances are going to be showed in montages of clips instead of just one clip meaning that we get a bigger picture to why these five men are nominated. I can't help but think that there are two glaring omissions - Alfred Molina and Christian McKay while some of these guys don't look like they deserve their spot here, definitely not Matt Damon as I thought he was rather weak in Invictus.

1:49 am - But unsurprisingly its Christoph Waltz who Waltzes away with the first prize of the night. His speech isn't as good as the one he gave at the BAFTAs but he does reference his famous 'its a bingo' line from Inglourious Basterds - by saying 'its a uber-bingo.'

1:55 am - We're back with the Sky Panel who comment on the opening with none of them, not even Celeb mad host Claudia Winkleman, knowing who Neil Patrick Harris is or what he was doing at the Oscars.

1:57 am - Cameron Diaz and Steve Carell are out to present Best Animated Feature. They cut a speech about how pretty they are which is funny because Carell isn't a glamourous movie star and he admits the speech was originally written for Jude Law, not the most original or funny thing ever but Steve Carell sure knows how to deliver a line.

1:58 am - The 'stars' of the animated features are being interviewed so we have Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, the Old Man and the Dog from Up, the frog from Princess and The Frog and some girl from something called The Secret of Kells, an Irish film that no-one has seen, which was obviously better than both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or Ponyo, neither of which were nominated.

2:00 am - Up wins Best Animated Feature, I'm going well on the predictions so far.

2:01 am - Amanda Seyfried and Miley Cyrus are introduced by the hosts as 'two young actresses who have no idea who we are'. They both seem to be struggling with their dresses which both have long trains and so they look like two girls just about to enter their senior prom.

2:02 am - The two are presenting the award for Best Original Song. While doing the intro blurb Miley messes up her lines and says that her and Amanda are both pretty nervous as its their first time up there. This was wrong for two reasons, firstly Amanda looked pretty find and looked like she wanted to deck Cyrus after she said that and secondly I'm pretty sure both have been there before, the former introduced one of the songs a couple of years back and the latter was involved with that mighty musical number last year.

2:03 am - We are presented with the five songs through video packages and not in the traditional performances. Last year they did a montage which only lasted about three minutes, about the same time as these video clips. I'm pretty sure Jeff Bridges wouldn't have minded performing 'The Weary Kind' as he did at the Independent Spirit Awards, while Marion Cotilard would've probably sung her Nine number and I'm sure people would be willing to sing the two nominees from Princess and The Frog. The one song that I'm not sure why it's there is some big operatic number from the film Paris 36, nobody would want to sit through that.

2:06 am - My first mis-step in the predictions stakes as 'The Weary Kind' trumps my prediction of 'Almost There' from Princess and The Frog. Should've stuck to my guns but I thought Disney was owed one.

2:07 am - Throughout the night, the ten Best Picture nominees are being highlighted by various stars. I devised an interesting game to try and figure out the connection between the star and the film. Chris Pine introduces District 9, which must have something to do with the fact he played Kirk in Star Trek and District 9 is another sci-fi. Tenous to say the least.


2:12 am - Alec Baldwin describes the Oscars as 'The Biggest Night in Hollywood, since last night. before introducing the woman who 'revived his career' Tina Fey along with Robert Downey Jr. to present Best Original Screenplay. Downey Jr. is wearing odd spectacles which almost make him look like he's watching the audience in 3D.

2:14 am - Fey and Downey Jr. do a little skit about what actors want from a script and what writers want from their actors. As Fey says its a 'collobaration' and Downey Jr. says 'a collobaration between pretty people and sickly little mole people.'

2:16 am - Mark Boal's win for The Hurt Locker means I'm 3-1 up on my predictions. During the announcement of the winner there's also a shot of fellow nominee Quentin Tarrantino who obviously didn't spend any time perfecting his graceful loser face.

2:18 am - Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick come out to present a special tribute to the late great John Hughes. It's nice to see some old faces up there as Broderick usually turns up to these things as SJP's other half and I'm not sure the last time Ringwald was invited to one of these. The tribute is a classy affair not over-sentimental and there's a nice lot of clips to illustrate what a legendary force Hughes was.

2:24 am - As the orchestra plays 'Don't You Forget About Me', the stage opens up to reveal other Hughes regulars and 80's 'Where are they now?' candidates Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy (I wonder what Emilio Estevez was doing tonight?) with Macauly Culkin and Jon Cryer. The tributes continue and I'm starting to get a little teary eyed if truth be told this was just a really nice segment and bravo to Oscar for recognising one of the true great film-makers of this generation.

2:26 am - Samuel L Jackson is now on for Up. What's the connection here? I know he was in another Pixar film, The Incredibles but I don't think he had anything to do with Up.

2:30 am - We're already an hour in and we've only had four awards, luckily its the short films up next and they usually get rushed through. But first we have a short film about the importance of short films is still really doesn't make me care that much about these short films.

2:33 am - Although I was rooting for Wallace and Gromit to win Best Animated Short it went to some weird looking thing called Logorama which saw a kind of violent Ronald McDonald on a motorbike made out of the Grease sign. It is made by a man called Nikolai Schmirkin which you've got to admit is a funny surname.

2:34 am - Following Schmirkin's acceptance speech there's a shot over to George Clooney who seems to be trying to revive his comotosed other half.


2:36 am - Music by Prudence wins Best Documentary Short and the makes of the film become the first people to be played off by the 'your boring' music.

2:38 am - The New Tenants wins Best Live Action Short Film. As there's no real way of watching these films I had to just guess the outcomes and got all three wrong. As a result I am now 3-4 down.

2:39 am - Ben Stiller comes out dressed as a Na'vi. I know there was some controversy over this sketch and Sasha Baren Cohen was originally scheduled to join Stiller on stage as a pregnant Na'Vi but the academy got cold feet and didn't want to piss James Cameron off that much. Stiller always likes doing something a bit special for the awards last year he dressed as Joaquin Phoenix and this time an Avatar character although he does note that Avatar isn't nominated for Best Make-Up and he should've just worn his spock ears as Star Trek is nominated.

2:42 am - And it's Star Trek that wins it, my prediction was The Young Victoria 3-5 down now.

2:50 am - Jake Gyllenhaal and Rachel McAdams are out to present Best Adapted Screenplay this one has to be a shoe in for Up in the Air.

2:51 am - But no it is in fact Geoffrey Fletcher who adapted Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire from the novel push by Sapphire. He is a very gratious and grateful recicipent and his speech is full of thank yous - his late father, anybody who ever had a dream and precious boys and girls everywhere. But thanks to him I'm down 3-6.

2:53 am - There's gracious moments a plenty as the camera pans to a smiling Morgan Freeman clapping and then the emotional sentimentality is broken up Steve Martin who says 'I wrote that speech for him.' Classic.

2:54 am - A clip montage of The Governer's Awards, a kind of event to get all the 'honorary awards' out of the way. I would've rather them than some of the other things we had to endure tonight. Especially as their honoring some of the finest film-makers and actors including Roger Corman, cinematographer Gordon Willis, producer John Calley and Lauren Bacall who's speech seems the funniest - 'I'm so excited that when I get home I'll have a two legged man in my room'

2:56 am - Lauren Bacalll and Roger Corman are both in the audience but obviously not allowed onto the stage. Clapping begins and everyone seems to be turning around and deciding whether or not they should stand-up or not in the end the whole crowd reluctantly stands and honours these two icons as they rightly should.

2:58 am - On with the business at hand as its time for Best Supporting Actress, Robin Williams is presenting and some more clip montages of these performances.

2:59 am - Maggie Gyllenhaal's clip montage has basically spoiled most of Crazy Heart for anyone yet to see it.

3:01 am - Again another lock as Mo'Nique wins the award and does another impassioned speech something she's been known for around awards times. As she wins the award however I can't help but notice that Michael Sheen is sitting next to her husband and in the same section as the Precious cast. Was he in the movie? Was that him playing Mariah Carey playing a social worker? He's that method I wouldn't put it past him.

3:04 am - Colin Firth presents the montage for An Education, I'm guessing because he's the poshest Brit there who wasn't in the film.


3:08 am - Avatar wins Best Production Design meaning thanks to that and Mo'Nique I'm clawing my way back 5-6!

3:10 am - Before the award for Costume Design, Martin and Baldwin come out and Martin introduces two well known 'clothes whores', Baldwin corrects him 'clothes horses' but Steve says 'Alec I hardly think the pluraly whore is whorses.' Anyway its SJP and Tom Ford.

3:12 am - The only Brit win of the night as Sandy Powell wins her third Oscar this time for The Young Victoria. She thanks all the costume designers who do contemporary films and don't get awards for dressing deceased monarchs. But she loses the applause by telling them all that the Oscar's coming home with her. My original pick was Young Victoria but I flip-flopped to Nine and as a result amd down 5-7.

3:18 am - The Sky Panel are still discussing the opening of the show and still none of them have an idea who Neil Patrick Harris was.

3:20 am - Baldwin and Martin preceed a tribute to horror films with a brilliant little spoof of Paranormal Activity which was better than any part of that film.

3:21 am - Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner come out to present a horror montage and question why horror doesn't get more of a look in? I'm guessing Lautner and Stewart were there to try and get the Twi-hards watching the Oscars. But the Oscar organisers consider the following films as horror - Beetlejuice, Little Shop of Horrors, Marathon Man, Edward Scissorhands and of course Twilight. There's also the debate about whether Silence of the Lambs should be in there as Stewart said that the last horror film to win any Oscars was The Exorcist but Silence of The Lambs won 'the big five'. So if it is not considered a horror film why include in a horror montage.

3:24 am - Anna Kendrick and Zak Efron randomly come out to the strains of Lulu's 'Shout', I'm not exactly sure why. They're here to present the sound awards and before they do they have their 'friend' Morgan Freeman explain the sound process. I would actually like to think that Efron and Freeman are friends and hang out together but I sincerely doubt it. Anyway Freeman is someone who could read the phonebook and make it sound interesting but even he struggles to make the sound process appear in any way thrilling. Someone who should really listen about how to make things sound good are the Oscars organisers as the sound production on the show has been lousy all night.

3:25 am - Hurt Locker wins best Sound Editing

3:28 am - And best Sound Mixing, meaning I'm now down 5-9 as I thought Avatar would win both of these awards.

3:29 am - Elizabeth Banks waxes lyrical about those unimportant Sci Tech awards.

3:35 am - Back to the Sky Panel and David Baddiel is commenting on what a difference the 3D makes to Avatar. Having seen it in both formats I can categorically tell him that it doesn't.

3:37 am - Sandra Bullock presents Best Cinematography to Avatar meaning that I'm now down a massive 5-10 and the gap between Hurt Locker and Avatar is closing 3-2.

3:39 am - Last year's In Memoriam section was ruined by Queen Latifah singing this year James Taylor murders The Beatles classic 'In My Life' while the assembled masses seem to only clap the dead people they recognise therefore there is large applause for Swayze, Brittany Murphy and Karl Malden but less so for some of the writers present. I think John Hughes' family are glad that he got a seperate tribute while Farah Fawcett was conspicous by her absence maybe they don't consider her 'a film actress' but then Michael Jackson was in here and he was primarily known for his singing.

3:45 am - Mark Dolan on the Sky Panel is harping on about how all the other critics were wrong about Avatar and he was right. I know Sky employ him as their film critic but they could've at least got someone who knew about films.

3:47 am - Sam Worthington and J-Lo are presenting Best Original Score, Worthington puts on his glasses that make him look a bit like a buff Elvis Costello, I don't think he would've been able to wear those on Pandora. Worthington informs us that loads of street dancers are now going to hit the stage to perform dances to the five scores and he introduces the legion. For a minute I thought it would be loads of old ex-soldiers coming out to streetdance but then he explained it was the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers.

3:50 am - Hans Zimmer's Sherlock Holmes score just about works as a dance piece but you can't really say the same about The Hurt Locke although it got me wondering what the whole film would be like as an interpretive dance piece and as a friend of mine said - it would have to be tap dancing.

3:51 am - Although I predicted James Horner's Avatar score to win I'm reconsidering and think its a bit too noble and instead am really loving the score to Up even if the dance seems to all be done in a clockwork manner.

3:54 am - And Up does indeed win Michael Giacchino's speech is brilliant talking about how he used to make movies and people who supported him. He tells the kids that if they want to be creative to get out and do it that its not a waste of time. I definitely think this wasn't too gushing or self-involved it was just right.

3:55 am - Gerad Butler and Bradley Cooper are presenting the Visual Effects Oscar and trying to outdo each other in the smouldering looks department. Avatar predictably trumps District 9 and Star Trek on this one. Finally one of my prediction is right and I'm up 6-11 now.

3:58 am - The Up in the Air montage is now on and again if you haven't seen the film it basically spoils a lot for you but you have to watch the film just to look at Sam Elliot's impressive moustache which is only briefly glimpsed in this package.

4:01 am - Back to the Sky Panel momentarily and Ronni Ancona suddenly goes Broken Arrow bemoaning the fact that comedy never gets a look in when it comes to The Oscars. She highlighted Adam Sandler in Funny People and Zack what's his name in The Hnagover as two possible candidates. This was all a bit surreal but Ronni may've just been a bit over-tired and eventually Winkleman had to stop her so we could go back to the awards.

4:02 am - Alec Baldwin comes on and says - 'the next presenting won a screenwriting award and then went onto become an action star, which is the first time in Hollywood that a screenwriter has ever got any action.' Then brings out Matt Damon.

4:05 am - Matt Damon presents the award for Best Docuemntary Feature to The Cove, a good if shocking movie about the Japanese's treatment of dolphins and whales.

4:06 am - Rick O'Barry the environmentalist at the heart of The Cove holds up a sign that says text 'whale' to 44144, the music quickly plays them off. This Oscars obviously doesn't want to send too much of a 'message' especially to the Sushi-eating Hollywood community.

4:08 am - The Hurt Locker gets Best Editing and leads Avatar 4-3, meanwhile I'm gaining some momentum in the predictions stakes 8-11 now I'm closing in.

4:16 am - Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarrantino present best foreign feature. Despite Pedro's film, Broken Embraces, being superior to Tarrantino's Inglourious Basterds, there's no room for it at all on the bill even in the Foregin Feature Film category that they're presenting for.

4:18 am - An Argentinian film called The Secret in their Eyes wins Best Foreign Film beating A Prophet and The White Ribbon. The director is actually quite funny thanking the academy for not counting Na'Vi as a foreign language but the production team aren't giving any allowances for foreigners and he has to hurry his speech before being played off.

4:25 am - Last year former winners of the four acting awards came out to present that years awards. Each took one of the nominees and gave a brief speech about why they were nominated. This year only the Best Actor and Actress nominees were given this treatment but instead of former winners there are friends or co-workers of the actors. Although Michelle Pfeiffer's speech towards Jeff Bridges was quite amusing and Colin Farrell's mention of the trip he and Jeremy Renner took to Mexico during the filming of SWAT I find it quite insulting that the Best Supporting Actor and Actresses weren't afforded this treatment. For trivia buffs Vera Farmiga was George Clooney's speech giver, Tim Robbins was there for Morgan Freeman and Julianne Moore talked about how she only worked with Colin Firth for three whole days.

4:34 am - After 9 minutes of waffle and Kate Winslet, Jeff Bridges is greeted with a standing ovation as he wins Best Actor one of the locks of the night.

4:36 am - As much as I appreciate how much Jeff Bridges deserves this treatment, is speech has now been going on for two minutes. Is he going to thank his cleaning lady next, or maybe his pet poodle?

4:42 am - It's time to do the same thing this time for the Best Actresses. Both Stanley Tucci and Michael Sheen are funny and depricating of Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren respectively while Peter Sarsgaard veers from funny to slightly bored in his praise of Carey Mulligan but there's more gushing as Forest Whitaker harps on about the tangible and magical quality that Sandra Bullock brings to her roles (Yeh Right) and Oprah bigging up Gabourey Sidibe on skipping school to audition for Precious, surely Winfrey would tell the kids to stay in school.

4:50 am - Sean Penn is out to present the Best Actress award, I'm guessing they didn't give the Actor award to Mickey Rourke last year so they didn't have to have him back to do this. However my punt on Carey Mulligan didn't pay off and Sandra Bullock won the award.

4:51 am - Sandra Bullock does one of those 'I'm going to share my award with my fellow nominees' which is a complete lie although she does say that Meryl Streep is a great kisser which raises a laugh. With Bullock's win I'm now 9-13, so haven't even got half of the winners right, lets hope Hurt Locker beats Avatar.

4:53 am - Barbara Streissand comes out to present the award for Best Director, as she approaches the stairs she waits until an usher runs across the stage to take her down all three of the stairs.

4:55 am - Katherine Bigalow becomes the first woman ever to win Best Director. But as Streissand pointed out in her opening ramble an African American has never won it either. Another milestone that could've been broken by Lee Daniels, however this had to be Bigelow's night.

4:58 am - Tom Hanks is on hand to present Best Picture, surprisingly he doesn't read out any of the nominees and just opens the envelope straight away and the winner is - The Hurt Locker. I've kind of redeemed myself a little bit but still come out short with 11-13 in the prediction stakes. Well done to The Hurt Locker, the better film won at the end of the day.

5:00 am - Steve and Alec wrap the show up by saying that it was so long that Avatar now takes place in the past.

5:10 am - I move quickly towards bed.

So in a way tonight was groundbreaking we had our first female Best Director winner and the film with one of the lowest budgets trumped the mighty Avatar. But on the other hand their were no big surprises, I would have to say apart from Jeffrey Fletcher's Adapted Screenplay award and the Argentinian film winning Best Foreign Language everything else was fairly predictable.

The show itself was patchy, although Baldwin and Martin were charming and quick-witted their segments were painfully few and far between. I felt the scrapping of the honorary awards and the loss of the Best Song performances took away some of the glamour and tradition from the Oscars. I also thought that the street dances and horror montage was a mistake. I also found the lovieness of the Best Actor/Actress sections a bit hard to handle and a bit harsh on the Supporting Peformers.

There were some highlights - the John Hughes tribute and Neil Patrick Harris' opening song were two but I don't think the show is as good as last year and it felt a bit dry. But maybe I'm just bitter about not doing well on the prediction front.