I know I shouldn't watch it. Every year I tell myself I should find something better to do with my time and this year I went so far as to make sure I would have a project to work on -rearranging my movie collection of all things- instead of being planted in front of the television for hours on end. But when the show started, sure enough, I sat down and started watching the fool thing like it was the greatest thing in the world. Like a junkie craving one more fix or that ex-beau who you know is no good for you but who you can't stop thinking about it seems there's no way for me to escape the Oscars.

The ceremonies open on a nice note with Tom Cruise introducing a documentary of people discussing their love of movies, which featured the unlikely collaboration of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop [do things like movies even register with Iggy anymore?] and Mikhail Gorbachev. The former leader of the USSR noted that he rather liked the movie "Gladiator." I recently attended a speaking engagement by Gorby but silly me, I forgot to start jawing with him about movies. Making sure the evening wasn't overly classy Whoopi Goldberg then literally dropped into the arena. Ms. Goldberg has a brassy, conversational attitude toward hosting, which can be nice but she doesn't seem to know how to get the pace of the show advanced out of a crawl.

At least Ms. Goldberg was never at a loss for words. Doing a bizarre tag-team commentary, Donald Sutherland and Glenn Close either stumbled their way through introducing the stars or gave out embarrassing trivia such as stating that brand new Oscar winner Randy Newman played a singing cactus in "The Three Amigos." Sutherland and Close must have a tough time getting gigs or their agents managed to talk them into a new career low. It also didn't help that whenever they were on camera they had to compete for attention with the Circe De Sole troop gyrating around backstage.

Having clever writers such as Buck Henry and the Coen brothers write about the more esoteric categories was a clever idea. At least this meant there were parts of the show that were well written. I would copy the idea and have somebody step into this overview for a paragraph or so but that would take more time than this piece really deserves.

Show oddities: Only during the Oscars could you find John Goodman sharing a stage with Sting and Paul McCartney, but would Goodman be the one to sing the song that receives the Oscar. I suspect the theme song to "Spider-Man" is going to follow Toby Maguire a lot longer than he will care for it too, but only at the Oscars will he be introduced with that theme played in such a lounge-y, laid back big band style. There's not many times when you will see Samuel L. Jackson sharing a stage with a street performer who danced up on stage playing a violin but it was one of the better unscripted moments of the show. Of the scripted stuff probably the worst was the Cirque De Sole performance saluting special effects or something like that. I'm sure it sounded great in discussion but all it did was stretch out the show even more, plus when you have a leotard wearing man swinging around on a wire pretending to be a flying monkey you've moved beyond kitsch into straight ahead gaudy.

Hollywood is a strange place. Take Ian McKellen for example. An openly gay actor who has been knighted for the work he has done primarily in British stage productions of Shakespeare has become, at a late stage in his career, a Hollywood star who has his own web page and action figures bearing his likeness. What kind of career switch is that? It's similar to the path Jennifer Connelly has taken. I somehow doubt she thought she would take home an Oscar back when she was playing second fiddle to Muppets in "Labyrinth."

Denzel Washington, however, probably did expect to win. Sure, his movie wasn't very good, but Russell Crowe had won the previous year for a performance that wasn't as good as others things he's done before or since so an actor's actual performance isn't always as important as his full body of work. Considering Washington has quite the body of work it was only a matter of time before he picked up a Best Actor Oscar. Halle Berry -a ridiculously attractive woman who has been stuck with poor parts for a good chunk of her career- had a terrific and appropriate freak-out session when she found out she won. She also thanked so many people that I think she mentioned me somewhere in there as well. I can't begrudge her for carrying on, however, since it's not like anything else in the show was short changed when it came to time. At four and a half hours -FOUR AND A HALF HOURS- the show was so long I'm surprised it's still not running. Just think, if this trend continues the Oscars could turn into a week long jam session or possibly a weekly event that would replace Monday Night Football during the off-season. At least discussions of the Oscars, such as this one, know when to quit.

As usual, you can contact me at gleep9@hotmail.com. If you're done with the four hour plus monster here, head on back to either the Third Movie or Main page.