Score one for the Underdog!

I don't recall ever having a such a pleasantly shocked reaction to an awards show as I did when Phillip Seymour Hoffman won Best Actor last night. Having first seen him in Boogie Nights, I've come to really take his inclusion in a film as a good reason to go see it. He's done quite well in all sorts of roles from smarmy (Talented Mr. Ripley) to whacked out (embodying Lester Bangs in Almost Famous) to creepy (Happiness) to flat out funny (Along Came Polly-for which he was the ONLY good thing in the whole movie. But, after seeing favorites of mine like Bill Murray, Don Cheadle, Paul Giamatti and other less "glamorous" actors fail to grab Oscars, I really wasn't expecting him to win, even after all the other awards he's won. Well, great job for once on the part of the Actor award nominees.

As for the rest of the show, I thought Jon Stewart brought very different yet very wonderful vibe to the proceedings and his monologue was legitimately hysterical. The rest of the show and awards were hit or miss. I didn't see alot of the winning films, but I'd say both Clooney and Witherspoon were locks to win purely on the Julia Roberts test: Wildly popular actor/actress + Oscar nod-any similarly situated actors/actresses=Oscar gold. Hey, I like em both, but they are both the types of people that Hollywood wants winning these awards, whereas Hoffman is the type of person who wins in spite of the Hollywood machine.

And Crash winning best picture pretty much epitomizes how awful this year was in movies. Put Crash in another year, and it doesn't even get a nominated.

Lastly, Jon Stewart said it best: "Martin Scorsese zero Oscars, Three 6 Mafia one."

Pretty much says it all, doesn't it?