Sean Penn accepts his oscarSo last night’s show was a good one. It was a pretty uneventful evening…my picks were more or less dead-on, I only missed two categories (Actor and Foreign Language Picture). And of those two, only one qualified as a surprise – Foreign Language Film, which didn’t go to either of the frontrunners. Go fig on that one. I did win my bet with my father, although he won all the major categories, so I suppose it’s somewhat of a hollow victory (I lost that way a few years ago…it’s a nice consolation).

As for the actual show, I wasn’t super thrilled with Hugh Jackman. He was okay, but while the opening number wasn’t bad (Anne Hathaway saved it), the homage to musicals was downright lame. Then again maybe I was just annoyed at any reference to Abba within the Oscar telecast (I have a thing about Abba…but that’s a story for another time).

Still, there were some interesting moments. Favorite speech of the night goes to Kate Winslet, Penelope Cruz or Sean Penn. I was disappointed that Mickey Rourke didn’t win, but I guess his craziness really did cost him an award (lest there be doubt, that is one seriously crazy dude right there).

My favorite moment of the night was watching A.R. Rahman accept his award for Best Score, run offstage for a minute, then come back out to perform, “O…Saya”, then “Jai-Ho” and then come back to accept the award for Best Song. It’s too bad the song performances were so weak. Yes, one of the performers just had a baby (went into labor just after performing at the Grammys!), but she did offer to do it via hologram, so you figure there could have been some solution. In any event, that was a disappointment, but not a huge one.

Anyway, good show. Not riveting, edge-of-my-seat awesome, but it was enjoyable. Hopefully next year I won’t have to deal with a screaming baby at the same time. That was slightly distracting.