Thanked everybody in the world except his wife! I was pissed and embarrassed for her. She even had to grab/kiss him before he up and ran to the stage, as if she knew she was already forgotten. All this after the pics of him snuggling up to that same model (Petra Manstealer) and she took him back! What a pisser for such a talented actress to piss it away on Sean Penn. She needs to dump his ass asap and get start reading scripts, cause the "wife of Sean Penn" role must surely suck.

The lack of applause for Charlton Heston during the "In Memoriam" tribute was embarrassing. He was no Newman, but on some relative scale, he was worthy of more recognition from the audience for his involvement in so many recognizable, if not iconic, films from a career that spanned over a quarter of a century. Certainly someone who appeared both in the The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur was deserving of a better sendoff.

In fact, the whole "In Memoriam" tribute was terrible. Unless the actual video display worked better for the live audience, the editing and graphic choices for the montage was awful for tv viewers. A poor decision to have a vocal accompaniment supersede the traditional use of audio clips with the video segments only made it worse. This also botched what should have been a no-brainer: having Roy Scheider's tribute include his most famous line from Jaws, "You're gonna need a bigger boat". The fact that he should have been honored last year won't even be mentioned.

For those of you dissing Penn for not thanking his wife first as the inspiration for his performance in MILK...stop yer histrionics for a sec and think about *the role he played* Maybe like, how his best friend might have been a waaaay better model for inspiring him to understand the deep male bonding and love he needed to show with unconscious and clear body language? Sheesh...even a straight guy like me could see that one. I'm sure his wife is very important to him, but he just won an Oscar for *becoming* one of the most important gay public figures in our country! ...and of course, the academy does seem to love their chameleons. (Hat tip to Mick LaSalle at the Chronicle)

I found most of the evening cringeworthy, but the true low point for me was when James Franco didn't even bother to correctly pronounce the winning German title of the best live action short ('Spielzeugland'). He laughingly slurred the words with a 'who gives a fuck' shrug, while Seth Rogen gave a supportive frat boy laugh. And then the German winner came up and graciously gave an eloquent thank you speech, in English. As an American who has lived in Germany for almost 20 years, those moments brought back to me the embarrassment of the inarticulate, entitled Bush years, which I truly thought we had left behind as a nation. Seriously, these actors - people who read lines for a living - cannot be coached in advance to correctly pronounce a few foreign words out of respect for their overseas colleagues? Shameful.

I've googled this, but can find no mention of it. Where was Daniel Day Lewis? Shouldn't he have returned to present the Oscar this year?

The Oscars are usually not exactly the greatest show in town, but I have to say that this might have been the worst I've ever seen. In past years, even though the montages and everything were painful to sit through, at least we got funny hosts. But this year? No offense to Hugh Jackman, but those song-and-dance routines were excruciating. Just embarrassingly bad. I'm sorry, but the musical is NOT back and hopefully it never will be.

God, just AWFUL! Add in the fact that Mickey Rourke got robbed, and I don't know if I can ever forgive the Academy for this cringeworthy charade.

Couldn't these narcissistic Hollywood squares have a private party to adore themselves? Why tie up networks with a boring and endless array of ego on parade. What a snore.

You must have been too carried away by your own rhetoric when you listed a bunch of actors who were "too perfect" in appearance. You put Phillip Seymour Hoffman in that group~! Really. A very over weight, scruffy guy always sloppy except when in a part in a move. No hair stylist for his scraggly, thin hair, some of which showed beneath his knitted toque. That's "too perfect"? His acting is perfect. I guess you got confused.

I think that the Oscar show this year was the best in years. Hugh Jackman was surprisingly adept at being a host, and, I agree that Anne Hathaway has a voice. (or at least did an incredible job of lip-syncing) I am sorry that "The Reader" didn't win Best Movie, having just seen it a couple of nights before. Kate Winslet certainly deserved the Oscar for her outstanding performance in that movie.

I totally agree with Seth Goldman's letter from yesterday that "Wall-E" should have been best picture. It really was a lackluster year for movies and Wall-E was all the more outstanding for appearing and giving us such a huge leap forward in story arc and artistic achievement. It had the best song, best score, best original screenplay, best sound artistry and deserved to win in every category it was nominated for --and *should* have been at the very least nominated best picture of 2008. The very number of nominations in such key categories speaks to the quality of the film. The (unspoken) criteria that a Best Picture has to show human actors doesn't hold water when one says out loud, "Not one actor from Slumdog was nominated for an acting award."

"Slumdog" was a fun movie with good energy, corny ending. Wall-E was fun, touching, stunning and profound. Everything a fan asks for...too bad the Academy once more showed it's age instead of joining the 21st century...

Was there even a picture of Heath when he won? None of the movie's music playing during the walk to the podium by the winner? No clips of the actors' movies? Messing up the In Memorium section....and what was that with the Best Picture nominees being mixed in with all the other movies? Hugh Jackman is likeable but seemed to confuse Oscars with Tonys.

What on earth were the producers thinking? (We need something different! Not particulary good, just different!) And yet, I watched every second and will again next year....