Last night was the 81st Oscars. We DVR'd it. We don't own a TiVo, and I know TiVo is all proprietary about their name being used as a verb...so we have the generic system used to record programming. We never watch anything at its original time, anymore.

But I digress.

We watched this 3-hour, 30-minute annual rite of self-congratulations in approximately 90 minutes. I say 'approximately,' because I didn't have hout the stopwatch, and because it doesn't really matter, apart from saying we watched the entire broadcast, although a good portion of it was at 4X speed.

General thoughts and observations...

Hugh Jackman's Opening Number was clever enough, I suppose. At times it felt pandering, though, like Hollywood was making a disingenuous appeal that they were in the same economically-recessed boat as the rest of the country. The Benjamin Button segment was good, and I think I said to Kelli that Anne Hathaway should be in a musical.

The format for the "Big" awards was a beating. Each nominee got their own presenter. I thought it was awesome when the one presenter (I don't remember which, it's not like I was taking notes) messed up Philip Seymour Hoffman's name. It was as though each presenter was responsible for their own speech/introduction, and some of the presenters were true friends or fans, while others spent 30 seconds at wikipedia, jotting notes on a napkin before stumbling out misprouncing names.

The Musical is back or so Hugh, Beyonce, and the Mami Mia/HSM kids told me. Good thing, too, since I had suggested that Ms. Hathaway be in one. And I don't care that Baz Luhrmann's name was attached to that medley they all did...it was a train wreck.

Steve Martin & Tina Fey were funny. And I liked how the show produced the awards for screenwriting...it was a small, effective way to let the viewer appreciate the screenwriter's craft more than they might otherwise. And for the record, I occasionally imagine writing an Oscar-winning screenplay. I'd tell you my ideas, but I don't dare risk it.

The "Now That You're Dead" Segment was poorly done. I prefer the straight-to-video homage that allows me to check names off the list of Questionably Alive Celebrities that I keep in our endtable drawer for just this purpose. I don't care that Queen Latifah was singing live...she kept me from seeing who wasn't. Live, that is.

Applauding the dead seems to be a final judgment by one's peers. Tough crowd. Nobody hardly clapped Charlton Heston, despite being Moses, Ben Hur, and fighting to save he planet from highly evolved apes. I'm supposing this because he was a conservative who helmed the NRA in his latter years. And I'm curious, how did that publicist make the list? Did that mean he was a member of the academy?

As for the actual awards...I didn't see some of the movies nominated, but I did see Doubt and Slum Dog Millionaire. The former was an excellent, provocative "thinker" movie that addresses human nature, suspicion, prejudice, and injustice. The actors were all incredible. It deserved better than it got. The latter was a 2-hour drama of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The insight inot the squalor of India's slums was interesting, but the movie's feel-good fairy tale left me thinking of the plight of a people who have no hope because the predominant faith of the region predetermines entire castes of people to poverty and despair. It seemed exploitative to me, but then again, nobody was calling me as their "phone-a-friend."

James Franco & Seth Rogan's segment was funny and I thought it was hilarious that Rogan literally LOL'd at Franco's mispronunciation of the name of the winner of whatever award they were presenting.

Is it bad form to suggest that that one documentarian should invest in orthodontics? No offense intended, but I seriously at first he was wearing some of those 99-cent store "Redneck teeth." Surely, if you can round up the scratch needed to make a movie, you can find a few thousand dollars to get the picket fence lined up straight.

If there were an award for Best Exploitation of Indian Children, you would have to think that Slumdog Millionaire would have won that one, too.

Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston should make a buddy cop movie together. It may never win an Oscar, but it would do huge box office.

Why is the title of Tarantino's new movie Misspelled? The editor in me is seriously off-put by this.

The animation award should be renamed The Pixar. Seriously. I think they've already engraved Up into the statue for next year's award.

Jerry Lewis deserved better. The guy is a bit of a goofball, but he was a technological innovator as well as a top-notch comic and exemplary philanthropist. Kelli commented that the lifetime awards are sad in a way, because most the recipients peers who would have truly appreciated the the recognition for their friend are already dead, leaving an audience of under-appreciative onlookers who often don't understand how they have benefited by the personal sacrifice of the person they are honoring.

Will Smith gave out four awards. And he did not mention a wacky religion, the way Tina Fey did. His silence is being held against him in the court of public opinion...this proves he must certainly be a Scientologist, right? And this, friends, is the exact theme of the movie Doubt. The fact that he gave out four awards alone made it feel a bit like he either hijacked the segment or was filling in for someone who called in sick at the last moment.

Smith distributed the sound and editing awards. I think Slumdog took a couple of these two. If I were the action movie editors, I'd be seriously upset over this, becasue these categories are usually the only place where their genre has a chance to be recognized, barring a Ledger extenuation.

Kate Winslet won for her role in The Reader, as a Nazi-SS guard who hooks up with a school boy, seduces him, and then reveals that she is illiterate. Really, I just wanted to mention this because the topic is icky, and I used to like her as an actress, but now I'm annoyed by her. Words like "pretentious" and "cloying" hovered in my consciousness as she prattled on through her acceptance speech.

The Asian guy who said "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto" finished in a tie for best speech with the guy who rushed the stage and balanced the Oscar on his chin.