After the Gold Rush

It was sweet of Jennifer Lopez to bring an AIDS patient to the Oscars as her date. Is this a Make-a-Wish type of thing she's into now?

Felicity Huffman was robbed. Reese Witherspoon was a supporting actress in "Walk the Line," not a lead. Oh, and Huffman acted in "Transamerica." Witherspoon played herself a bubbly Southern woman. (Aren't all Southern women the same anyway -- cleaning up after their drunken/drugged husbands?)

Dolly Parton was robbed, too.

What the hell was Naomi Watts wearing?

Jake Gyllenhaal gets hotter each time he leaves the house.

How about a lifetime of hotness Oscar for Matt Dillon?

I'm not sure who this Eric Bana character is, but he's hot (in a very small mouth kind of way).

Betty Bacall, we love you you!

Ang Lee's "I wish I could quit you" joke was really embarrassing and made no sense. (I loved it.)

Salma Hayek still can't speak a word of English but has great tits.

Jennifer Garner's trip and "I do my own stunts" comment were adorable.

How does someone with a speech impediment win two Oscars, Hilary Swank?

Putting aside the fact that I wanted "Brokeback Mountain" to win Best Picture, "Crash" should have never even been nominated for the 2005 Oscars in the first place. It was made in 2003 and first screened in 2004. But in preparation for what was starting to seem like the inevitable, we watched it on Saturday. Did the Motion Picture Academy not notice that it was the exact same film as 1999's "Magnolia" (with a nod to "Pulp Fiction" with its pretentious abnormally casual dialogue during intense moments)? Tell me Paul Haggis didn't spend the last decade writing "Walker, Texas Ranger" wishing he were P.T. Anderson. Neither film is particularly bad, but both are derivative of better films, with their ridiculous intertwining of lives and too-large ensemble casts. But at least "Magnolia" felt like a film instead of a preachy made-for-TV project. Nearly every scene in "Crash" featured some bit of dialogue that had me just shaking my head in disbelief thinking "no two people in the history of the world have ever said anything like that." Even the theme song from "Crash" ("In the Deep" by Kathleen "Bird" Yor) was a complete ripoff of Aimee Mann's superior "Magnolia" soundtrack ("Wise Up," "You Do," "Save Me" et al). The only way these films could have been more similar would be if frogs had fallen out of the sky in Los Angeles at the end of "Crash" -- instead of snowflakes. How quickly the Academy forgets ...

Jon Stewart seemed really nervous and wasn't nearly as funny as I was expecting him to be. He certainly confirmed what I've long believed -- that no matter who hosts the Oscars, it's still really long and boring.