While I ramble about the Oscars...

[Read if you've nothing else to do - bit rambly. Don't say I didn't warn you.]

You know that it's recession time when the Oscars seem to be er, lower in scale and budget.

I think Hugh Jackman wasn't too bad for a first time Oscar host (he's hosted the Tonys before). There's no digital insertion of him in any of the nominated movies, ala Billy Crystal. But I give the guy props for his opening number with the seemingly low-budget props supposedly depicting the nominated movies. The musical medley he did with Beyonce (I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of seeing her on my TV screen now), HSM's Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens (why?!) as well as Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper from Mamma Mia! was pretty entertaining and I thought I recognised the scale of the performance when they said it was choreographed by Baz Luhrmann. (When I heard that, I said, "That explains it")

With all the prerecorded bits, presenters and what not, one hardly sees the host at all, as Will Smith pointed out ("Hugh's napping"); he's basically just there to open and close the show, and sing a couple of songs in between. At least he wasn't terribly stiff.

The show was still pretty damn long even with the presenters presenting more than one award (less presenters, less goodie bags needed?) - I could've sworn it was faster when they had people presenting every single award each. The thing where they got 5 past Oscar winners to present the acting Oscars was an interesting bit of show, but no less a time waster. The formula seems to be: 2 living, older winners, 2 recent ones, and last year's winner.

As for the winners... I'm just glad that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button only won three technical awards out of thirteen nominations (ouch). The other movies didn't stand a chance against an underdog movie set in Mumbai, honestly. Some more with the Indian people in attendance... it'd be disappointing. You know Slumdog really didn't have a big budget when the guy who sang on two of the nominated best original songs happens to the guy who composed the soundtrack. I thought that Jai Ho song's the memorably catchy Indian song since Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

Don't even ask me how many of the nominated movies I've seen as it's pitiful: it's only been The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon (which I admit to skipping a bit). I'm not sure if I ever want to see Slumdog Millionaire having already read the source material (read: the book). I still have Milk and W on the desktop that I've not gotten round to watching yet. But thanks to the various movie and pop culture podcasts I've been listening the last few months, it wasn't a total snoozefest - I even recognised the other movies in the foreign, animated, etc categories.