11:48 p.m. So what do you say when you've already said you don't have a lot to add to what you said earlier? Well, here's Ethan Coen's chance, now that he's back up there as one of the winners of best movie. Ah, but he's letting his producing partner handle the expository work. Smart man. Thank you and goodnight.
11:42 p.m. Martin Scorsese, a winner at last, gets to present "an award that, trust me, will mean so much to the recipient." And the best directors are The Coen Brothers, for No Country For Old Men, their second win tonight. Ethan Coen: "I don't have a lot to add to what I said earlier. Thank you." Best. Speech. Ever.
11:26 p.m. Juno author Diablo Cody was the new It-Girl even before she won for best original screenplay. I'm linking to her Myspace page because her other site has a name I can't repeat in a family-friendly daily newspaper.
11:16 p.m. Interestingly, best documentary feature (presented by Tom Hanks) goes to a movie examining U.S. treatment of terror suspects and POWs in the Middle East.
11:12 p.m. This is a great touch, having troops in Iraq present the best short-subject documentary. As one soldier said, "We watch a ton of movies over here, and we love 'em all."
11:01 p.m. To anyone who noticed Michelangelo Antonioni in the memorial sequence, go rent Blow Up, his 1966 mod-London murder mystery, to see what made him such an interesting director. It's strange and cool not just for the Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck sighting - they play themselves as members of the Yardbirds in a club scene - but it's a terrific screenshot of a particular era, which Austin Powers would later have great fun lampooning.
10:58 p.m. Has this ever happened before - somebody cut short at the microphone getting to come back after the break to give the undelivered speech?
10:49 p.m. And my alleged Oscar specialty, best movie song, is Falling Slowly, from Once, co-written by Irish rocker Glen Hansard of the Frames. The song also won the Grammy for best movie tune. Hansard has acting credits, too: You may remember him as the guitarist in The Commitments. p.s. How quick is Wikipedia? They posted Hansard's Oscar win before he was even finished speaking. Scary.
10:43 p.m. The best-foreign film nominees hail from Poland, Austria, Israel, Kazakhstan and Russia. The Austrian film, The Counterfeiters, won. But based on the clips shown, Mongol, from Kazakhstan, looks like one butt-kicking war epic. Which reminds me, I still haven't seen 300.
10:38 p.m. The montage honoring veteran art director and production designer Robert Boyle was quite good, because it was more like a mini-documentary than a tedious slide show. He took his time at the podium, but it was a graceful and considered set of thank-yous from somebody who, at 98, could have spent literally hours thanking every great filmmaker he's worked with. Now, is Nicole Kidman actually two heads taller than Mr. Boyle, or is she just standing on a soapbox?
10:28 p.m. Since the Oscars themselves are never an achievement in editing, we console ourselves knowing that The Bourne Ultimatum has now won its third Oscar - for best editing job.
10:23 p.m. Jack Nicholson is a national treasure, but how often has somebody on an Oscar telecast given the "movies inspire us/challenge us/take us away" speech? If ever there was a time to depart from the script - Jack just doesn't sound right mouthing TelePrompTer platitudes.
10:10 p.m. Just so you know, we have waited one hour and 43 minutes for a major award (best actress), but it's a shocker: Frenchwoman Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) wins for playing and singing legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf. Here comes the chart spike for Piaf CDs.
10:01 p.m. Your host of hosts ... What is there to say, except that Jon Stewart is so consistently, amiably funny that he would almost be more interesting if he bombed.
9:59 p.m. As opposed as I am to montages, I will go on the record in support of an Oscar song medley instead of individual performances of each nominated tune. That's at least 20 minutes saved.
9:56 p.m. Here's Javier Bardem accepting best male supporting actor for No Country For Old Men, which also nabbed best adapted screenplay.
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Photos by Associated Press
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9:47 p.m. And on the subject of TMI, here's mere than you could possibly want to know about best supporting actress Tilda Swinton.
9:44 p.m. It's Jessica Alba, who I know is pregnant because when I turned on E! earlier this evening, Ryan Seacrest, carpet correspondent, asked her if she would be breast-feeding. "That's very personal," said Alba - a nice way, I thought, of telling Seacrest to get lost. But then she answered the question!
9:41 p.m. BTW, that's Robert Plant and Alison Krauss harmonzing on the commercial break. A song from their lovely 2007 album, Raising Sand, has already landed in an ad (for JC Penney). I should be upset, but it's a great song, and a nice-looking ad, and Madison Avenue has long since replaced radio as the way to break new music.
9:39 p.m. Tilda Swinton says she's giving her best supporting actress nominee to her agent. Points for honesty. The Grammys, to their credit, anticipate this form of gratitude by naming the producer AND the performer for best-album and best-record honors.
9:35 p.m. It's Alan Arkin! I told you Get Smart was being subliminally foisted on us.
9:33 p.m. Hugh Welchman, one of the winners for animated short, walked to the podium cradling the puppet that starred in the winning reel, Peter and the Wolf. Years of Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy routines have trained me to expect that a puppet will talk, given a chance. But not a word.
9:31 p.m. A humorous bee-themed montage ... is still a montage!
9:29 p.m. Did you see that teacher going bonkers in The Substitute, the short-film nominee? When I was in school, it was our goal to make substitute teachers act like that. Good times ...
9:27 p.m. This second Oscar-nominated movie song, Raise It Up, is trying really hard for gospel glory, but I'm just not feeling it, not even with the adorable 11-year-old doing her best to be inspirational.
9:23 p.m. Finally, the montages we need! The Oscar salute to binoculars and periscopes, and the Oscar salute to bad dreams. Now that montage has become satire grist on the show that pioneered montage abuse, we might at last be free of cinema's answer to "home movies your relatives force you to watch."
9:18 p.m. Javier Bardem, best supporting actor, wins what could be the first of many awards for No Country For Old Men, and loosely translating from my half-remembered Spanish, I think he just told his mother, who is in the audience, "This is for you." In any language, that beats "Hi, mom!" (who's usually at home) by a mile.
9:11 p.m. The Rock, another co-star of the forthcoming Get Smart remake, just made a presentation. If Alan Arkin - also appearing in Get Smart - walks on, we'll know the Oscars are officially doing product placement for the next slate of summer blockbusters.
9:03 p.m. "Happy Working Song" is so cheerful I may shoot myself ... Amy Adams actually sounded delightful putting a comical brave face on a song describing the toil of maidwork. It's the musical equivalent of smiling through gritted teeth, and Adams mimed it nicely.
8:52 p.m. Hey, kids, that was the bracing theme music to Get Smart, the '60s spy sitcom, that Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, just walked onstage to. They'll be starring in the remake, which cannot possibly be as funny as the TV series.
8:48 p.m. Another montage, this one set to stirring, Copland-esque brass music. I'm willing to concede Hollywood and the Oscars have a great, varied and colorful tradition if they would just stop with the film-school editing exercises.
8:42 p.m. "Achievement in Costume Design" seems like an underwhelming first act for the 80th Oscars. I understand nobody actually liked Elizabeth: The Golden Age, whose costumer just won the award. And with the winner's short speech, another overwrought period movie fades into history ...
8:34 p.m. The opening montage looks like it was cut together with a Commodore Amiga. Who seriously thinks that digitizing famous actors so they look like little dress-up refrigerator magnets, and then moving them around like checkers, signifies "movie magic"?
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I met Jacob Jeffries last year at a Dashboard Confessional concert in Delray Beach. He was Jacob Groten then, and hadn't yet taken on the more alliterative public name. He was supposed to play the late shift at City Limits, after Dashboard had wrapped up, and because I couldn't stay he gave me a CD-R in a red sleeve with a handful of his songs.
One observer calls them "The Holy See of the SoFla music scene" that bloomed in the 1970s and 1980s.