By 9 o’clock last night [Part 1 Highlights], three of my predictions lined up with the Academy’s: Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. And here’s what the rest of the night had in store:

• Classy lady in red Sigourney Weaver presents Best Art Direction award. Avatar wins. YAY! Can’t imagine any other movie matched the beauty that was Pandora!
• The best dressed man in the whole event (and probably responsible for the well-dressed men in the audience as well) Tom Ford and fashionista Sarah Jessica Parker presented Best Costume Design award. The costumes are indeed pretty, but does The Young Victoria really does the best job amongst the other great nominees? Not sure.
• Charlize Theron introduces Precious. Ok, just one question, what was she wearing??! Yikes!
• Ok now, Tribute to Horror Movies??! Well at least the Paranormal Activity spoof with Steve and Alec was knee-slappingly hilarious! Definitely the highlight of the whole event for me! The Twilight kids Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart (R-Patz’s not invited?) introduced past notable horror flicks, man The Exorcist never fails to terrify me, still the scariest of all even amongst other bone-chilling flix.
• WOW, The Hurt Locker practically cleans up the sound category by winning both Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. The best part of the whole sequence was Morgan Freeman introducing last year’s winner The Dark Knight with one of the best clips from the blockbuster.
• John Travolta, whose career was pretty much revived by Tarantino himself fittingly introduces Inglourious Basterds. I hope you win, QT!!
• The affable miss Bullock presents Best Cinematography. The winner is: Avatar. Why am I not surprised. Must be fun for the guy to be sent to Pandora for work, eh? 😉
• Demi Moore in a ruffly dress with sky-high platform pumps tried really hard not to trip. Sheesh, does she ever age? She looks like Anna Kendrick’s slightly older sister, it’s ridiculous! James Taylor sang during the In Memoriam sequence… time for a bathroom break.
• What’s with J Lo and Aussie boys? Her upcoming rom-com The Back Up Plan stars Alex O’Loughlin and now she’s presenting with Sam Worthington. Anyhoo, instead of musical performances, we’ve got the street performers dance troupes dancing to the nominated scores. Best Original Score goes to Michael Giacchino for Up. Definitely deserves it, probably the only score I remember out of the lot of ’em.

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  A high doze of tall, dark and handsome in the form of Gerard Butler and Bradley Cooper present Best Visual Effects. Bradley looked a bit nervous while the slimmer Gerry was all smiles. Obviously Avatar has this in the can, I’d be very surprised if it didn’t win.

• Writer-turned-action star Matt Damon (as Alec said) presents Best Documentary Feature. The Cove wins. Yay!!! Congrats Louie Psihoyos for bringing Ric O’Barry’s cause to light, and hope it changes things in Japan.
• Three actresses (Michelle Pfeiffer, Vera Farmiga, Julianne Moore) and two actors (Tim Robbins, Colin Farrell) introduced the nominated actors. Followed by luminous Kate Winslet presents Best Actor award. And the winner is: surprise, surprise, Jeff Bridges! Love the fact that he thanks his wife of 32 years, wow, there is still a family man left in Hollywood!
• Now it’s the women’s turn. Forest Whitaker, Michael Sheen, Peter Sarsgaard, Oprah, and Stanley Tucci introduce the nominated actresses, I really like this feature of the telecast, I hope they keep this up. Sean Penn rambling about something intelligible before presenting the Best Actress Oscar to: Sandra Bullock. So she’s not an ‘Academy type’ but I for one think she delivered a good performance in TBS, and obviously her peers think so, hence her SAG award win. I’ve always liked her, and her gracious speech makes me like her more. Boy, even her tough guy husband Jesse James tears up! Btw, Bullock is the first actress to win a Razzie (for All About Steve) and an Oscar in the same year. I believe Halle Berry has also won both a Razzie (for Catwoman) & an Oscar (Monster’s Ball), but not in the same year though.

  

• Barbra Streisand introduces Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow. Wow! She makes history tonight as the first female director to win Best Director. But seriously, all politics aside, and even as a woman who’s all about Bigelow breaking Hollywood’ glass ceiling and all, I think Cameron or Tarantino deserves it more. 
• Tom Hanks practically blurts out the winner for Best Picture. I guess he just can’t bear the suspense like the rest of us. And the winner is … The Hurt Locker! [pout] Bummer, Tarantino is robbed!!!
  …
  So, in the end THL swept up 6 Oscars whilst Avatar only earned half of that with 3 wins, mainly in technical categories — visual effects, cinematography and art direction. In a perfect world, at least half of THL‘s statues would’ve gone to IB instead! Avatar and Inglourious Basterds are far more memorable and compelling films, those I’ll remember years from now. I could barely remember much of THL even a couple of weeks after I saw it! I echo the sentiment of Peter Sciretta @ SlashFilm: “I’m sure that in 20 years we’ll look back and wonder how Avatar didn’t win either Best Picture or Best Director … I’m not saying Avatar is an incredible film, but in 50 years it will be the film we remember, definitely over Hurt Locker.” Oh well, I guess this just proves my point that a lot of the times, films that win Oscars aren’t exactly the ‘enjoyable’ ones nor the most memorable.

In any case, out of the ten categories I predicted, I’ve only got ONE wrong: the Best Original Screenplay statue went to Mark Boal for The Hurt Locker instead of QT for Basterds. Not bad for a first-timer I guess, but then again it seems like this year’s winner is quite predictable except perhaps the Best Picture & Best Director categories.

Well, that’s all folks. Overall it was an enjoyable telecast, Steve + Alec did a pretty good job as hosts and I really dig some of the new features this year, i.e. the actor-to-actor introductions for the Best Actor/Actress nominees. Plus, the jokes were pretty funny, the dance performances entertaining, and best of all, it actually went by quite fast.

So readers, any gripes/kudos about this year’s Oscar picks/snubs or the telecast itself? Sound off below.