These Oscars *bit*. Lamest Oscar show in years. And who's to blame? Why, Gil Cates, of course. Evidence of the lousy producing:

1. He cut out clips of the acting nominees, and in their place used montages of "who's won in this category in the past". Unforgivable.

2. The pointless Oscar Dance Numbers montage where he didn't even play the music for most of the numbers, instead subjecting us to Ethel Merman blaring that cliched song over most of them.

3. The pointless People Talk About Their Oscars montage -- what the heck was THAT about?

4. A montage of Past Academy Presidents talking at the ceremony. Yeah, there's something everyone is eager to see. At least it was short, but still.

5. There were no musical clips of the nominated scores during Best Score. Insane.

I also think it was a mistake to do the "introduce past winners" thing again -- it's only been 5 years since they did it last time. Wait a bit longer between occurrences.

And some random thoughts:

* Steve is a good host, but he wasn't nearly as good as the last time he hosted. His monologue was so lame that I thought Bruce Vilanch probably wrote it. Still, bring him back next year.

* Somewhere, Vanessa Redgrave is thinking "my speech about Zionist hoodlums has finally been eclipsed as the most obnoxious acceptance speech ever".

* Dear Jack Valenti: seriously, no one wants to see you onstage. Stay offstage where you belong, making terrible decisions about movie ratings.

* Harrison Ford missed his big chance, in my opinion: "Roman Polanski could not be here tonight because he likes to molest little girls and should be in jail." SHAME on everyone who gave a standing ovation to that man.

* Another missed line: I'd have liked to hear Zeta-Jones begin her acceptance speech with "My water just broke!"

* Wow, we almost had one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history there at the end, didn't we? After a while, I was seriously wondering whether Pianist was going to pull it off.

* Streisand handing the statuette to Eminem would have been SUCH a photo op. Oh well. (By the way, I hate that song, but at least it isn't "Cleaning Out My Closet".) And since Eminem couldn't show up, why not have someone else perform his song? I'm thinking Celine Dion must have been available: "Loooooose ... your-SEEEELLLLLLF... in the MYOO-oooh-OOOH-siiiiic...."

* That Mickey Mouse thing was lame. Not even voiced well. Ugh.

* I never want to hear the four words "...and all that jazz!" ever again.

So, in short, I'm referring to this year's award ceremony as Oscar De Low-Rent-a.

-- Trip