Three cheers for Michael Moore! For the first time, I stayed up to watch the whole thing (finished at 5am) - the joys of not having to get up for the old 9-5... Mike Moore's win was definitely the highlight of the evening: I don't think I've ever wanted someone to win an Oscar so much. And obviously he was going to say something about the war; I like the way he did it, gathering the other nominees around him and making the point about the strange relationship between "truth" and "fiction" - and he did get in a classically Moore-ish dig at Bush, something like "When both the Dixie Chicks and the Pope oppose you, you know your time's up."
Adrien Brody's win was a great moment too, as he seemed the most genuinely shocked to hear his name announced. His speech was wonderfully all-over-the-place, and yet he managed to hold it together - just - and say some important things. And wasn't Halle Berry a good sport?? I bet she wasn't expecting to be snogged within inches of her life by an extremely emotional Mr Brody, but bore it like a trouper. I was really glad to see Chris Cooper up there too, a superb performer who's done some brilliant work, especially in John Sayles's films. So many of the names up for the statues this year were "the usual suspects". I haven't seen Chicago, and I don't know if I will (having an aversion to both musicals and Richard Gere), but was still slightly dispirited that it won quite so many awards. Still, how often does the best film award go to a middlebrow "safe pair of hands" rather than something really outstanding (I am thinking, for example, of Ordinary People winning over Raging Bull or A Beautiful Mind being preferred to Gosford Park)? For what it's worth, my choice for best film, out of the films I've seen and were nominated, would have been The Two Towers. Maybe The Return Of The King will clean up next year... Azeem in London NP: Paula Cole - Harbinger
