Oh what a beautiful evening

So of course I watched the Oscars. How could I not? Even if didn't watch every year, they had Hugh Jackman host. I love him. He was awesome hosting the Tonys, he's dreamy, he can sing and dance. The Oscars didn't really need to try to get me to watch, but man. Hugh Jackman.

And he didn't disappoint. I liked the show, overall. Liked the opening number, particularly the admission of not seeing The Reader. Now, you'd think that I'd like the salute to movie musicals. I love musicals. I love production numbers. I love montages. I love Hugh Jackman. There's nothing bad here, right? Yet, as I watched, I was trying to figure out why it left me cold. It got to "You Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray, which I adore, and I was like, "This should be awesome. What's wrong?" I got annoyed at that point because the tempo of the song was much slower than it should've been. I just feel like it wasn't put together as well as it could've been. And then Hugh said that it was done by Baz Luhrmann. And there was my answer. His stuff just leaves me cold. I almost walked out in the middle of Romeo + Juliet and was meh on Moulin Rouge, for all that it had an adorable Ewan McGregor singing. Someone make him step away from songs I like, OK?

One thing I'm not sure about is having the past winners present the nominations. There were times when it really worked (Shirley MacLaine/Anne Hathaway), but a lot of the time, I was kind of like, "Blah blah blah." And it did prevent us from getting clips of the nominated performances. But, man, I wouldn't take that moment away from Anne Hathaway and the others for whom it was clearly very meaningful. So I don't know. Maybe make it shorter. However, I'd like to point out that since we didn't get clips from the movie, this didn't extend the show, like some people claim.

The other thing I don't know about is adding the clips from previous Oscar winners to the Best Picture clips. Again, I get why they did it. It just didn't always work. I'd put that in the "Interesting Experiment, But Let's Scrap It For Next Year" pile.

In all, though, I quite enjoyed it. Because, really, anything that involves Hugh Jackman singing can't be bad.