The Best of Oscar Night

The Oscars were somewhat of a bore to me this year. Despite having a seen pretty much everything that was up for major categories, I thought I'd be all over them...but I think using that show as a decompression time after teaching all day Sunday took away from my appreciation of watching America's High School (a.k.a. Hollywood) pat itself on the back.

However, two events stood out...

The first was Diablo Cody's acceptance speech for "Best Original Screenplay" for "Juno?" Rarely can you tell how much it means to people but you can tell when she gets to the end...she has to walk away before she loses it. There are some sound issues with this, but you can hear check it out here:



Could there be a better story than a former *ahem* exotic dancer becoming celebrated screenwriter? (or a better line when Jon Stewart asked how she was taking the "pay cut?")

The second, and the one that stole the show, was actually in two parts: When the couple Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won for writing "Falling Slowly" as Best Song in the movie "Once." (you can check out the song here. It was a true underdog deal where they spent about $100,000 to make the movie themselves, and beat out not one, not two, but THREE Disney songs to win it (and if Eddie Vedder had been nominated--as he should've been--he'd likely have lost to this song) It's a song about love...and he finished his speech by repeating the words "make art" three times.

And THEN, Jon Stewart brought her out to give her time to make her speech as her microphone was turned off and she was escorted off stage. After the commercial, he gave up whatever mildly funny joke he was going to say to let her speak. How great is that?

You can check out the entire moment here: