Oscar update

OK, I watched as much of the show as I could stand as a blog duty. I would have had more fun with that second draft. Only a few observations worth making:

Who knew Dolly Parton was animatronic? It's really obvious now, because they've overdone the skinny part which renders the superstructure completely infeasible, and airbrushed her head.

Jon Stewart's schtick was dry as I like it, not bad given the material he had to work with. The "gay cowboy moments" montage was very cute. It kind of suggested the academy had a frivolous reaction to the boys from Brokeback. Which might explain its inexplicable failure to sweep the statuettes.

The choreography for the Crash song was very creepy. How can you do a dance depicting racially charged encounters amid the flames from a burning car and actually play it straight? There was also a reported sighting of two dancers simulating a rape at the edge of the stage, but either this was cut or I missed it. I wouldn't have thought you could top this even in Hollywood, but the "song" It's Hard to Make it Out Here as a Pimp proved that you can get an Oscar for celebrating the sexual exploitation of women as long as you do it in a life-affirming way. I guess it's not that surprising Brokeback Mountain got the consolation prizes.

The clips of PS Hoffman "doing" Truman Capote were as bad as I feared; right up there with Russell Crowe's wibbly-wobbly nutty professor in A Beautiful Mind. So of course he won. Wyndham, your instincts were right on the money.

Culture clash of the night: Isaac Mizrahi interviewing Ang Li on the RC. I bet not even his wife calls him "doll", although he does look a bit ... no, unkind thought, I like his films.

Fashion note: I am probably not the first to observe it, but it seems black really is the new black
-- and what was that Charlize Theron had on her shoulder, a Gucci rocket launcher?