Bouquets

Hugh Jackman did an excellent job in the opening "musical skit" (with kudos to AnneH), getting Hugh a well-deserved SO.

The presentation of the acting awards was awesome, with the winners from the past welcoming the new winners onto the stage.

The old-style stage with the round centre piece was great. And it was nice to have the big name nominees so close to the stage.

Nice to see the orchestra out of the pit.

The Ledger Family giving heart-felt speeches after Heath's win was wonderful to see.

Fey/Martin and Stiller/Portman were funny.

It was good to see Jerry Lewis honoured for his humanitarian work.

The "Movies coming in 2009" during the credits was a nice touch.



Bricks

The wildly fluctuating "In Memorium" panels were totally out of place. They really should have turned off the mikes over the audience like they were rumoured to do. And Charlton Heston should have been first, though he would have been lost in the shuffle like Cyd Charisse was at the beginning of the montage.

Get that self-promoting jackass Maher off the stage.

The five original scores that were nominated all sounded the same - boring ! And the three songs nominated were terribly unworthy. Thank God they didn't give each of them their own full spotlight. Keep the original score category, I guess, but get rid of the original song category, since it's been a long time since any half-decent song came out of a movie at the Oscars.

Many awards are given out a few days earlier at their own party. Why not send the documentary and short films and sound mixing and original scores and all of that crap out to this earlier party. NO ONE CARES HOW "IMPORTANT" THESE CATEGORIES ARE - THEY ARE POPULATED BY A BUNCH OF NERDS NO ONE HAS HEARD OF !! The Big Six, plus the two screenplays, foreign film, animated film and honourary Oscars should be the only categories given out on Oscar night. This allows for a nice comfortable two hour show with lots of time for extra goodies like montages honouring directors, actors, film genres, etc. etc.