Okay, let's dig in...

- The ceremony itself was bad. Just... bad. With a series of misguided ideas (cheesy backdrops from older movies were supposed to "transport us into another world," huh?), bad jokes (Hathaway's enthusiasm went nowhere due to James Franco's lazy lack of interest), and a weaker-than-usual batch of speeches, getting through the ceremony was a chore. Or it would have been, had I not been with my usual posse of Oscar-watching cohorts. The Oscars are rarely a source of great comedy, but for whatever mysterious reason, a group setting tends to permit/inspire considerably more laughter. Alas, even in what was a generally jovial setting, the chuckles were few and far between for last night's show.

- "The King's Speech" did very well last night. I liked the film... I really liked it, actually... but it's less deserving than many of the other nominees. I expected it to win Best Picture, but Best Director, too? There was little special or distinctive about Hooper's direction - he did his job well in a workmanlike sort of way. As another writer noted, "Did anyone leave the King's Speech thinking about what a great job Tom Hooper did?" Perhaps the Academy was awarding his "let's just focus on the story" anonymity? It was nice to see Colin Firth win a Best Actor Oscar, though I'm going to pretend that his was for "A Single Man" and that the one Bridges won last year was for "True Grit." David Seidler won Best Original Screenplay for the film, which I believe was a tribute to the many, many years he spent attempting to get the film made.

- Natalie Portman deservedly won for her striking performance in "Black Swan," as everyone expected her to. Here's hoping Portman continues to tackle more ambitious roles as her career progresses (2011 seems to be a popcorn movie break for her, as she's appearing in "No Strings Attached," "Your Highness" and "Thor").

- Christian Bale and Melissa Leo took home prizes for their supporting turns in "The Fighter," and both seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the wins. Leo gasped and stammered (and eventually dropped an unexpected f-bomb which the network censors caught just in time), while Bale (in what I thought was a nice, grateful touch) pimped the real Dicky's business web site.

- "The Social Network" didn't fare as well as some once anticipated it would, but still managed to take home some prizes. Aaron Sorkin predictably won best adapted screenplay (though there was little adapting involved), and was thrilled at the idea that he had won an award once given to Paddy Chayefsky for the passionate, brilliant, still-topical "Network" (one can easily envision that film as a great source of inspiration for Sorkin). The film also nabbed Best Editing (which was deserved) and Best Original Score (which was not).

- "Toy Story 3" was the biggest lock of the night, as everyone expected it to bring home the Best Animated Feature prize. Of course it did. Randy Newman also won Best Original Song for "We Belong Together," which is arguably his weakest Pixar tune to date but which is nonetheless a bit better than some of the other lackluster nominees. Newman had the best speech of the night, charmingly expressing his desire to be "good television" and chastising the Academy for only nominating four songs. "You coulda found a fifth song somewhere. Cinematography has five nominees, but you can only come up with four songs? Maybe it's for the best; the fifth song could have beat me."

- Denmark's "In a Better World" won Best Foreign Languange film, continuing the recent trend of wins from little-known films in that category.

- "Inside Job" won Best Documentary, and the director's acceptance speech was essentially, "I'm still mad about all the stuff I was mad about in the film, but thank you for giving me a prize for being mad about it."

- "Alice in Wonderland" somehow won two Oscars for its Art Direction and Costume Design. Dear Academy: "Most" does not always translate into "best."

- "Inception" grabbed some technical awards - sound editing, sound mixing, visual effects, and - in one of the night's bigger upsets - cinematography. Honestly, I think it's the least of the nominees in that last department, but the others were certainly deserved.

- The winning shorts were predictably little-known - "The Lost Thing" for animated short, "Strangers No More" for documentary short and "God of Love" for live action short.

- At one point, Cate Blanchett was forced to utter the words, "And the Oscar goes to... The Wolfman." Fortunately, it was for Rick Baker's fine makeup work.

- Thankfully, there was no clapping during the "In Memoriam" segment this year. This always seemed a strange element of the show in years past, when people would give a certain level of applause to each dead celebrity throughout the montage. It was accompanied by Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" (one of the saddest uplifting songs ever written), but the song received a weak performance from Celine Dion.

- For some reason, they dragged old Kirk Douglas out to present at one point. The man made a game attempt at being funny, but he struggled to get through each and every word. It was worse than when they bring Dick Clark out to slur through his New Year's Eve countdown.

- The questions asked of the stars on the red carpet before and after the show were so incredibly inane. Early on, many were of the, "Do you want to win the Oscar you're nominated for?" variety. Later, someone asked Natalie Portman whether her unborn baby had any reaction to the news of her Oscar win.

- A completely unrelated note: For reasons too complicated to explain, I saw "Drive Angry 3D" over the weekend. I'm not going to write up a review, but suffice it to say that the film is a fascinating new low in the career of Nicolas Cage (which is saying something). I'm still trying to convince myself that the movie actually exists and that I didn't just make it up when looking a poster of Nic Cage in a smoke-filled room.

Back at ya later