Another Oscars has come and gone and, well, given the explosive events of 2017, it was fairly benign. No big upsets. No big controversies. A few nice moments and a few groaning embarrassments, but overall, pretty tame. But here are about a thousand thoughts about it anyway.

1. Right off the bat, they missed the best available opening joke. Jimmy Fallon should have come out to open the show. About a minute into his monologue, some Academy functionary should have rushed on stage and whispered something about a mix-up. Then Jimmy Kimmel should have made his entrance. They really should think about hiring me to write next year’s show.
2. Before I get to the rest of the awards, a word about the red carpet. I don’t watch it.
3. The show itself ran about 3 hours, 45 minutes, and that was without any Lifetime Achievement or Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Awards. This of course is always a problem, but let’s be clear about one thing. The Academy does not want to solve this. They could, fairly easily. But this is an industry that is all about excess. So you can expect more trips around town or pizza deliveries in the future.
4. Kimmel was fine. I like him. Hosting two years in a row is a pretty big deal.
5. Oh, one more thing about the red carpet, which I didn’t watch. I lied. I did watch, but I mostly watched E! to see what the Ryan Seacrest fallout would be. I think I saw Seacrest on screen for a total of thirteen seconds. Every time I turned on E!, four fashionistas were sitting at a table oohing and ahhing over some dress. I really miss Joan Rivers.
6. Now, onto the awards themselves. For such a strong, wide open year, there were surprisingly few upsets. No major ones really. I suppose Get Out taking original screenplay over Three Billboards would count, though it was gaining great momentum in the final weeks. (BTW, best year for original screenplays that I can recall. In a normal year, Lady Bird  would have been a shoo-in, and this year, it was probably a distant third.) The biggest upset was probably in live action short where The Silent Child beat DeKalb Elementary, but if that’s the best you can come up with, there were not any serious upsets.
7. Maybe it’s because I’m old, but for me, the most memorable parts of the show were the appearances of 93-year-old Eva Marie Saint and 86-year-old Rita Moreno. I’m in my mid 50s – they are both better looking and better spoken than I will ever be. At least 89-year-old James Ivory had the courtesy to use a cane when accepting his Oscar for Call Me By Your Name’s adapted screenplay. But who am I kidding. He looked better than me too.
8. Oh, before I leave the red carpet (which I do not watch) behind, let me just say that my favorite moment was Timothee Chalamet’s reaction to the taped greeting he got from his former high school drama teacher and classmates. Runner-up goes to Sandra Bullock. I have this overwhelming desire to see Ocean’s Eight now.
9. I had no problems with any craft awards. That’s in part because I know very little about craft.
10. I really had few minor quibbles with the acting awards either. I would have given supporting actress to Leslie Manville, but Allison Janney is certainly worthy. I also would have given supporting actor to Willem Dafoe, but that’s because The Florida Project was one of my top three movies of the year and was otherwise disappointingly overlooked.
11. I almost used the word “shamefully” above in place of “disappointingly.” But then I remembered that this is always my biggest take away from the Oscars. We fans get so damned indignant when our personal favorite doesn’t win the popularity contest. I suppose there have been genuinely shameful choices in the past, but usually it’s just our own pique rising up. Which brings me to the seven best picture categories. I agreed with one (Coco for animated feature), had no opinion about another (I haven’t seen the documentary shorts yet), and pretty strongly disagreed with the other five. In several categories, my least favorite nominee ended up winning. Such as…
12. In documentary feature, Icarus was a very brave movie that took advantage of a great bit of good fortune. I do not consider it anywhere near as polished a movie as Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which would have been my choice.
13. In live action short, The Silent Child clearly had the best production values of the nominees. And it starts out well. Then it ends abruptly without any vestige of dramatic resolution. DeKalb Elementary was a short, simple, well-acted drama of enormous emotional power. That would have been my choice, with the hilarious The 11 O’Clock coming in second.
14. In foreign language feature, I would have had A Fantastic Woman second, behind one of the best movies I saw in 2017, On Body and Soul. I did not like the second half of Fantastic Woman enough to give it the award. Truth be told, the foreign language field was surprisingly weak this year, with a number of better choices left on the sidelines.
15. In animated short, Dear Basketball was a beautifully drawn, tiny love letter to basketball. I suppose its very small scope should not be a hindrance in the “short” category, but I preferred the more substantial Revolting Rhymes (which was enormously clever) and Garden Party (which had perhaps the best blend of artistry and story.)
16. And what’s the one I’m forgetting? While I’m trying to remember, let me just say that the song “Remember Me” is the most worthy winning song I can recall because it is both a lovely song and a vitally important piece of the story itself. And yet, hearing Sufjan Stevens sing “Mystery of Love” almost got me changing my mind. It made me instantly recall Call My by Your Name and was so instrumental in creating that film’s sublime tone.
17. Oh yeah, best picture. Shape of Water didn’t do a lot for me. I admired it, but didn’t get the message of uplift that others seemed to get. Among the nominees, both Get Out and Three Billboards affected me far more. And, as you may recall, Florida Project should have been there.
18. But I will not get too upset about that because, as I said, this is a subjective popularity contest. It provides a fascinating window on an industry and on a culture at a particular moment in time, but plenty of things – including politics and marketing and personal friendships and righting past wrongs, in addition to artistic merit – figure into the ultimate decision. But if you want something to get incensed about regarding this year’s Oscars, try this one. No Tobe Hooper in the In Memorium section. The director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist doesn’t deserve a couple seconds of memory? Sure, the cast of Texas Chainsaw pretty much despised him, but I’d like to think that somewhere out there, Leatherface is taking a chainsaw to an Oscar in honor of his forgotten director.

Until next year…