The 84th Academy Awards

Never before have I had so little invested in the Oscars. A phenomenally poor line up of overrated nonsense was being praised by the world’s most self-congratulatory group of attention-seekers. My interest was only piqued when Meryl Streep once again added to her collection for her portrayal of the great Margaret Thatcher. Naturally I frowned in disgust as Transformers: Dark of the Moon’s most deserving technical awards were shunned in favour of something unworthy. Best Picture went to an oh-so-original black and white silent movie and I think in an age of THX and Real 3D it was if the Academy was declaring a big “Fuck You!” to the world's audiences – pathetic. Kudos though to the wonderful Christopher Plummer, who is almost as old as Oscar, for Best Supporting Actor and the legendary James Earl Jones who received an honorary award.

There were a few interesting presentations to say the least, Ben Stiller played it straight for once against Emma Stone’s overly enthusiastic “new girl” while Will Farrell caused some racket with Zach Galifianakis they bashed cymbals together with their trademark brand of humorous antics. Sadly however Angelina Jolie proved that no matter how much leg she showed on stage, she’ll never upstage the delicate elegance of Natalie Portman who was by far the most resplendent of the evening even in her understated  gown. I was also surprised to have missed the memo where it was declared that Chris Rock would no longer be funny as he crashed and burned with some lame attempts at humour but Robert Downey Jr. didn’t disappoint by having his own personal camera crew with him filming a “Live Documentary” as he presented with Iron Man co-star Gwyneth Paltrow.

Despite the vacuously boring subject matter nominated this year, the production as a whole was saved by two major entertaining elements. These were the magnificent compositions of the prince of film composition himself - Hans Zimmer who scored the event splendidly and composed the greatest theme ever for any awards ceremony of all time and the hilarious presentation from Billy Crystal whose performance makes you wonder what muppet decides on giving the job to the likes of Anne Hathaway and James Franco. All I can say was thanks be to Lucas that Brett Ratner is a bigot and his antics caused the has-been Eddie Murphy to bow out gracefully. I won’t go so far as to say that it was Crystal’s best performance yet, but he stole the show with his trademark jokes without descending into Ricky Gervais territory, because Crystal doesn’t need to: “And now may I present a reoccurring fantasy of mine, Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz!” – and when introducting Christian Bale he warned the audience to "stay out of his eyeline!" - gold.

More next year.