A Glamorous Night Honoring Only the Big Shots

The Academy Awards is one of the most important nights in Hollywood, dedicated to recognizing the greatest accomplishments in film each year and honoring those who accomplished them.
This year, instead of giving time to acceptance speeches, winners were told to save it for the back stage thank-you-cam to allot for time for a laughable—but not funny—opening musical number by Neil Patrick Harris, a tribute to horror film (questionably including an Edward Scissorhands clip), and an explanation of the definition and importance of short films and Sound Editing. Oh, and plenty of bad jokes from hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.
"The New Tenants" directors, winning the award for Live Action Short Film, were the first to get cut off. After Joachim Back finished his speech his partner, Tivi Magnusson moved to the microphone for his share of the speech only to be interrupted by the orchestra.
Later, Juan Jose Campanella winning for Best Foreign Language Film humorously thanked the Academy for "not considering Na'vi a foreign language" only to shout, "Oh no! Countdown!" a few seconds later as the clock was ticking on the final seconds of his short speech.
Much time was spent on the awards for Best Actor and Best Actress with speeches about the character and personality of each nominee by a colleague before the actual award was even given. The segment could have been more of a great honor and less of an ego stroking if only it had been shorter. Instead, its contrast with the limited speeches of the less famous winners made the act ostentatious.
Jeff Bridges' acceptance speech for his Best Actor win in "Crazy Heart" took the audience back to the days of his role in "The Big Lebowski" as the Dude when he thanked his parents for getting him into a "groovy profession" and said "man" a lot.
For her role in "The Blind Side" Sandra Bullock won Best Actress. Her acceptance speech was the best of the night. She starts by asking, "Did I really earn this, or did I just wear y'all down?" and continues by paying tribute to all of her competitors and moms everywhere.
Although she didn't win, actress Gabourey Sidibe was represented by Oprah Winfrey during the Best Actress speeches for her role in "Precious." Winfrey calls Sidibe an "American Cinderella" and concluded by saying "Precious is the first of many adjectives coming your way."
The biggest upset of the night was the announcement of "The Hurt Locker" as winner of Best Picture when predictions were highly in favor of "Avatar." Not only did "The Hurt Locker" win Best Picture but Kathryn Bigelow made Academy Award history as the first woman to win Best Director, rather than Bigelow's ex-husband James Cameron.
Full of bad jokes and plenty of tributes, this year's Oscars goes to show that the highest grossing film isn't always the best, high school actresses can be just as good as any star, and the greatest entertainers in America can be fairly unentertaining.