80 Years and Counting for the Oscars

On Sunday night, "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart hosted the 80th Annual Academy Awards. This was the first time I watched the ceremony from start to finish. Plus, it was Sunday and I'm sure many University of Iowa students didn't have anything much better to do either! Here are some of my quick thoughts from the ceremony:

Things I Liked:

* I was glad to see some great movie choices for the "Best Picture" category. So many times before I would see movies nominated that I've never even heard of.

* Jon Stewart did another fine job with his hosting duties. I might be biased since I've always liked Stewart, even before his days with "The Daily Show."

* The tributes to those who have passed away in the last year was classy as always. To finish off with Heath Ledger was a very powerful moment. The video packages looking at past winners at the Oscars was a nice touch as well.

* It was awesome to see Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson present the award for "Best Visual Effects." I've been a huge fan of pro wrestling my whole life and it is amazing to see where The Rock has started in his movie career and to now see him at the Oscars presenting an award.

Things I Didn't Like:

* I saw some people were upset that people from different countries - or "ferners" as President Bush likes to call them - won so many awards on Sunday. I can't understand why anyone would be upset that someone who isn't American won an award. Do we really live in a country where people have that train of thought still? If anything, Chris Matthews pointed out on "Hardball" this week on MSNBC is that it shows that the academy choose on talent instead of how someone talks.

* I'm sure you saw this complaint coming - cutting people off during acceptance speeches. I'm all for keeping the show moving, but deliberately making more time for what some people feel are "more important" acceptance speeches isn't right. If you don't think that award should take up a lot of time, then keep it off TV and don't cut people off. I did like when Jon Stewart brought Marketa Irglova (who won "Best Original Song" along with Glen Hansard for "Once") back out to finish her speech. That was a classy thing to do.

* Wow, that was a long show to watch. By the time the more important awards were ready to be handed out, I was ready to change the channel!

Even though this wasn't technically the first time I've watched the Oscars, it was the first one I was able to sit through from start to finish and I enjoyed it. I plan on checking out next year's show if nothing else is going on that day.

It should be noted that this year's Oscars may have drawn the worst ratings for the ceremony ever according to an article by CNN.com (click here). The least-watched Oscars was back in 2003 and early ratings for Sunday's show had viewership at 14 percent lower than that show.