Host Ellen Degeneres set the perfect tone for the show. In her jester persona, part Charlie Chaplin physical humor and part Harpo Marx mischief, she disarmed the nominees and the rest of the audience by voicing what everyone was thinking (to paraphrase): "this is a night that will make or break your careers. There must be a billion people watching. I hope you're not too nervous" with the inside joke being that she, too, as host, would be on the line as much as if not more than the nominees. With her wide-eyed schtick, she cut through the layers of icy defenses that anyone in show business finds themselves encased in after a few years, portraying a naive bumbler who makes every faux-pas in the book. Kneeling beside Martin Scorsese in his aisle seat, she makes fawning chitchat with him for a few minutes and then, as if the thought had just occurred to her, slips him a script she just happened to be carrying along with her. Later, she hands her digital camera to Spielberg and asks for a photo of her and Clint Eastwood for her MySpace Page, and then at one point gets "caught" on camera making snide remarks about Oscar absentee Judi Dench to a crew member ("She's home having 'knee surgery' Yeah, right. More like eye surgery.") As the night progressed and the camera panned the crowd, it was evident that they had succumbed to her charms and were laughing unguardedly at themselves and having a wonderful time. To the rest of us at home, she seemed to be saying, "It's just a show. It's just entertainment. After this is over the auditorium will be vacuumed and we're all going to get back to our job, which we're doing for you, the public."

As in many other years, the 2007 Oscars had its share of politics, but not in the form of an Oliver Stone conspiracy blockbuster or an actor's grandstanding acceptance speech. West Bank Story, a musical romantic comedy about Jews and Palestinians, ("I just met a girl named Fatima...") won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short film. On the film's web site, the film maker Ari Sandel states his modest-sounding goals for the movie:

I wanted to accomplish three things with the movie:
1. I wanted to make a film that would get attention and also make people laugh.
2. I wanted to make a movie that was pro-peace and offered a message of hope.
3. I wanted to address the situation in an even-handed and balanced way so that Jewish and Arab audiences would feel fairly represented enough to let their guard down and laugh WITH the characters from the "other side". I thought, if we can make a movie that Israelis will watch and like the Arab characters and that Arabs will watch and like the Israeli characters then that will be something valuable.

Entertaining people and bringing them together through laughter? It sounds so corny and simple, but how many people would have had the courage and generosity of heart to pull this off? In his acceptance speech he said that so many people urged him not to do the film that he "shelved it" for five months before resuming work on his short film.I wonder how many people in Hollywood warned David Guggenheim not to take on another lost cause by making a documentary on the un-radical, anti-chic Al Gore and his Power Point presentation on Global Warming?


It may have come as a surprise to some that the man who composed the groovy theme music for tough guy Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a little old Italian grandpa in coke bottle glasses. Probably the only winner whose acceptance speech the band dared not interrupt with its unsubtle sendoff music, Ennio Morricone started off in English and then switched to his native Italian, with Renaissance mensch Eastwood gamely translating by his side. In a trembling voice, he expressed gratitude for his honorary lifetime achievement award and acknowledged all the great artists who had never won an award. He also thanked Maria, his wife of 51 years. Ironically, Maria really stood out in a crowd of people trying to stand out in a crowd, with her naturally aged face in the midst of all those androids with their regulation long necks, pert noses, wide smiles and plunging cleavage.

In her rendition of "I Knew I Loved You," one of Morricone's film themes recently set to lyrics, Celine Dion delivered the best musical moment of the evening. Unlike Melissa Etheridge, who seemed overly anxious to sell her song (which won a much-deserved Oscar), or the dueling divas in the Dreamgirls screamathon, Dion was poised and relaxed as she gave a restrained and reverent performance. Dion can afford to be relaxed. She isn't really even a star anymore. She has actually moved on to the Supernova stage. After the show she and manager-husband Rene Angelil returned to the heavens where they each rule their own planet.


I have not yet seen The Departed or the Last King of Scotland, so the climax of the evening for me was Mirren's award for The Queen. I did see that film, and found it to be profoundly moving and stealthily political. In its portrayal of a struggle between Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II over the crown's public response to the death of Princess Diana, The Queen was a testament to statesmanship at its best. In the film's pivotal moment, the beleaguered Elizabeth, who has been insisting that the funeral is a private matter, and who will be damned if she's going to pay homage to a trollop who's splashed her family's business over the tabloids, gets stuck while driving alone in the hills at Balmoral during a hunting expedition. She encounters the very animal that is being hunted, a fourteen point stag, and the two lock eyes. As she murmurs, "You're magnificent," and is moved to tears by the sight, she suddenly gets it. The stag represents something rare and majestic - the monarchy, tradition, the sacred trust between the Queen and her people. It could be many things, but whatever it is, she realizes that it is bigger than she is. After that, she decides to visit the shrines and bouquets laid out in front of the palace. I cried watching Mirren as the Queen, slowly walking along the gate, handbag in arm, reading handmade placards accusing her and her family of being heartless murderers, while stunned members of the crowd helplessly and reflexively curtseyed before her.

To me it seemed obvious that Stephen Frears was trying to tell our leaders to wake up and realize: it's not about you. Unless you stop fighting personal vendettas from forty years ago and working out family dramas on the world's stage, there will be no more world. That call to duty was the theme I heard in this year's Academy Awards. Hollywood is not the center of the universe, but it plays a vital role in keeping the rest of us going, by inspiring, making us think and feel, making us laugh and believe and want to get up in the morning. And each of us has our own role to play as we walk through the shit of our lives, struggling in each moment to do the next right thing.

Now, let's all have a nice cup of tea and get back to work.