PUR-LEEZE, ACADEMY!

Okay, girlfriend, let’s dish the Oscars. What the hell was Anne Hathaway thinking? More to the point, what the hell was she wearing? Valentino, as it happens, and he must have hated her in The Devil Wears Prada just as much as we did. What’s more (and I never thought I’d advocate surgery but there’s a first time for everything), Hathaway really is someone who should get her eyes done. There, I’ve said it.

Emily Blunt, on the other hand, looked sumptuous, her shiny blue gown only starting at all if the camera panned down far enough. But then she effortlessly stole all the scenes she shared with Mrs Shakespeare. Indeed, apart from Emily, the divine Miss M-for-Meryl and dear Stanley Tucci, the acting in the movie was vile: the men were particularly repellent. It’s a silly little movie but such fun. Much like the Oscars, really.

On the red carpet, the designer of the night was Vera Wang. Class, class, class. Rachel Weisz was stunning in a sculpted Wang creation that made her look like a proper, womanly star – Ava Gardner in her prime, perhaps. Jodie Foster too looked serious and effortlessly stylish in a simply cut Wang number of fugitive blue. In her Valentino gown, Kate Winslett “looks like a big mouldy tree trunk”, according to The Guardian’s Jess Cartner-Morley. Catty but not far wrong. It certainly did nothing for Winslett’s ample curves whereas Wang’s cuts elongated her clients.

Cate Blanchett’s Armani Prive sheath looked like some kind of armour but was becoming in a rather alarming way, topped off by a fierce bob. Then she talks and she’s soft and charming. But the gown I liked best was the one Celine Dion – of all people – wore for the red carpet (but not, sadly, for the number she performed during the show). I don’t know who designed it but it was a classic wrap-around piece in a muted shade, almost British racing green, with strategically placed and unfussy silver accessories and a gold bag. It made you really pay attention to her and I’ve certainly never done that before.

Many of the men – especially but not exclusively those under 50 – wore black ties but not proper bow ties. I’m sad that formal evening dress is dying out for men. No less than Alan Arkin was improperly dressed. If you wear a lounge tie, it makes your tuxedo look as if it might be a lounge suit. In his old-fashioned garb, John Travolta was probably the most elegant man there, even with unruly hair.

Before the show proper began, we swapped between the live coverage of the red carpet on the E! channel and the rival “exclusively on Sky One”. It soon became clear that Sky’s relay was far from live. Sky’s crew was set up right (or rather left) alongside E!’s yet Michael Sheen left his E! interview screen left and didn’t enter Sky screen right for fully twelve minutes. In between, he must have fallen into a time-warp. Later we saw Dame Helen Mirren doing her shtik with her union flag at the left edge of the E! frame but had to wait seven minutes for the Sky interview that concluded with that flag routine.

The coverage on both channels was pretty lamentable. Sky interjected witless “background” from supposed experts: “people like Helen Mirren, Kate Winslett and Dame Judi – Brits are just dominating the Best Actress category” [I’m sure Ms Streep would have something to say about that]; “in the Original Screenplay, we’ve got Patrick Morgan for The Queen” [that’ll be Peter Morgan, of course]. It’s “experts” like this that make you aware how out of fashion true expertise really is.

E! ran “viewer quotes” that were almost as witless and banal as the “expert” views. In every break on Sky, the L’Oreal ad with Penelope Cruz was run. Smart booking but I bet they wish they’d signed Dame Helen.

The interviewers on the ground were as awful as you’d expect. Sky’s Fearne Cotton kept telling the passing stars that it was her first Oscars, as if they gave a damn. But at least she had the wit to interview Wolfgang Puck, the official Oscars chef, in what was certainly the most entertaining encounter of the night. Spare Brits like James McAvoy and Sheen (whom Fearne Cotton called Martin) were very available for interview, almost pathetically so. The E! interviewer, Ryan Somebody, kept insisting that Sheen “looks just like Tony Blair to me”. “You see, Ryan’s got the good analysis” concluded his co-presenter from her roof-top platform and, of course, she meant it seriously. Now and again she was joined by a “fashion expert” (whose hair was a story in itself) armed with a “glamorstrator” with which he scribbled on freeze-frames of the gowns to no great purpose.

Back on the ground, Ryan was separated from the stars by a potted azalea. “I can barely make it over the bush” he cried, oblivious to the unfortunate term, as he craned to kiss Forest Whitaker’s wife. Later, he pumped an increasingly irritated Gael Garcia Bernal about Brad Pitt, evidently unaware that the two actors were filmed on different continents for the big ensemble piece Babel (which the Yanks refer to as Babble). You could hear Bernal thinking “he doesn’t have anything to ask me, does he”.

The emphasis on big box-office stars is maddening, of course. There were veteran actors present who didn’t have presentation duties and whom nobody interviewed: Jane Russell, Mickey Rooney. Either might be dead next year. Sky at least talked to the co-writer of Borat but we heard from no other writer or director. The first time all evening we got sight of Paul Greengrass was when the directing Oscar was about to be presented – not, as it turned out, to him.

During the ceremony, we saw plenty of Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese, prominently seated and familiar to a huge proportion of the supposedly billion-strong audience. There were quite a few shots of the respective directors of Babel, Dreamgirls and Pan’s Labyrinth, the last of which richly deserved its three statuettes and was unlucky not to win for Best Foreign Language Film. But Stephen Frears, resplendent in white scarf and an aisle seat, was only seen at the edge of frame until Dame Helen’s inevitable win and the directing Oscar moment. Neither Peter Morgan nor the other British writing nominee, Patrick Marber, was shown at all, save in Errol Morris’s sprauncy pull-together of snatches of nominee comment that opened the show: that’s happily available to see again on the AMPAS website. (By the by, every event-broadcaster does pull-togethers these days but nobody ever does them as well as the Academy).

In the hall, we saw Jack Nicholson frequently, though he was a mere presenter. I dearly hope that his new Daddy Warbucks look is for a part and not the result of age and self-abuse. We saw too much of Will Smith, never in the running for Best Actor and laughing way too hard at his eight-year-old’s presenting moment. At least the cutting between cameras had been well rehearsed to go with the pretend spontaneity of Ellen DeGeneres’ hosting routines. But it was a great pity that it was thought necessary to show us the Sound FX Choir rather than the movie clips the singers were dubbing so cleverly.

The awards themselves held few surprises. Nobody in the world – not even Messrs Frears, Greengrass, Inarritu and Eastwood – could begrudge Marty his Academy Award. And nobody could think The Departed is among his best pictures. He wasn’t even nominated for Taxi Driver (John G Avildsen won for the absurd Rocky which also got Best Film), for New York, New York (Michael Cimino won for The Deer Hunter which was Best Film), for The King of Comedy (James L.Brooks won for Best Film, Terms of Endearment), for The Color of Money (Oliver Stone and his movie Platoon won) or for The Age of Innocence (Spielberg’s year, for Schindler’s List). And, of what are perhaps his greatest masterpieces, his direction of Raging Bull was beaten by Robert Redford for Ordinary People, and Kevin Costner for Dances with Wolves was preferred over Goodfellas (that year he was first up against Stephen Frears, for The Grifters, which he co-produced).

Mention of Redford's soap opera brings to mind the wonderful Lillian Gish tottering on stage to announce the identity of the Best Film winner: "Ordinary Pic ..." she began, then corrected it to Ordinary People. She was right the first time and I'm quite sure she meant it.

Few expected Meryl Streep’s 14th nomination to bring her a third award but can you believe it is now 25 years since her last win? And what was that for, movies buffs? Out of Africa? Sophie’s Choice? Silkwood? The French Lieutenant’s Woman? A Cry in the Dark? These days she doesn’t get to make the kind of movies that carried her triumphantly through the 1980s.

There were no especially embarrassing acceptance speeches. Winners, notably behind-the-camera ones, still think they have to thank people but nobody’s list got really out of hand. Some of the presenters could do with a wind-up nudge from the band: Jerry Seinfeld was unfunny and way too long, as if auditioning to be presenter next year.

As for Ms DeGeneres, I thought she was fine but, like all the others who are not Billy Crystal, she made you crave really top class material. Stuff about Gilligan’s Island and her pretence of hoovering the auditorium carpet should have been excised at an early script session. I was sorry that she made nothing of being the first lesbian to host the Oscars (that sound you heard was Bob Hope turning in his grave). But at least Melissa Etheridge got to be the first woman at the Oscars to make reference to “my wife” – Tammy Lynn Michaels.

Oh, and it was Sophie’s Choice, by the way. Meryl’s last win. But you knew that.