The theory at the Oscar party I hosted/attended (it’s my party, but I don’t have the space to hold it in, so I get a cohost now) was that the guy typing the closed captioning got fired halfway through, because the quality of the captions improved radically over the course of the evening.  Though it’s worth noting that even the later one didn’t try to keep up with the rapid-fire delivery of a fluent English-speaker whose first language is Spanish.  There were some whole sentences missing in there.  Of course, the captioning of any live event is notoriously bad, even if it’s scripted, and since I’ve always said not enough winners are delivering their speeches off notes, there’s definitely a lot of ad-libbing on Oscar night.

Let’s get a round of applause for Neil Patrick Harris as host, and not just because he was willing to go out there and, um, pretty much bare it all.  I’m partial to Billy Crystal even yet, I admit, but man, it could have been worse.  He could have been James Franco.

This year’s Questionable Fashion Trend was, for some reason, really big earrings.  Octavia Butler’s looked kind of sharp, and a whole lot more of them just looked uncomfortably heavy.  They did, more often than not, match the dresses, but it’s still not a look I liked most of the time.  It’s a better Questionable Fashion Trend than some (there were still too many flesh-coloured dresses, to the point than Jennifer Lopez kind of looked like a clay statue of herself, though at least one with a wig, but that trend seems to have ebbed), but it’s enough to make me wonder where they start.  A cruel joke on the part of stylists?

Also this year was a male Questionable Fashion Trend, the Tux of a Different Colour.  The combination of the pale blue tux and that unfortunate hair made my friend Tim dub Jared Leto “Jesus Going on a Prom Date,” only made worse when he was escorting Patricia Arquette off stage.  Now, some men can pull off the Tux of a Different Colour, just as some women can pull off really big earrings.  (Only please, don’t pull off a woman’s really big earrings; an earlobe tear is a terrible thing.)  Mostly, however, not.  Jared Leto was not the only man apparently attending prom.

Frankly, I think we need to stop doing a song after the In Memoriam reel.  (Does anyone know if Olivia de Havilland now holds Luise Rainer’s former title as Oldest Living Oscar Winner?)  If we’re having a song, have a song over the reel.  It doesn’t help anyone after, and it just makes the ceremony even longer for no good reason.  I suppose possibly it’s intended to give everyone time to compose themselves, but isn’t that what commercial breaks are for?  And while Lady Gaga did, as everyone will tell you, do an excellent job on that Sound of Music medley, was there a particular reason we had one?

Anyway, on to the winners, because we’ve got some upsets, here.  Not that I’d seen most of the predicted winners, either.

Brace yourself, people, because you’re going to get a lot of think pieces about why Birdman beat Selma.  You aren’t getting it here, because I haven’t seen Birdman or Selma, but other people will doubtless do it for me.

It’s not that I’m surprised Eddie Redmayne won; it’s that (despite not having seen literally any of these movies) I’m a little disappointed.  And here’s a thought–would Steve Carell come back and host The Daily Show now that Jon Stewart is leaving and Jessica Williams says she won’t?

I’m betting, however, that a fair number of people lost money on Marion Cotillard.  Interestingly, when she won in 2007, I’m pretty sure my prediction was Julie Christie for Away From Her, where she played a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s.  Though I know my sentimental favourite that year was Cate Blanchett.  Anyway.  There’s an odd piece of Oscar trivia for you.

Since no one was surprised that J. K. Simmons won, except in the sense that we’re still talking about Whiplash, allow me to share another thought that came up.  Edward Norton is supposed to be extremely difficult to work with.  So maybe the director who could work with him more than once, and get good performances every time, is Werner Herzog.  After all, he can’t be more difficult than Klaus Kinski, right?

I was honestly unimpressed by Patricia Arquette in Boyhood, but I did breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Meryl Streep.

I know a lot of people are soured on superhero movies.  I’m not.  I bought my son a Big Hero 6 t-shirt.  Not that he’s seen the movie, because we don’t take our toddler to the theatre.

And, yes, I was wrong on cinematography, but I was wrong the way I expected to be.  And after Big Hero 6, it turns out that The Grand Budapest Hotel was the movie that the most people at my party had seen.

While I predicted Maleficent would win for Costume Design, I am neither surprised nor upset that Grand Budapest Hotel did.

There was a long pause in the captions when Alejandro G. Iñárritu won Best Director, and the joke we made was that they were looking up how to spell it.  I have been copy-pasting from the Academy’s website, in part because that way I get the tilde and the accent.  Since I haven’t seen the movie, still no opinion.  Though I’ll admit a grim amusement to the comment he made that someone would look into it, since Mexicans have won Best Director two years running.

I haven’t seen CitizenFour.  I probably will at some point, since I actually like documentaries quite a lot.  It’s on my Netflix queue–but in the “saved” section, because it’s not out yet.  I did guess right on the Documentary Short, though.

Honestly–has anyone actually seen Whiplash to have an opinion on its editing?

You know, it’s not that the Academy members could only get Ida.  They get screeners.  And did that guy thank his cat?

Makeup is probably the category where I’m most disappointed, and not because of my Wes Anderson thing.  (I have actually seen both the winner and the movie I wanted to win, here, after all.)  It just feels like the movie got an award because they made Tilda Swinton not look much like Tilda Swinton.  This led to one of the people at our party ranting about how superhero movies can’t be allowed to win “real” awards, which seems more true than I’d expected, looking over past winners.

I was surprised but not disappointed that Alexandre Desplat won Best Score for Grand Budapest, and I was delighted that Julie Andrews pronounced his name properly.  But she’s Julie Andrews; of course she can.  I was, however, greatly surprised that “Glory” took the prize, the only Oscar Selma won all evening.  I wasn’t expecting it to win.  I was expecting Populist Backlash to take the award, and failing that Sentiment Over a Dead Legend.  Token Win was a bit unusual.

Yes, I was right over Production Design.  No, I’m not surprised that I called it.

“Feast” was, technically, the other winner seen by the most attendants.  (I hand out chocolate every time anyone has seen a winning film.  This was not a chocolate-intensive party this year, except all those Grand Budapest wins.)  But none of us had seen any of the Live Action shorts, so none of us had seen “The Phone Call.”

According to the one person who I think had seen American Sniper, they turn down the sound when he’s sniping.  So that’s why it one.  And I guess Whiplash is, now that I think about it, about music.  I just didn’t remember that, because my initial thought at the preview was, “No, thank you.”

I do hear good things about Interstellar, including from the three or four people who had seen it, and it is on my Netflix queue.  However, that’s along with several hundred other movies, and it’s not out yet, so I don’t know when I’ll see it.

I declared, when The Imitation Game won its Adapted Screenplay award, that I was frankly surprised that we couldn’t hear Julius Kassendorf yelling about it.  Olympia (Lacey, technically) isn’t all that far from Seattle, after all.  And Birdman‘s win just makes me want to see it more, though apparently the roommate of my cohost hated it desperately.  I’d certainly like to know for myself.

All in all, not a bad night.  Good food, good friends, and many jokes at Jared Leto’s expense.  Also, it turned out, someone who grew up a mere handful of miles away from me Back Home in LA County, albeit a while after I did.  So lots and lots of culture-specific references that no one else in the room got, and those are always fun.