Post-Oscars Reaction

As movie years go, 2007's crop of hopefuls aren't going to remembered with some of Oscar's best over the years.

I watched last night's broadcast, rushed because of the strike, with some trepidation, especially knowing it was going to be a big night for the awful "No Country For Old Men," and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised.

Jon Stewart did a very capable job with short prep time, and the pace of the show was fairly brisk, though I found the segments celebrating 80 years of Oscars with past clips to be redundant after a while. At least Michael Moore didn't win, so we were spared a controversial acceptance speech.

A few highlights:

NICEST MOMENT: (Tie) The troops in Iraq presenting an award (Best Short? I'm drawing a blank) and host Jon Stewart bringing back best song winner Marketa Irglova to say a few words after the orchestra cut her off when her partner, Glen Hansard, ran a few seconds long.

MOST PLEASANT SURPRISE: Tilda Swinton. I figured the Academy would go with Ruby Dee in Best Supporting Actress as a sort of lifetime achievement award even though Dee only appeared for about 10 minutes in "American Gangster." The always-terrific Swinton was phenomenal in "Michael Clayton," and it was nice to see her recognized.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: Speaking of lifetime achievement awards, I find it remarkable that Hal Holbrook only got his first-ever nomination for "Into The Wild," and having just turned 83, he might not get too many more chances to win. He was much more the supporting actor than Javier Bardem, who was basically the lead in "No Country For Old Men."

BEST PRESENTERS: Jonah Hill and Seth Rogan, and their "I'm Halle Berry" bit. Fortunately, neither of them gave any of the award winners an Adrien Brody-type kiss.

WORST DECISION: The Academy's choice to honor "No Country For Old Men" with four Oscars, including Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor. This is one of the most overrated movies in recent memory, and pretty forgettable I thought. It had no ending and the inciting incident to get the ball rolling was one of the most insipid in movie history. I admit I've never read the Cormac McCarthy novella, so I don't know how true it was to the source material, but as a movie, it just plained sucked.

BEST DECISION: Diablo Cody's win for Original Screenplay with "Juno." My gal Diablo (OK, I met her for 30 seconds, but still) has become a rock star among screenwriters.

What were some of your notable Oscar moments?

After the broadcast, I caught some of Jimmy Kimmel. Normally, I'm not a huge Kimmel fan, but this running "feud" with Matt Damon has been hilarious. First, Kimmel's girlfriend Sarah Silverman said they were "breaking up" because she was now with Damon. You can catch the brilliant music video on YouTube. So Kimmel retaliated last night by announcing he was now with Ben Affleck, complete with a "We Are The World" type video with the likes of Harrison Ford, Don Cheadle, Josh Groban, Robin Williams and others. It was insanely funny.

MONDAY'S BEST BETS: The Lorraine Hansberry classic play "A Raisin In the Sun" (ABC, 8 p.m.) has drawn about as much critical praise as anything I've seen this year. The TV movie version reunites the Tony Award-winning cast, including Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald, while Sean "Puffy" Combs has met with a lot of success in a role originated by the great Sidney Poitier. The play deals with a struggling black family in the 1950s that suddenly comes into some money from a life insurance policy, then debates how to spend it to improve their lives.

On "Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles," (Fox, 9 p.m.), the good cyborg (Summer Glau) takes a ballet class. I'd like to see Arnold Schwarzeneggar do that. Seriously, I would.

CBS has new episodes of "Welcome To The Captain" at 8:30 p.m. and the terrific "Old Christine" at 9:30 p.m. On NBC, "Medium" is new at 10 p.m.

On cable, both "Kyle XY" and "Wildfire" are new on ABC Family.

Finally, the coolest program of the night may be the season premiere of "Top Gear" (BBC America, 8 p.m.), which has Oscar winner Helen Mirren as its guest driver.

And The Golden Globe Goes To...

...(sounds of crickets chirping)...

One of the latest casualties of the strike is that the WGA hasn't granted exemptions to both the Golden Globes and the Oscars, meaning that no writers will be cleared to work on those show.

In addition, all of the writers, plus most of the actors and directors, have said they will honor the picket lines and not attend the awards shows if the strike is still going on when they are supposed to air. That means there will be no one to present the awards and no one to receive them if the producers decide to go ahead and air them anyway. The Golden Globes, set to air in early January, are the first awards show coming up to be affected by the strike.

Though I always have a lot of fun trying to predict who will win what, I can't say I watched any of these shows with any sort of frequency. And this year's Golden Globes nominations were especially annoying with who got picked and who didn't, both on the movie side and the TV side. (I can't think of a movie more overrated by critics for some time than "No Country For Old Men," but that's a discussion for another time.)

Meanwhile, an interesting twist to the strike that may help bring about some sort of resolution has been the willingness of writers to seek out funding for projects other than the studios. With the availability of hedge funds out there as well as new media platforms like YouTube and Google - which have tons of money - some writers are looking to cut out the studios as middlemen and go directly to the Web with their projects.

It's a bit ironic, since the major sticking point between the studios and WGA are residuals for writers from new media broadcasts of their projects. By not giving any ground on this issue, the studios are running the risk of making themselves obsolete.

You can read more about this new idea for making movies at the L.A. Times Web site here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-webwriters17dec17,1,299083.story?ctrack=3&cset=true.

And, Jimmy Kimmel has announced his late-night talk show on ABC would return to production at the beginning of January, joining both "The Tonight Show" and "Late Night" on NBC.

"SCRUBS" FIX: My brother sent me a link to a very funny Web site, which is good for people wanting their "Scrubs" fix. To learn more about the staff at Sacred Heart Hospital, visit here: http://www.rateyourdoc.org

WEDNESDAY'S BEST BETS: First off, my apologies. CBS listed a new episode for "NCIS" last night, but re-ran the season premiere.

So, be forewarned that tonight's episodes of "Criminal Minds" (CBS, 9 p.m.) and "CSI: NY" (CBS, 10 p.m.) are also supposed to be new. We'll see.

The finale of "Journeyman" (NBC, 10 p.m.), a complex and clever series that never found an audience, airs tonight. The producers have promised to wrap up at least most of the questions surrounding Dan Vasser's (Kevin McKidd) time travel. That's something, at least, though I would have liked to have seen more of this show. It follows "Clash of the Choirs" at 8 p.m.

I won't get into "Duel" (ABC, 8 p.m.) too much except to say I was really glad that woman who hates men got booted last night. Her "Oh, I think a woman should win it all, and if it was up to me, it would only be women in those chairs" comments made my sense of schadenfreude work overtime when she proved to be less smart than a lunch lady. Buh-bye.

Finally, the CW is all-new with "Crowned" and "Gossip Girl."