Best Fiddle Dee Dee Moment: to Melissa Leo for dropping her overly rehearsed F-bomb. It was plain to see from the last speech she gave that she spends more time than she ought to writing and memorizing these so-called off-the-cuff bits of gosh oh gee impassioned earnestness. Give me a break. Give her a prize.
Best Comeback: to Sandra Bullock who, having had her heart broken in front of the world in 2010, managed to bring her dignified self onstage in 2011 and, looking older, sadder and wiser, make everyone laugh.
Best Line of the Evening: to Luke Matheny, who won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short for God of Love, for, “Wow, I should’ve gotten a haircut.”
Best Sextegenarian Vocals: to Randy Newman, who proves he still has what it takes to waltz us down memory lane with whispers of Sail Away and Dayton Ohio 1903.
Best Imitation of a Bad Oscar Host: a two-way tie to Anne Hathaway and James Franco, she for going overboard, and he for going under.
Best Son-to-Mother Moment: to Tom Hooper, for describing to the world how his mother Meredith found the script for the film after she was invited to see what was then an unpublished play.
Best Emotive Moment: to David Seidler, 73, writer of The King’s Speech, who overcame a debilitating stutter as a child. “I accept this on behalf of all the stutterers in the world. We have a voice. We have been heard.”
Best Husband on the Red Carpet: to Warren Beatty, for making his wife cry, and for choking up not only himself but every adult viewer who has ever been loved or who loves anyone who has loved them back deeply…if that makes any sense.
Best Handsomest Man: to Mark Ruffalo, who I would have married in a heartbeat if only he had asked. How many fathers do you know who take their kids’ chickens’ eggs to the farmers’ market every Saturday? (And how many men do you know who elicit so many plural possessives?)
Best Dressed Female: to too numerous to mention, but if I were slim and had to choose one for myself, Sandra Bullock’s red gown, please.
Best Dressed Male: to I don’t really care because I was so happy to see Tim Gunn interviewing on the runway, looking dapper as always, and always so polite.
Best Mean-Spirited Award: to those who continue to pick mercilessly on Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow, two lovely, reedy women who seem sweet and warm and vulnerable. Oh, what a cynical world…
Best Flowers: to Michelle and Rob, who chose a radiant and textured bouquet of red whose illustriousness reminds us of heart, health and happiness.
Best Church Supper Style Sandwiches: to Mary MacDonald, who knows how to make an egg salad with onion and low-fat mayonnaise just the way I like them…which is to say, eggy and low-fat (relatively speaking) (even though we’re not related) (by blood, I mean)
Best Company: to Michelle, Mary, Susan, Rob, Stephan and Mike, and to Noam and Sarah in absentia, and to my darling girl’s voice uttering for nineteen Oscar evenings, every ten minutes, “How many have I got right now, Mum?”
