Beginning with a musical number featuring How I Met Your Mother’s Neil Patrick Harris and an American Idol-esque lineup of the Best Actor and Best Actress nominees, last night’s 2010 Academy Awards ceremony was off to a strange start from which it never quite recovered.

In an effort to perhaps attract a new audience and increase ratings for the proceedings in light of a decade-long slump, this year featured ten Best Picture nominees and not one, but two hosts (Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin). Looking back from today, this strategy seems to have worked (initial reports say that the broadcast moved up beyond 40 million viewers for the second time in 5 years), but ceremony itself left much to be desired. ABC’s marketing team must be very pleased with itself.

As I said before, last night was strange. Martin (an Oscar hosting veteran) and Baldwin, a combination which on paper seems like it can’t fail, were forced to deliver many stilted, awkward jokes of the “Oh hey it’s [insert nominee here], he/she is [punchline]” variety. While these would have been more tolerable with one emcee, having the two read off a teleprompter accentuated all the awkward pauses for laughter and brought the show to a halt within the first 20 minutes. Thankfully beyond the monologue Martin and Baldwin more or less switched off between nominees (Two presenters that actually had amazingly funny banter were the always-funny Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. Couldn’t they just host the show next year?).

Presenters this year included the usual combination of old and new Hollywood (with some “why are you here?” added in via a seriously out of place “Tribute to Horror” presented by Twilight’s Kristen Stewart and Amanda Seyfried from Jennifer’s Body). Each of the ten Best Picture nominees got their own short montages sprinkled throughout. Acting categories also used montages to highlight performances for the first time I can remember. Best Actor and Actress categories returned to the format from last year where each nominee was presented by someone who worked with them in the past. It’s a nice idea, but it ultimately slows the show down far too much with explaining to us why the people nominated for THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE are talented. There’s a rude word I want to use here to describe this but I won’t. A highlight of the night came from Ben Stiller’s full Na’vi makeup for the makeup category which eventually went to Star Trek, marking a first for that franchise. 11^th time’s the charm!

Perhaps the biggest question mark from last night was the removal of the Best Song nominees’ performances in lieu of a weird interpretive dance to the Best Original Score selections. Wouldn’t it have been more fun and exciting to see the likes of Randy Newman, Dr. John, and eventual winner for Crazy Heart Ryan Bingham show off their talents? In Crazy Heart’s case we could’ve even had Jeff Bridges get up there with a guitar and join in! One can dream.

I will give the ceremony points for their Animated Feature introductory videos. They were very entertaining to see, especially with all the different kinds of animation used in what is probably that category’s strongest year since its induction in 2000. Likewise, kudos to the broadcast for taking the time to explain the difference between Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

I’ve almost hit 500 words without mentioning the actual awards themselves. To be honest, there’s not much to say, especially on the negative side. The Hurt Locker dominated with 6 statues, including Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow (the first for a woman) and Best Picture. The most successful movie of all time, James Cameron’s AVATAR, secured 3 awards including Best Art Direction, Cinematography, and (in the biggest shocker of the night) Visual Effects. Surprises included Precious’ win for Best Adapted Screenplay (making Geoffrey Fletcher the first African-American to win a screenplay Oscar), and The Secret in their Eyes from Argentina took home Best Foreign Language Film despite nearly all predictions pointing at The White Ribbon. Sandra Bullock took home Best Actress for The Blind Side, overcoming healthy competition in the form of Meryl Streep. Jeff Bridges finally received Best Actor for Crazy Heart after multiple nominations in the past and a career stretching back nearly 50 years. Inglourious Basterds’ Christophe Waltz and Precious’ Mo’Nique won in the Supporting categories in a race that even Nostradamus probably predicted centuries ago. A full list of winners can be found at http://oscar.go.com

All in all this year’s Academy Awards made some baffling structural changes in order to drum up more public support which ultimately worked, but most likely at the expense of the perceived importance of the awards themselves. I also wonder if this means that the “big 10” will be considered a success and what this means for the entire season itself. I guess we’ll have to wait for next year!

-          Andrew Webb

Nominees seen through the PFS this year (winners in bold): Ajami, A Single Man, The Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart, Invictus, The Messenger, Precious, Julie & Julia, Nine, The Princess and the Frog, Up, Star Trek, The Young Victoria, A Serious Man

Can a movie be perfect? Probably not. But if your expectations are to just have a good, dumb laugh, then Hot Tub Time Machine might be as close to perfect as you can get. Three titans of comedy, a couple up-and-comers, and plenty of self-referential 80s jokes gives us the first epic comedy of the year. I was excited to see how veteran of the “guy-meets-girl comedy” John Cusack (2012, High Fidelity…almost everything) would hold up with upstarts like Craig Robinson (The Office, Pineapple Express) and Rob Cordry (The Daily Show, What Happens in Vegas.) And let me tell you: they, along with Clark Duke (Sex Drive, Kick-Ass), come together perfectly. Perhaps too perfectly. And once Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls, Party Down) show up, forget it. I was in love with the whole thing.

This film is weird, and fairly stupid, but decent character stories and an awareness of said stupidity gives it all the ammo it needs to have you laughing for nearly the entire run time. Even if it teaches a terrible moral while trying to teach an important one, Hot Tub Time Machine has what you need even if Doc Brown wouldn’t endorse it.