Oscar reactions

Who watched the Oscars last night? I had a small get-together - way too much food - to watch everything. It was my best friend's first time watching it, believe it or not. She likes movies, but had never bothered with the Oscars before, and had done as poorly on watching the movies this year as I did.

This was not my best year picking the winners by a long shot.

Honestly, I'm boggled Richard Linklater didn't get best director. Boggled. He had such a difficult task, creating Boyhood over a dozen years when so many things could've gone wrong, that I just don't get how he could've been looked over. I didn't see Birdman winning, either, though in hindsight, it's the kind of movie the Academy loves. Redmayne was always a contender, but I'd gambled on them giving it to Michael Keaton for sentimentality and as a token nod to Birdman. Oops.

Also? I was a little bit down by Neil Patrick Harris. The opening was fantastic, but I found a lot of the punny bits in between not very funny. The magic prediction didn't work for me, either, because let's face it, it relied on the tidbits being terribly clever (which most of them weren't).

Things I did enjoy?  Meryl Streep fist-pumping at the end of Patricia Arquette's speech was fantastic. "Glory" wasn't my pick for best song, but I did enjoy the performance of it. And I liked the message of Graham Moore's speech about staying weird.

But I had more fun hanging with my friends this year than I did actually watching the ceremony. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Somehow, I even managed to still win our Oscar pool, but that's only because nobody else saw any of it coming, either.