Where were you last night?

A completely reasonable question, because if you are reading this site then you are most likely a big movie fan (or lost). And last night was the 79^th Annual Academy Awards, which is one of the biggest nights of the year for anyone who digs movies or scantily clad celebrities walking down a red carpet. If you missed the Oscars, then you missed quite a bit. Ellen Degeneres hosted, and quite well I might add. There were some surprises, some funny moments and then there were some sappy moments. Also, plenty of montages to fill 4 hours of show and plenty of celebrity glitz to go around. So whether you were out partying it up like I was or you were cuddled up on your couch, my hope is that you took in the show last evening, because otherwise the rest of this is going to make little to no sense at all.

You may be asking yourself, “How did the Movie Guy do with his predictions?” It is funny you should ask, because I’d like to think that I did quite well. In fact, I out-picked my fellow COFCA members, which made me feel pretty darn cool. Some of it was blind luck, but most of it was my ability to read between the lines of the entire awards season. Alright, it was all blind luck.

The night started well, with Pan’s Labyrinth winning the first two awards of the night (Achievement in Makeup and Art Direction). But then, as many of the technical awards were announced I began to fall behind. Who knew that Marie Antoinette would win for Best Costume Design? I sure didn’t. I also missed out an all of the short film categories, but those were mostly guesswork anyway.

As the night wore on, it was clear to me that my picks in the major categories were going to go well. It started with Alan Arkin winning Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Little Miss Sunshine. Everyone thought that Eddie Murphy was going to walk away with this one, but I had a gut instinct that even a flashy motown singer couldn’t overcome the drawer power of a flagrant, heroin addicted perve grandfather figure.

Then there were the obvious choices, as if we thought anyone else was going to win. Helen Mirren took home the Best Actress Award for her performance in The Queen, Forest Whitaker won Best Actor for The Last King of Scotland and Jennifer Hudson, America’s rags to riches story, took home the Best Supporting Actress award for Dreamgirls, all as expected.

I was also happy to see that I correctly predicted both screenwriting awards. William Monohan’s Best Adapted Screenplay award for writing The Departed was well deserved, as that story (and the movie for that matter) was as suspenseful and intelligently crafted as any film I have seen in a long time. Also, Michael Arndt’s win for Best Original Screenplay for Little Miss Sunshine just goes to prove what I have been saying since last summer — that Little Miss Sunshine was the most honest, original and heartwarming story of 2006.

But my excitement was subdued a bit when it came down to the final two awards. At first, when Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas came on stage to present the Best Director Award, we all knew what was up. It was a somber and heartwarming moment to see Martin Scorsese finally get to take the stage and grasp an Oscar for himself. The man is truly one of the great American directors, and this year was just his year to win it. Then shortly after Marty got his Oscar, his film was graced with another great achievement: the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. Personally, I would have liked to see Little Miss Sunshine walk away with Best Picture as opposed to The Departed, but I can’t complain. By that time I had picked 15 of the 24 categories correctly, and if your pick is going to lose it might as well lose to a great film. And The Departed was, without a doubt, a great film.

In the end when I look back at last night’s Oscar show, I have to say that I am pleased. There is no reason to run out into the streets shouting about how great the show was, but it was good enough to keep me interested and I agreed with most of the winners. If you watched the entire show, you can probably relate to the fact that it did drag on, but when doesn’t it drag on. You have to go into the Oscar telecast understanding that someone will make a painfully long acceptance speech (i.e. Ennio Morricone accepting his Honorary Oscar with Clint Eastwood translating from Italian to English) and that there are going to be one too many montages about seemingly irrelevant topics (like the Foreign Cinema montage). But there were some funny moments courtesy of host Ellen Degeneres, whose attempt to get Steven Spielberg to take a picture of herself and Clint Eastwood for MySpace was pretty darn funny. There was also a very funny musical number by Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly about taking Helen Mirren home with them.

On a whole, the show was pretty good. Not amazing, but good. I would have been more satisfied had Little Miss Sunshine been the last movie called…

For more Oscar coverage, stay locked on my Oscar Beat column, as I will be recapping who won, who didn’t and who should have all week long!