Culture

Oscar Roundup 2013 (Or As They Call It At My House, Purim)

We watch the tedious award show so you don't have to.

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I just watched either the Academy Awards or the longest, most caustic sketch in the history of SCTV. For those of you who had the sense not to tune in, the main things you need to know about the night are:

1. Seth MacFarlane hosted. His manatees didn't work very hard on his jokes.

2. Michelle Obama announced the Best Picture winner. The losers were dispatched by a drone.

3. When Quentin Tarantino won a screenplay award for his slave-revenge flick Django Unchained, the orchestra played him off with music from Gone with the Wind. I assume that this was a last-minute switch, and that they had been planning to play it for Tony Kushner.

4. The high points of the evening were Shirley Bassey singing "Goldfinger" and an unexpectedly funny gag about The Sound of Music. So the night's big winner was the mid-'60s.

For a list of the victors, go here. Note that Sally Field didn't win an Oscar, but Hal Needham did.