If you don't have a Twitter account or chose not to join in during the show, you missed 3+ hours of nonstop snark, whining, excitement, and schooling in what these categories actually are. This is why you follow funny and serious entertainment writers on Twitter.

But more importantly, the 84th Annual Academy Awards went off last night in bland style. Billy Crystal did nothing new with his hosting shtick. That means his shtick didn't get funny until the producers allowed him to start improvising one liners in response to the ceremony. Say what you will about the unfortunate "insert yourself into the movies" montage. I can't think of another host who is so good with bringing out the pun-filled groaners. Actually, I can't think of another host in recent memory who actually got the audience to literally groan at groaners.

The big surprises of the night happened in the technical categories. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, suspiciously not nominated for Best Picture despite a slew of nominations, took home Best Editing over The Artist and Hugo. Those two films split the other categories that normally go to the overall winner. Hugo won most of the technical awards--including an upset in Cinematography--while The Artist took Director/Actor/Picture. The last time a film won Best Editing without a Best Picture nomination was The Bourne Ultimatum at the 80th Annual Academy Awards.

Though it had a 1/3 chance, many on Twitter seemed surprised by The Iron Lady picking up Best Makeup. I default to Nathaniel Rogers over at The Film Experience with a refrain he's made a few times this season. Best equals most in some categories. That un-moving mask of old age and Alzheimer's disease and a ton of fake teeth is more than a subtle chin/nose/earring cover job and less than flashy CGI. However, this was a year where the Academy swung for practical makeup, not digital makeup, leaving The Iron Lady as the winner of Most Practical Makeup in a Feature Film.

As an aside, if you watched the ceremony and have not seen The Iron Lady yet, you got your first good luck at the deathly visage of old Margaret Thatcher in the film. Do you see why they hid that part from the trailer? It doesn't look too good. Have you ever seen a Best Makeup nominee not have any photos or video available that show off the flashiest makeup job in the picture? There's always a first.

Speaking of The Iron Lady, I chickened out and went against my instincts in the past few days. On Thursday, I resigned myself to Viola Davis winning for The Help, hoping for the better of the two front runners to win out. However, had I stuck with my nomination day instincts, I would have correctly picked Meryl Streep to surprise.

It's not really a surprise. Oscar voters love it when well known and well loved actors play real people. What did it take for Julia Roberts, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, and Sandra Bullock to win Oscars? Real life characters. Whether they deserved to win for those roles is another question. It took real life characters to get them there.

There's a corollary that makes Meryl's win even more obvious in hindsight. The Oscar voters also love actresses doing real life characters with radical makeup transformations. Marion Cotillard and Charlize Theron both won for intricate portrayals of real life characters through thick layers of makeup. These performers often have to rely a lot on body language and handling a wide range of physically taxing actions to get recognized in spite of the prosthetics and paint.

Put those together and what do you get? Meryl Streep winning another Oscar for playing a real life character through a lot (tons, really) of makeup. I joke about her inability to really move her face for most of the film, but her physical presentation of the ravages of age done with a consistent body posture from the height of Thatcher to her rapid decline is strong. I just wish the screenplay and direction justified that much work on character development.

As another aside, I went 14/24 with my predictions from the day of the nominations. This was before The Artist started to sweep and The Descendants began picking up a lot of Adapted Screenplay momentum. I also did not want to believe The Help would be an Academy Award winning film, so Spencer did not even factor into my calculations. If I did it again yesterday, I would have gone 17/24 and have been slapping myself for underestimating Hugo in Visual Effects.

To me, the big surprise of the night was learning that Best Original Score winner Ludovic Bource (The Artist) has no formal training. Now I'm wondering what direction he was given to write the music for that film. Was he given a list of references and he just copied the ideas? Did he hunt out scores from silent pictures and get to the ideas himself?

The Artist's score is very derivative, which I thought was an homage to the period. Now I'm beginning to wonder if that choice was an accident. They did have to use excerpts from Vertigo for the most modern and serious moment of the film. Was that always the plan or was it a backup out of necessity? I want to give Bource the benefit of the doubt, but the voice over about not having any formal training gives me pause.

Not to say people without formal training can't write music. Jill Scott can't even read music and she comes up with beautiful songs in her own way. It's just, for such a mannered and referential score, did this composer really have the goods to do this on his own? The Artist is the first time Bource composed a score by himself for a narrative feature. He normally has a co-writer or only contributes one song. It's an odd issue to get hung up on, I know, but it's one that sticks out for me.

But more importantly, here are five things we got instead of performances by the Best Original Song nominees.

1. Emma Stone hamming it up for the length of "Man or Muppet" about her first time presenting at the Academy Awards.
2. Billy Crystal joking about how much money was wasted on building a large projection orchestra score prop for the music categories.
3. Zach Galifankis and Will Ferrell doing shtick with cymbals and white tuxedos to introduce the Original Song nominees.
4. Five minutes of Cirque do Soleil paying tribute to movies nominated fifty years ago for Oscars.
5. Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. joking about live documentaries for the length of "Real in Rio."

Dear Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,

I know you'll never revamp that horrid Original Song scoring system. Just kill the category at this point. I promise you the music people who watch will get over it. Bring back adapted song score and relax about the inclusion of a minute or two preexisting material in otherwise original scores.

Thanks in advance,

Robert

In conclusion, the Oscar telecast did one thing amazingly well. When last year's Best Actor and Best Actress winners took the stage to introduce this year's nominees, it was beautiful. Watching each nominee get a moment to be recognized on live TV made all the nonsense worth it. Consider cutting back on filler and actually taking the time to say nice things about all of the nominees in every category.

People won't be talking about Saving Face today. They'll be talking about how funny the Bridesmaids cast was introducing the nominees for Documentary Short. Make the event a celebration of film artists and the whole ceremony will have a lot more worth than just a statue or a line on a DVD/Blu-ray box.

Thoughts? Love to hear them.