The writers’ strike ended several days ago, in time to salvage this year’s Oscars telecast. This matters to the industry, but the buzz on the telecast is that it may score record-low ratings, the victim of the network TV’s supposedly slow slide into irrelevancy (don’t tell that to the near record number of viewers for last month’s Super Bowl, broadcast on network TV).

 

Then there’s the tone of this year’s Best Picture nominees. Can you say “downbeat”? With the exception of “Juno”—which has developed into a $100-million-plus hit—the major nominees are gloomy.

 

All we ask is that the show entertains, maybe even makes us laugh. If anyone can do that, it’s Oscar host Jon Stewart. So … here we go.

 

8:30—Diet Coke is a proud supporter of “The Heart Truth.” Who knew?

 

8:32—First joke: “make-up sex.” Oooo-kay. Maybe he’s just warming up. Ah, there it is! A crack about this year’s “psychopathic” Best Picture nominees.

 

8:35—First Clinton joke. The Jewish “Atonement” joke gets some laughs—including a hearty one from me. A “Norbit” joke scores! And with a decent lawyer joke, Stewart is officially on a roll.

 

8:38—An Iraq War joke—and a zinger about the age of the Republican nominee for president. A partisan joke about the assumption that the next president will be a Democrat, with a funny line about disaster movies.

 

Monologue over. It took a while for Stewart to warm up, but this outing turned out better than his last.

 

8:42—BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Winner: “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” The speech is much shorter than the presentation of the nominees. Can we get this woman to produce the next Oscars telecast? She’s on to something.

 

8:47—George Clooney introduces a clip reel encompassing 80 years of highlights. That was nice, but … no clips of Robert Altman’s eloquent acceptance speech of his honorary Oscar shortly before his death?

 

8:52—BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Presenter Steve Carell reminds us of how funny he can be.

Winner: “Ratatouille”

 

8:56—BEST MAKEUP

Winner: “La Vie en Rose” Great choice! Not to underrate Marion Cotillard’s performance, but the makeup was superb.

 

9:07—BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Winner: “The Golden Compass”! I was sure it would go to “Transformers.” The four winners are, again, a model in brevity when it comes to their acceptance speech.

 

9:12—BEST ART DIRECTION

My wife comments about presenter Cate Blanchett’s hair: “I’m disappointed. It looks like something I’d wake up in.”

Winner: “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” Well deserved. Dante Ferreti’s Italian accent is thick.

“But look at her hair!” my wife exclaims, still distracted by Blanchett. “Her dress looks great, but look at her hair!”

 

9:14—Here comes the first acting award.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Winner: Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men” Not unexpected, but maybe a sign of a big night for “No Country.” Beautiful reaction shot from Bardem’s mother in the audience.

 

9:22—Biggest laugh yet for the Oscar salutes to binoculars and periscopes, followed by a salute to bad dreams. These are the best laughs the Oscar broadcast has seen in years, monologues included.

 

9:26—The second Best Song nominees to be performed is, like Amy Adams’ performance of the first nominee, well executed. These presentations can be dreary, but so far, this year’s Best Song performances have been exciting.

 

9:28— BEST SHORT FILM

Owen Wilson presents. It’s good to see Owen in front of a camera again.

Winner: “Les Mozart des Pickpockets”

Another foreign-language acceptance speech. Not bad!

 

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Jerry Seinfeld’s bee character isn’t very funny.

Winner: “Peter and the Wolf”

 

9:35—BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Winner: Tilda Swinton, “Michael Clayton.”

My wife says, “Now that is the ugliest dress in Oscar history. It looks like a gunny sack, a yard trash bag.” My wife is catty tonight. Look out!

 

9:46—BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Winner: Joel and Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”

 

10 p.m.—A baby joke. Not so hot. But here come Judi Dench and Halle Berry to present … no, scratch that. It's two comic actors instead. Kinda funny, but 90 minutes into the broadcast, the “let’s get on with it” sentiment has started to take hold.

 

BEST SOUND EDITING

Winner: “The Bourne Ultimatum”

No “No Country” momentum yet.

 

BEST SOUND MIXING

Winner: “The Bourne Ultimatum”

Big “Bourne” momentum! Could it take Best Picture later tonight?

No. It couldn’t. Because it wasn’t nominated in any major categories.

 

BEST ACTRESS

Already?! It’s “only” 10:07. The pacing of this year’s telecast is pretty good, although I suspect I’m jumping the gun in saying that. Check back with me in an hour.

Winner: Marion Cotillard, “La Vie en Rose”

Major surprise! “You truly rocked my life!” “Thank you life, thank you love. It is true there are some angels in this city.” What a great speech!

 

10:20—Returning from a bathroom break, I catch the tail end of a performance of “Falling Slowly,” from “Once.” Rats! I wanted to see that.

Instead, I get the montage of Best Picture winners—a reminder of how underwhelming so many of the choices have been over the years. Will this year’s winner be a proud addition to the canon, or a film that, years from now, makes viewers of a similar montage shrug their shoulders when a clip from it appears?

 

10:27

BEST FILM EDITING

Funny picture of Roderick Jaynes, editor for “No Country for Old Men”—a person who doesn’t exist.

Winner: “The Bourne Ultimatum”—which is cleaning up in the categories in which it’s nominated.

 

10:31—Honorary Oscar to Production Designer Robert Boyle

Long speech, but the guy’s nearly 100 years old and is more poised than most of the other presenters and award recipients tonight. Cut him some slack!

 

10:42

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

My wife has gone to bed, so no comment on Penelope Cruz’s dress. Me, I think Cruz is gorgeous, as always. She could wear a gunny sack, and I'd be fine with that.

Winner: “The Counterfeiters”

It’s the first Austrian film to win the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

 

10:45—The final Best Song performance, nicely done if a bit pat. So if you’re part of the “Enchanted” team, with three songs nominated in a category with five nominees, how disappointed will you be if your film doesn’t win an Oscar tonight?

The Oscar goes to “Falling Slowly,” from “Once”—a great song, a great movie moment, an outstanding film. Very, very gratifying.

 

10:56—How nice! Stewart calls back to the stage Marketa Irglova to give the acceptance speech she started to give for her song from “Once,” before she was cut off. “Hope connects us all,” she says. It’s a cliché, but the warmth of the moment conquers all.

 

10:58

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Great work all around this year. Tough to pick a winner here.

Winner: Robert Elswit, “There Will Be Blood”

 

11:04—The “In Memorium” feature ends with a lingering shot of Heath Ledger. Ingmar Bergman, meanwhile, gets a two-second shot sandwiched between two other industry folks near the end of the segment, and only after the segment notes the passing of several Hollywood agents. Sigh.

 

11:08—BEST SCORE

Winner: “Atonement”! But will it, like “Babel” last year, have to settle for a victory in this category only?

 

11:12—BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FEATURE

Presented from Iraq!

Winner, “Freeheld”

That woman’s expression—shocked delight—as she heads to the podium says it all, doesn’t it?

 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Winner, “Taxi to the Dark Side”

 

11:20—OK, it’s been over an hour since I asked you to check in and see if I held to my notion that the show was well paced. And I had, until they just said that the Original Screenplay awards remain. Which means Best Director remains. And maybe another honorary Oscar, or a montage or two, before the Best Picture award. I’m hangin’ in.

 

11:24

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Winner: “Juno”

You know things are strange when I notice how, ummm, strange a dress looks on someone. That leopard-print thing—don’t know what to say about that.

So “Juno” can’t be counted out as Best Picture.

 

11:29—BEST ACTOR

Winner: Daniel Day Lewis, “There Will Be Blood”

 

11:40—BEST DIRECTOR

Winner: Joel and Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”

 

Only one more award to go.

 

11:45—BEST PICTURE

Hey, it’s 15 minutes before midnight! Way to go, Gil Cates, or whoever produced this year’s telecast.

Winner: “No Country for Old Men”

 

Big night for the Coen Brothers. An excellent film that forthrightly addresses evil, and the presence, or lack, of God in the lives of its characters. It’s a challenging film, but a dark one.