and giving people Oscars in the audience WAS disrespectful. Did Beyonce have to sing every song but one? Has Hollywood no more singers these days? What about Catherine Zeta-Jones, who used to sing with the Welsh National Opera and won an Oscar (in part) for singing? It turned the Oscars into a Beyonce concert....As to the winners, Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman were really no-brainers, but I was depressed to see the women win who did. Hilary Swank won an Oscar five years ago for playing a butch woman from the wrong side of the tracks, and here she plays the same kind of role and wins again. In between the two awards, her career has really come to nothing, because she is a terribly limited talent. Can she play an l8th Century French aristocrat? No -- but Michelle Pfeiffer can, brilliantly. Can Swank play a turn of the 20th-century suffragette? Nope -- Julia Ormond took every scene away from her in IRONJAWED ANGELS. Swank is a very contemporary American woman, masculine, and not really very attractive. She doesn't seem to have much depth or sophistication. If she can find other roles like these two, she can continue. Meryl Streep she ain't. Annette Bening really deserved to win, whether people liked BEING JULIA or not (I doubt many actually saw it, but it was a tour de force). And while I do admire the multi-talented Cate Blanchett, basically she was doing an imitation of Kate Hepburn; I don't think impersonations deserve Oscars. Virginia Madsen really deserved to win in that category. As to Best Director and Picture, AVIATOR was much more artistic, and Scorsese is to my mind a greater talent. But Eastwood has grown tremendously since his spaghetti western days, and he is popular in Hollywood. Doesn't justify a simplistic boxing movie winning, though.....Thanks for a chance to express my opinions.
