Well, first things first. Of the twenty-four categories, I successfully predicted the winners of eleven. Not my best showing, to be sure, but I've done worse, and in a couple of cases the people I wanted but did not expect to win, won, so I'll count those as a moral victories.

There were some genuine surprises tonight, which is always nice. I don't think anyone foresaw Adrien Brody winning Best Actor. No one I know, at any rate. But hey, I can't complain. He was excellent in The Pianist. Not as good as Nicolas Cage, in my opinion, but pretty damn good nonetheless.

And then there's Roman Polanski. Even Entertainment Weekly didn't see that one coming, and they're usually pretty good with their predictions. But again, I'm pleased he won. Granted, the man's a pig, but of all the Best Picture nominees, The Pianist was the one that moved me the most, and I think Polanski deserves a lot of credit for that. Plus, it was fun to see the look on Harrison Ford's face as he took in the audience reaction. I know he had a great joke floating in his head. (My reaction: "Accepting this award on behalf of Mr. Polanski is the Los Angeles District Attorney's office.")

Eminem's win in the Best Song category was astonishing. Who would have thought the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would be hip enough to vote "Lose Yourself" as the best song? Granted, it was the best of the nominated songs by a long way, but that's never stopped the academy before. And it was worth it just to see how Luis Resto was dressed. Oy. One question: why did that song need three songwriters? There's no tune!

The last of the upsets was The Pianist taking the Adapted Screenplay award. Of the five nominees, that seemed to be the least likely winner. It's so straightforward!

I'm not sure what to make of Michael Moore's little outburst. On the one hand, good on him for for inviting the other nominees up on stage with him -- classy -- and for speaking his mind. On the other hand, the way he spoke it was incredibly graceless. Come on, Moore, you just won a Writer's Guild award! Surely you could have done better than that. (There was one good line though: "And any time you've got the Pope and Dixie Chicks against you...") Well, at least he took off his baseball cap.

The last thing I have to say for now is that I was impressed that the Academy had the good grace to allow Conrad W. Hall to accept his father's award. It would have been easy for them to just fall back on their rule about not allowing persons other than the award winners to accept the Oscar, but they took the high road and did the right thing.

More in the morning.