A lot of the show had that same 'wait, why?

and Italy's The Great Beauty took Best Foreign-Language Feature; these awards weren't exactly preordained, but neither did they really surprise anybody.I was more surprised when 20 Feet From Stardom took Best Documentary over The Act Of Killing. Yes, 20 Feet From Stardom is entertaining and bouncy, but The Act Of Killing is a work of art, and the Documentary category is one of the slots that's often able to reward genuinely exceptional filmmaking. Not this year, though … but 20 Feet's win did lead to the sight of Darlene Love belting out a gospel tune from the stage of the Dolby Theater, triggering the evening's first truly enthusiastic standing ovation.

Yeah, about the show itself. Ellen DeGeneres was a game host, her self-effacing manner nicely undercutting the enormous self-regard of the evening … but after the first 90 minutes, she was just another drag on the running time, fumbling through an undercooked bit about serving pizza to the hungry people in the front row and taking a selfie with her Samsung phone in the night's second most awkward piece of product placement. The first was the shameless pimping of The Wizard Of Oz – now available on Blu-ray in a restored 75th-anniversary edition, folks!  with Judy Garland's famous and less famous children being serenaded with a rendition of Over The Rainbow by Pink. Good song, good performance, entirely unnecessary to the evening.

A lot of the show had that same 'wait, why?" quality: the evening was organized around a theme of heroes that never quite gelled, but allowed for two lengthy montages of movies that somehow typified heroism – the first built around films based on true stories, the second on superheroes that found a way to include clips from Jaws, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Back To The Future. Maybe the night's real hero was Steven Spielberg.It certainly wasn't Rob Ford, who spent the hours before the Oscars wandering around Hollywood Blvd. in the general vicinity of the Dolby Theater'plex, hoping people would recognize him and buying a cheap tuxedo for a cameo appearance on Jimmy Kimmel's post-Oscar show.Is this the first time in the entire evening we have heard someone refer to God and thank Him?