2002-03-26 | 3:44 p.m.

corduroy licorice was his own worst enemy. he'd send letters of complaint about himself to his boss at his restaurant job and would even spit in his own food.

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oscar watched 2002

so the results are in...the upsets, the victories, the fashion boo-boos, the bodacious tatas (uma, i'm talking to you).

the show was pretty boring over all. one day, i will produce an academy awards show. i know just how i'd do it. first of all, no musical numbers (sorry, debbie allen). second of all, longer segments from the nominated films. it was cool that this year they let each director say one whole sentence about their work.

as far as the fashion, no one looked all that. the female tresses in general looked eh. cameron diaz and helen hunt's "just back from the beach" dos looked like poo to me. halle barry's dress was fitting for a best actress award winner...elegant and sexy. i'd award best dressed and best tressed to reese witherspoon. her black lace and soft curls were quite becoming.

i got a kick out of darling owen wilson standing warily back from the podium as if it was a shanghai noon rattler. his pre-taped bit with ben stiller was fun, but it would've been cooler if they'd done it live. writer, actor, director...chicken? whoopi was ok, but i still prefer steve martin or billy crystal as host.

my two complaints of the evening would be against julia roberts (could you make the "best actor" moment any more about you?) and halle "waterworks" berry. i mean, she did a great job in monster's ball and has come a long way in her career, but she gushed a bit much. let's just say sally field owes her a favor. berry's sobbing "oh my god! oh my god!" way topped field's "you like me! you really like me!" she also forgot to thank billy bob. hmpf! even though roberts and berry bugged, i had to remind myself...these are actresses we're talking about. professional actresses. it's their birthright to spaz publically.

i was bummed ameli� didn't win best foreign film and i can't believe the garbled gosford park won best original screenplay. it was nice to see moulin rouge get some well-deserved recognition, even though it didn't bag the big wins. i guess it was an honor just to be nominated (as they say).

the best parent award would have to go to will smith and jada pinkett-smith who left the event to come to the aid of their ailing daughter. evidently she had fallen victim to oscar fever.

seeing woody allen was the highlight of the program for me. i do lurve the woodman so. his films made me fall in love with new york city before i even met it. i didn't realize that he'd never attended an academy awards show before...even though he's been nominated so often. what a tribute that he'd schlep to the city that gives him nervous indigestion to represent his hometown.

according to eonline.com, backstage with the press woody explained how he'd composed his speech: "i didn't write it out, but i thought it out in my shower--for about two weeks; i always feel better in my shower."

the other class act of the evening was denzel washington. i really enjoyed his calm-cool-collected acceptance speech. his playful joke towards poitier was the best tribute the legendary actor got that night: "forty years i've been chasing sidney, and what do they do? they give him one on the same night. [but] there's nothing i'd rather do, sir."

backstage, he was just as cool. another eonline.com report:

"for the record, reporters made more of the black-actor-wins-an-oscar angle than washington. he invoked the name of tunesmith randy newman more than once (as when he asked whether newman lost 16 times in a row before winning tonight, was that racism?) and helped a newspaper reporter with the wording on his lede: 'say an actor won.'"

damn straight, denzel. damn straight.

berry's insistence on flashing the race card and the cameramen's panning of blacks in the audience during black-related moments was a bit annoying. of course, we should celebrate the fading of prejudices and inequalities over the last 50 years, but it ain't like taliban rule was just lifted here, yo. i really enjoyed andrew, king of diaryland's sharp-witted take on it:

"all i have to say is that it's really nice that a black woman finally won the best actress oscar, maybe one day a black woman will host the show."

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