Oscar Liveblog, Part IV: The Surprisingly Fast Third Hour

• Robert Altman is from Kansas City -- my hometown man.
• Nadia: Aishwarya Rai. Will: the love child of Russell Crowe and Ben Stiller. Jill: . . . This is hard. Jill has this heart-shaped face and really amazing curly hair. I shall think on it.
• Yes! It’s time for the pimp song!
• They’ve changed the word “bitches” in the song to “wenches.” Hee. They're pirate pimps!!!
• Lisa Yee: Michelle Yeoh. Lisa’s in Missouri at my grandfather’s Children’s Literature Festival right now, actually, and my mom met her today and told me she was (I quote) “a nice young lady.”
• Woo-hoo! The pimp song won! That’s awesome.
• Jennifer Garner looks good for a woman who had a baby two months ago. “Alias” is back on April 19, btw, with Lena Olin, Michael Vartan and Greg Grunberg in the episode where Syd gives birth, and dear Bradley Cooper will be on the week after that, leading up to the series finale on May 24.
• The memorial montage. A moment of silence, please.
  
• And commercial.
• I want to see “Paradise Now.” Also “Sophie Scholl.” That would be an interesting double feature about morality and taking action.
• Two or three people now have read out what must be the instructions on the TelePrompTer about their time limit. They get 45 seconds, apparently.
• Poor Hilary Swank—she and her husband are separated. But oh, the celebrity I really feel sorry for right now is Sheryl Crow: split from Lance Armstrong and breast cancer.
• Such good performances in the Best Actor category this year. I haven’t seen “Capote,” but David Straithairn was so lean and restrained, and Heath Ledger eaten up from the inside . . .
• Wait, we’re on Best Actress already? Three hours, and we’re almost done? Incredible.
• I think it’s significant that the scene they chose for Keira Knightley was one that actually used Jane Austen’s language as opposed to Deborah Whatserface's dreck.
• Ah, I had Reese Witherspoon down and then I changed it at the last moment too. I liked her performance, but I don’t know, she always seemed so perky . . . Maybe the nature of the role, that June Carter didn’t seem to have darkness, but I felt there were acting depths either not present in the writing or not plumbed by her performance. Hmm.