Another year, another Oscars. While previous years have seen highly polarizing debates over who deserves what award and who actually won what award, this years Oscars went relatively as expected. The closest thing to a “surprise” during this years telecast was The Artist claiming victory in the acting and directing category over George Clooney and Martin Scorsese, and Meryl Streep taking home the best actress award over The Help’s Viola Davis. Even still, none of those victories were quite upsets or could be defined as shocking. Streep had been nominated a record 17 times with this being her 3rd victory, and The Artist winning in every major category it was nominated (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor) in is more a testament to how weak this year for film has been then to how good The Artist actually was. Crystal shinned as host, conducting the ceremony better than what has been witnessed in the past few years, and provided the audience with plenty to laugh at. The evening saw Christopher Plummer take home the award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Beginners, making him the oldest Academy Award winner in history at 82 years old (2 years younger than Oscar herself). Much to the tune of Inception at last years awards, Hugo won 5 awards in smaller categories (cinematography, art direction, sound mixing, sound editing, visual effects), and split the claim for most awards of the evening with The Artist. While a relatively safe broadcast this year, the Oscars was definitely enjoyable with prerecorded sketches, an inspired performance by Cirque Du Soleil, and the return of Crystals popular bit “What Are They Thinking”. While the evening won’t be the topic of discussion past this week, I still feel like the Academy managed to put together a show that was enjoyable given the relatively bland films up for awards this year. Also, I would like to point out that the Ellen DeGeneres JCPenny ads that played throughout the broadcast are worth checking out for those of you that missed the broadcast.