LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Good Bob Hope tribute. Did you catch the audience shot of Mickey Rooney when Tom Hanks was doing the intro? And of Julie Andrews? They were probably as close as the director could come to someone in Hope's generation who was present and recognizable. It's kinda sad there are so few "great older film comedians" alive.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Best Supporting Actress, Renée Zellweger. Popular choice.

They'd talked of not cutting off acceptance speeches so rapidly this year. So far, no one seems crowded, and it's a distinct improvement.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Best Costume Design, Lord of the Rings. I'm four for four in predictions so far, but they've all been pretty easy ones.

A friend of mine once said that he was most interested in the "non-star" Oscars because you're seeing people who ordinarily don't get applauded, and you're seeing them at what is probably the absolute high point of their lives. Tom Hanks may have many thrills and honors that will mean more to him but how often does an Art Director have the whole world watching him?

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Robin Williams delivers the second gay marriage joke of the evening and the second jab at Michael Eisner. There will be more of both.

Best Animated Feature, another non-surprise: Finding Nemo. My guess is that if you'd locked all the voters in a theater and made them watch all the nominated films and vote their consciences, The Triplets of Belleville would have won.

I don't care for these "instant replays" going into commercial, like showing us Tim Robbins' win again. To me, if you're going to do a live show, keep everything in real time.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Paul Dini just e-mailed that he found Crystal's monologue more excruciating than sitting through Mel Gibson's new movie. And "DneColt" thinks the best joke so far was Michael Moore getting squashed by the elephant, which I agree was pretty funny.

Art Direction Oscar to Lord of the Rings. I'm two for two on predictions. These winners are all wearing bowties…first ones of the evening. Was there a memo they missed or something?

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Good opening by Mr. Crystal. Great lyrics. The cameraguys missed a lot of audience shots but it probably wasn't their fault. That Kodak Theater looks like a monster for this purpose, which is surprising since this event is one of the main reasons it was built. (The year Letterman hosted, one of the backstage points of friction was that Dave was inserting monologue jokes at the last minute and expecting the director to get certain audience shots that couldn't be arranged on such short notice.)

Best Supporting Actor, Tim Robbins. No surprise. Good speech. Good audience shot of Susan Sarandon. And you could hear the exhales that he said nothing controversial. That is, unless you're in favor of violent abuse.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — "This morning, Peter Jackson woke up with Seabiscuit's head in his bed."

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — That's right: When someone on stage mentions the war in Iraq, cut to Tim Robbins in the audience.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Three minutes in: First Gigli joke.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — An early trend: Neckties instead of bowties.

And you get the idea that a lot of those stars really don't like that guy prowling around the audience interviewing them? It's like you can see them thinking, "Hey, I was willing to put up with this on the way in. Does he have to be inside?"

Aw, they didn't get Neil Ross back as announcer. He did such a great job last year.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — You know what I miss during these Oscar arrivals? I miss Edy Williams. There was a span of maybe five years there where she used to show up each year in something outrageous and revealing. One year, I think she was in a leopard-skin bikini with a live leopard on a leash. I don't know that she ever got inside or even tried to, but the reporters would flock to cover her entrance, stampeding over Jimmy Stewart and Debbie Reynolds to get to Edy. It was almost all she was known for but it was, in a way, enough. One year, the night after the Oscars, Johnny Carson made a comment on the air, something like: "Poor Edy…she still doesn't know it's over." Not necessarily because of that, I don't think we ever saw Edy walk down the red carpet again. Or wear it.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — I had to flee my post during the pre-game activities. Hearing just a little too much about what Naomi Watts is wearing. But we're back and ready to hear the snide references to Gigli. Bill Murray is discussing his suit and being interviewed by the kind of host he used to parody on SNL.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Just set the TiVo to record tonight's Oscarcast. On first generation TiVos, this was a problem because if the schedule said a show was three hours, that's how long TiVo would record. Now, you can pad, and I padded this recording by an hour. I don't expect it to run that long but in years past, I padded 20 or 30 minutes and it sometimes wasn't enough.

As I recall, the last few Oscar shows have come in relatively close to the announced three hours. It seems like we've moved past the day when the producers would say it would last that long, knowing full well it would be more like four. A theory used to exist in the teevee business that it was preferable to lie about the length of shows that ran late at night. One local Los Angeles station used to run a late movie that started at 11:00 PM and they always claimed "90 minutes" in the TV listing even though the movie, after commercial insertions, was always going to be an hour longer than that. (And the station knew it. If you looked closely, the start time of the next program was always around 1:30 AM.) The idea here was that you'd be less inclined to tune in the broadcast if you knew in advance you wouldn't be getting to bed 'til 1:30.

The Oscars have this problem that they have to be live. This means programming for the West Coast and East Coast. When they were Monday night, the network and producers didn't want to start the show any earlier than 6 PM in the West because people would be coming home from work. This meant 9 PM in the East. Which meant that for folks on the right coast, it would mean staying up well past Midnight…some years close to 1 AM. So they'd lie and say it would be three hours when they knew it would be four. They figured that though Eastern viewers might get annoyed at not being able to go beddy-bye by 12, they weren't about to tune out then and miss the big awards. A few years back, the ceremony was moved to Sunday. Since fewer people work on Sunday, it seemed possible to start the show at 5:30 Pacific Time, giving them an 8:30 start in the East.

One thing to remember is that the Oscar broadcast really doesn't run long in the sense that its producers thought it was going to be a lot shorter. Most of it is rehearsed and timed…everything except the acceptance speeches, which are usually limited in time. Even if everyone rambled an extra minute, that wouldn't add an hour to the show. If they say it's going to run three and it's 45 minutes longer than that, it's because they decided to let it run long.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Joan and Melissa are now counting down the ten worst fashion statements at Oscars past. Sally Kirkland looks like she's wearing Scarlett O'Hara's drapes. Courtney Love is a slut. Dennis Rodman looks like the doorman at a gay Bed and Breakfast. (Hey, Joan: How do you know what the doormen look like at a gay Bed and Breakfast?) Pam Anderson and Elizabeth Hurley are "trailer trash all the way," apparently because their breasts are exposed. And Number Uno is Bjork's famous 2001 swan dress but at least Joan recognizes that it was intended as a joke. Joan knows about jokes because, rumor has it, she used to do comedy.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Just tuned in the E! Network and heard someone say something about predictions for tonight. Turns out, various fashion designers are predicting what the stars will be wearing tonight. For the men, that's easy. I always thought it was odd that regarding formal attire, the biggest sin a man could commit was to have his tux stand out, whereas for women the biggest sin was to dress like anyone else.

Alison Krauss is going to singing the nominated songs from Cold Mountain wearing a pair of shoes valued at two million dollars. The gent who designed them is calling this an "anti-Hollywood statement." Yeah, I can see that.

Joan and Melissa Rivers are counting down the "Top Ten" fashion statements from the years they've spent working the Red Carpet outside the Oscars. Their number one pick is Halle Berry in 2001 mostly because (Joan says) of how she tastefully displayed her breasts that year. Yeah, but were her shoes worth two million dollars?

It always amazes me how to some people, the Oscars are all about what the ladies are wearing. One year, I watched the ceremony at a Hollywood-type party where the consensus was that it was all a colossal disappointment. I agreed but not for the same reason as half the people there: The outfits weren't great, and the director had failed to give us a good look at them. This is why the transparent podium was invented.