Oscars. Here's the news.

First off, the biggest surprise of the night was Adrien Brody (The Pianist) beating out Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York) and Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) in the Best Actor category. It was long considered either Day-Lewis or Nicholson's to win. And Brody went up on stage and gave a long kiss to Halle Berry, something I believe we'd all like to have the opportunity to do. Then his speech was great, and even-keeled about the war (safe return, swift resolution)...which is not what...

Michael Moore did after his documentary Bowling For Columbine won (which is a great documentary by the way). He said, "We live in a time and age where we have a president elected through fictitious results and he's going to war for fictitious reasons. Shame on you Mr. Bush, we are against this war," and I'm paraphrasing, but he was treated to many boos (and some cheers of course), and speaking of cheers...

Steve Martin is the best host Oscar has ever had. He was awesome for the 2000 Oscars and he was awesome again for the 2002 version. Singling out Mickey Rooney, who was way back in the back of the auditorium, he said, "I wish we could have gotten you a better seat, but Vin Diesel is here." And then he started talking about actor salaries and how they would have to start penny-pinching, "We should do what Tom Cruise does. He takes a million dollars and sets it aside each week. And by the end of the year, he has a nice little nest egg." There were plenty more great jokes. Also surprising...

Roman Polanski won for Best Director (The Pianist), and couldn't be there because he had sex with a 13-year-old in 1977 and has been out of the country since. I wasn't surprised that Chicago won for best picture, but after Brody, the adapted screenplay, and Polanski won for The Pianist, I was kind of surprised best picture didn't go to that movie. Which makes the third instance in the last five years in which the best director award did not match with the best picture, long an almost guarantee at the Oscars before 1998. (In '98, Spielberg won for Saving Private Ryan and then Shakespeare in Love won BP, in '99 Sam Mendes directed American Beauty and those matched, '00 Steven Soderbergh won for Traffic but Gladiator won BP, in '01 Ron Howard directed A Beautiful Mind and they matched, and now '02)

So there's Oscar roundup.

Other major awards...Original screenplay went to Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her, Catherine Zeta-Jones won Best Supporting Actress for Chicago, Chris Cooper BS Actor for Adaptation, and Nicole Kidman BA for The Hours.