The scenes in Pig Latin were a bit much: "Babel"

I meant to post this last night, but Blogger had some kind of brain fart. Now I'm tired, so this won't take long.

First, some quick Oscar thoughts:

• Normally she annoys me, but Ellen DeGeneres -- I probably spelled that wrong -- wasn't bad. The unassuming stuff worked OK for the occasion. The choir dancing in the aisles, not so much.
• I also thought the Ferrell-Black-O'Reilly number was amusing, if uneven. Should have been some explanation for Ferrell's afro, though.
• A little surprised that Alan Arkin won, and wished he had a more natural speech. The "Little Miss Sunshine" screenwriter, though, was pretty good.
• Confession: We fast-forwarded through much of the second half of the program, and thank god. The thing was wayyyyy too long, wasn't it?
• As for "The Departed," I'm fine with it as Best Picture, I guess. But as much as a couple of my friends -- we'll call them "Dustin" and "Huey" -- will rip me for this, I'm still just a bit underwhelmed that this is the pic for which Scorsese gets his award. Oh well, it's something.

And now, the movie I thought would win but am glad didn't ...

"Babel" features four storylines in three countries in, oh, a bunch of different languages. Brad Pitt is bereft in North Africa. Some kids in that same area are in over the heads after a horrible act. A Latina nanny back in the U.S. makes a mistake with her two young charges. A Japanese teen desperately seeks comfort in bustling Tokyo. What on earth can these people from all corners of the world have in common? Oh, you'll see.

As you may have heard, it's a sprawling story a la last year's Oscar winner, "Crash." The link here isn't quite as good, and it's not like I thought "Crash" was anything amazing. While some of the performances are good -- the Japanese girl was better than the Latina nanny when it came to supporting actress noms -- the overall movie is merely OK.

In the end, the movie seemed to try too hard to deliver some great message, but there was more style than substance. Whereas "Crash" hit you over the head -- sing with me ... "Everyone is racist!" -- "Babel" isn't clear enough. Yeah, I definitely had a "That's it?" feeling when the credits rolled. And it's not because I had the subtitles off, either, smartass.