If only Jared Leto had leaned a little more in.

1) Let’s start with the ceremony itself.  It ran way too long, it was full of slow spots, and it was almost painfully safe.  And yet, it was also fun to watch.  As opposed to Seth McFarlane, Ellen DeGeneres went out of her way to keep things positive and uncontroversial.  There’s a lot of political and social turmoil in the world right now but you wouldn’t know that from listening to any of Ellen’s jokes.

But you know what?  That’s okay.  Last night’s Oscar ceremony was 3 and a half hours of positive energy in an increasingly negative world and how can you complain about that?

2) This may be the first Oscar telecast that I can remember where there really weren’t any bad acceptance speeches.  (I could have done without the woman singing after Twenty Feet From Stardom won for Best Documentary but that’s mostly because I find gospel music to be tedious and everyone knows Stories We Tell should have been nominated and should have won.)  So, who gave the best acceptance speech?  I think it’s a 7-way tie between Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong’o, Matthew McConaughey, the two songwriters who won for Best Original Song, Spike Jonze, and Steve McQueen.

3) How adorable was Jared Leto last night?  Not only did he give a great acceptance speech but he also brought him mom to the ceremony to him!  How sweet!  I think I may have a new celebrity crush to go along with the Franco brothers, Michael Fassbender, Bradley Cooper, Ryan Gosling, and Idris Elba.

4) I enjoyed Pharrell’s performance, largely because it provided proof positive that I’m a better dancer than Meryl Streep.

5) I haven’t seen August: Osage County but, just judging from the clips they showed of Meryl and Julia Roberts in the film, I’m not regretting that decision.  It’s hard to judge a performance on the basis of a few seconds but both Meryl and Julia came across, in what I did see, as being painfully shrill.

6) I’m not a religious person but I did enjoy watching all the hipster douchebags having an online meltdown after McConaughey thanked God.  I haven’t seen them that scandalized since Clint Eastwood endorsed Mitt Romney.

7) A lot of people made some unkind comments about Kim Novak and the way she looked (and acted) during last night’s broadcast.  Well, you know what?  Kim Novak is 81 years old and she was directed by Alfred Hitchcock so, as far as I’m concerned, she can do whatever the Hell she wants.

8) I loved Penelope Cruz’s dress!  Penelope Cruz always reminds me a lot of my mom so I’m always happy to see her.

9) “Jim Carey” was briefly a trending topic on twitter, largely because everyone was misspelling Carrey.  That’s probably a bad sign, for an actor, when people can’t spell your name correctly.

10) For the second time in Academy history, Tyler Perry was a presenter.  That’s probably the closest Perry will ever get to winning an Oscar.

11) As far as my predictions went,  I got 18 out of 24 correct.  My mistake is that I assumed there would be more upsets than there actually were.  As a matter of fact, there really wasn’t a single upset this year.

12) I recently rewatched Blue Jasmine and I have to admit that I was a lot less impressed by Cate Blanchett’s performance the second time.  If anything, Sally Hawkins is really the one who held the film together.

13) A film directed by Woody Allen won an Oscar last night.  Has Ronan Farrow responded yet?

14) As far as the winners go, I can’t complain.  My favorite of the nominees was American Hustle but 12 Years A Slave is a great film as well.  I did get a little bored with Gravity winning every single technical award but then again, Gravity deserved its victories.

15) Of all the nominated performances, I think that Barkhad Abdi’s was the most underrated.  I think a lot of people are assuming that Abdi was simply playing himself.  Hopefully, he’ll get a chance to show more of what he, as an actor, is capable of doing.

16) I loved American Hustle but a lot of my fellow film blogger did not.  What I find interesting is that people go so overboard with the American Hustle hate, as if the film’s existence is a personal insult or something.  Seriously, let’s all grow up, okay?

17)  My BFF Evelyn’s review of the show is that U2’s performance of Ordinary Love put her to sleep and she never really woke back up.

18) As is tradition, I live-tweeted the Oscars and it was a lot of fun, even if my tweets weren’t quite as good this year as last year.  When I was asked who I was wearing for the Oscars, I replied, quite truthfully, “Victoria’s Secret” and gained a dozen new followers.

19) One very odd thing of note: essentially, a few hundred of the most outspokenly liberal people in America were all gathered in an auditorium together and yet, somehow, it was a very apolitical evening.  Jared Leto mentioned the people of Venezuela and Ukraine in his acceptance speech and Steve McQueen spoke out against slavery but otherwise, politics did not come up.

20) Now that this Oscar season is over, is it too early to start speculating about next year’s Oscar winners?  Of course not!  A lot of people seem to be excited about Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.  Myself, I’m curious to see what David Fincher will do with Gone Girl and whether or not the people at AwardsDaily will declare it to be the greatest film ever made without having seen it (which is typically their response to any movie directed by David Fincher).  And let’s not forget that Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel is opening in just a few more days.

The Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday morning (see the full list here) and, ever since, various movie bloggers and reviewers have been speculating about whether or not 12 Years A Slave is still the front-runner and why certain actors and films were nominated while others were ignored.

Now, as a semi-serious film blogger, how can I not look at all of these people engaging in foolish speculation and pompous pontification and ask myself, “Why not me?”  Seriously, if Sasha Stone and Jeff Wells can make a career out of being wrong year-after-year, why not me?

With that in mind, here are 12 random thoughts on the Oscar nominations.

1) There was one film that was popular with audiences but less so with critics that still seemed like it was a sure bet to get at least a few nominations.  And yet somehow, when the nominations were announced, its name was nowhere to be seen.  I’m talking, of course, about Pacific Rim.  How Pacific Rim failed to score nominations for either sound or visual effects is one of the great Oscar mysteries.

2) On a personal level, I was really disappointed that Sarah Polley’s brilliant Stories We Tell was not nominated for Best Documentary Feature.

3) Whatever else may be said about it, Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa will be forever immortalized in the Academy’s history books.  It was nominated for Best Makeup.

4) When it comes to Best Director, I predicted that Martin Scorsese would be snubbed and his spot would be taken by Spike Jonze.  Instead, Paul Greengrass was snubbed and Alexander Payne was nominated for Nebraska.  

If I had to make a prediction today, I would predict that Alfonso Cuaron is going to win the Oscar but Gravity probably won’t win best picture.  (That’s right — it’s Ang Lee and Life of Pi all over again.)

5) Speaking of predictions, I totally nailed Best Supporting Actress, correctly predicting that Sally Hawkins would be nominated and Oprah Winfrey would be snubbed.  So yay me!

6) There’s been a lot of speculation about why the Academy snubbed Oprah but was it really that surprising?  Lee Daniel’s The Butler was an aggressively safe and rather banal film, a fact that became even more obvious when it was compared against 12 Years A Slave.  Looking back over the past year, it’s obvious that most Oscar watchers decided early on that Oprah was an Oscar front-runner solely because she’s Oprah Winfrey.  Her victory was perceived as being predestined and the majority of the online film community were too  busy hopping on the bandwagon to actually realize that nobody was really that enthusiastic about either The Butler or Oprah’s performance.

7) After Meryl Streep gave her speech criticizing Walt Disney at the National Board of Review, a lot of people speculated that she may have either hurt her chances to be nominated for August: Osage County or that she may have hurt the chances of Emma Thompson and Saving Mr. Banks.  Not surprisingly, Awards Daily’s Sasha “I am a Genius” Stone took it upon herself to write a typically condescending post where she defended Meryl Streep, said the speech would not hurt Thompson’s chances, and that everyone but her was an idiot.

Well, I’m not going to speculate on whether Sasha was correct or not.  However, on Thursday morning, Meryl Streep was nominated for August: Osage County (a film that has, to be put it generously, received mixed reviews) while Emma Thompson was not.  Furthermore, Saving Mr. Banks was not nominated for Best Picture and Tom Hanks was not nominated for playing Walt Disney.

Now, to be honest, it’s tempting to say that this was all because of Meryl’s speech but that’s a rather simplistic way to look at it (which, of course, is one reason why a lot of people are saying just that).  The fact of the matter is that Saving Mr. Banks was a film made by Disney to primarily celebrate itself.  Regardless of how well-made the film may have been, it was still hard to escape the idea that it was essentially a commercial.

8 ) Incidentally, there were two films that I really did not want to have to see.  One was Philomena, because the commercials were kinda tedious and it looked like the type of film that all of my girlfriends would be like, “Oh Lisa, you would love this movie so much,” which would almost obligated me to watch it and try to find a reason to dislike it.  (Because nobody tells me what to like…)

The other was August: Osage County, largely because mainstream Hollywood always messes things up whenever they try to make a movie about the middle of the country.  I’ve lived in Oklahoma, I’ve got family in Oklahoma, and I’m bored with films about how much people in California and New York think that the rest of us suck.

However, thanks to the Oscar nominations, I’m now going to have to sit through both of them.  Hopefully, my instincts will be proven wrong and they’ll be turn out to be better than I am expecting.

9) I was really hoping that James Franco would somehow get nominated for Best Supporting Actor but sadly, it did not happen.  However, I was happy that Barkhad Abdi got nominated because he really was the best thing about Captain Phillips.

Consider this: Jonah Hill is now the most honored member of the cast of Superbad.

10) I was really surprised that neither Tom Hanks nor Robert Redford was nominated for Best Actor.  Leonardo DiCaprio deserves the Oscar but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bruce Dern win.  And I bet he’ll gives a great acceptance speech.

11) Going into the nominations, 12 Years A Slave was considered by most to be the front-runner.  After the nominations were announced, 12 Years A Slave suddenly looked a lot weaker.  While it was nominated in all of the major categories, it also failed to pick up nominations for some of the categories — like Cinematography and Sound — that it seemed like a natural for.  At the same time, American Hustle got all of the nominations it was expected to receive and a few unexpected ones as well.  12 Years A Slave is still a strong contender but, looking at the nominations, American Hustle seems to have the momentum.

12) Regardless of what wins in March, the best film of 2013 remains Upstream Color.