So that was the 79th annual Academy Awards, wafting over the horizon in a ripple of applause and a rustle of taffeta. Helen Mirren won, just as everyone said she would. Forest Whitaker won, just as everyone said he would. And Martin Scorsese was finally honoured with a gold statuette of his own, some 31 years after he should have won for Taxi Driver. Just as everyone said he would be.
All of which made this year's Oscars the most predictable I can remember (and I include the 2004 event when Peter Jackson won pretty much everything and, in so doing, put the Ring in boring). Normally there are at least a few twists and turns, at least one major award that doesn't go to the bookies' favourite. Not this time. Even The Departed's last-gasp seizure of the best picture award had been widely tipped in the days leading up to last night's event.
So on the one hand the Academy Awards presentation was a whopping redundancy, and surely one of the least suspenseful productions that Hollywood has ever staged (Amistad included). And on the other, it largely got it right, particularly with regard to Scorsese.
I really do hope that Scorsese has never cared that he didn't have an Oscar. I hope that he judges his worth on different criteria to that. And yet the evidence suggests that the Academy Award did matter to him, and that he perhaps felt his career was not quite complete without it. So I'm glad he has the thing at last. I'm happy for his happiness. I just wish we hadn't had to sit through three hours of guff just to see him finally take the stage.
Read the full list of winners here. Read a minute-by-minute account of the ceremony here.
