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I fall in line with the majority on the Good side of the ledger. Shirley Bassey’s surprise appearance to sing Goldfinger was spectacular. You may not have realized this while watching her perform, but Bassey is 76-years-old. Don’t you hope to look that great as a septuagenarian? A bit later, Adele belted out a sublime version of one of the best songs of 2012, Skyfall. Fittingly on a night that celebrated half a century of James Bond, Adele and Bassey both stole the show. A debate about which of them was better would probably get heated enough to split the Avengers again.

I was also a huge fan of the acceptance speech for Inocente. Let’s not all pretend to have watched the winner for Best Documentary Short. Instead, we will focus on the meat of the subject. The girl who is the focal point of the story was an undocumented homeless 15-year-old at this time last year. Thanks to the vision of Andrea and Sean Fine – and $52,527 from Kickstarter – she is now the face of an Academy Award winning story. The Fines never lost sight of this accomplishment during the acceptance speech, imploring a billion viewers to patronize the arts more. I was heartened that the crowd shots of Amy Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman showed them smiling broadly about a topic I am sure is dear to their hearts. Adams worked her way up through Colorado dinner theater (and Hooters), if you didn’t know.

I was also a huge fan of Grant Heslov (you know, Arpid from The Scorpion King!) quipping about his attractiveness. Working with Ben Affleck and George Clooney every day would require someone to sustain their self-confidence via any means necessary, after all. I also loved Affleck’s delivery of his acceptance speech at a speed almost fast enough to qualify him for membership in Alvin and the Chipmunks. Finally, I enjoyed writer Chris Terrio’s intensity in relaying in open terms how much Ben Affleck has meant to his career. The relationships people make with others are the best way to determine how likable celebrities are in real life. Affleck is clearly learning from Clooney in terms of emerging victorious in the Hollywood political game.

With regards to the awards themselves, my biggest takeaway is that the Academy felt the same way about the movies of 2012 that BOP’s staff did. There were many solid movies with memorable scenes and brilliant performances. None of them managed to separate themselves from the rest, which led to a split ballot. Consider that there are eight major categories each year, nine or ten when Best Animated Film and Best Foreign Language Film spill into Best Picture consideration.

Out of those ten categories, Amour won for Foreign Language Film and Brave won for Best Animated Feature. They were otherwise non-factors. In the other eight categories, Lincoln, Django Unchained and Argo all won twice while Les Miserables and Silver Linings Playbook emerged victorious in the other two categories. That is seven films splitting ten categories or five splitting eight categories. Simply stated, all of the awards bait movies of 2012 were viewed in generally equal terms.

While the smear campaign against Argo winning Best Picture is already well underway, I would argue that this criticism is misplaced. Here are the winners in the category in the 2000s with their Rotten Tomatoes scores in parenthesis: American Beauty (88%), Gladiator (77%), A Beautiful Mind (77%), Chicago (87%), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (94%), Million Dollar Baby (91%), Crash (75%), The Departed (93%), No Country for Old Men (94%), Slumdog Millionaire (94%), The Hurt Locker (97%), The King’s Speech (94%) and The Artist (98%).

Argo would finish third on this list under this metric with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 96%. Some people may not love it the way that they love say Return of the King or No Country for Old Men, but more critics enjoyed Argo overall. It is an unbelievable true story told very well and while it was only my ninth favorite film of the year, Argo is still undeniably one of the cinematic achievements of 2012. I suspect that if you rank the list above, an exercise I performed last week, you will realize that you like it better than most of the Best Picture winners of the 2000s as well.

Overall, the only metric that matters is eyeballs. We can talk about the specifics until we’re blue in the face (you probably think I already have), but Hollywood is a money industry. In that regard, this show was a smashing success. 40.3 million viewers watched, which is the second best total over the last six years. During that timeframe, the average number of viewers had been 37.4 million. The high point had come during The Hurt Locker/Avatar year of 2009 when 41.7 million watched. An almost 3 million viewer bump from average and a 1.1 million improvement from last year is a win for all involved. The combination of an unusual host and a rare amount of blockbusters nominated for Best Picture led to heightened interest.

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