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Into every Oscar night some magic must fall.
Here are my 10 favourite bits of the 85th Annual Academy Awards. Take a look:
Shirley Bassey - Goldfinger
The so-called 'big' celebration of Fifty Years Of James Bond films turned out to be a damp squib, with a short Halle Berry intro and a very pedestrian 007 montage, but then the big gun stepped out.
Dame Shirley Bassey, 76, walked out and owned the stage, crooning Goldfinger like only she can.
The audience rose to its feet, and -- for a minute or two there -- everything seemed perfect.
Otherwise awful host Seth Macfarlane hit a rare peak during the show when he introduced veteran actor and Oscar winner Christopher Plummer.
The spotlight cut to a pair of doors and a uniformed guard burst through, panicking that Von Trapp had vanished.
It was a terrific Sound Of Music reference and a lovely moment, and Plummer walked out to very warm applause indeed.
Need I say much?
Sandra Bullock, presenting the award for Best Editing, seemed to find the Oscar envelope surprisingly tenacious, leading to a flurry of facial contortions that will surely live on in animated history.
One of the warmest scenes of the night came when Hoffman and Theron took the stage to present, but Hoffman veered off-teleprompter to complement Theron on her performance earlier in the evening.
"You're a good dancer," Dustin exclaimed, with Charlize endearingly bashful about it.
Seth Macfarlane might not be a great Oscar host, but he is a fine singer, and parts of this song -- where he paid homage to the hardest working bosoms in show business, as well as to MrSkin.com -- were terrific.
To quote:
"Kristen Stewart, we saw your boobs in On the Road
And in Monster we saw Charlize Theron's
Helen Hunt, we saw them in The Sessions
And Scarlett Johansson, we saw them on our phones.
Jessica Chastain, we saw your boobs in Lawless
Jodie Foster in The Accused
Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry
Penelope Cruz in Vanilla Sky
And Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures and Jude
And Hamlet and Titanic
And Iris and Little Children
And The Reader
And whatever you're shooting right now.
Acting veteran Tommy Lee Jones scowled quite grumpily through the Golden Globes, enough to make him notorious for not smiling.
The Oscars opened with Macfarlane calling the show "the quest to get Tommy Lee Jones to laugh" but the actor gamely started chuckling, looking more than amused and glad to smile.
Another rare Macfarlane gem was this line about how Daniel Day-Lewis is just the latest in a long line of illustrious actors to have played Abraham Lincoln, but there's only one actor who "really got into Lincoln's head."
Pause.
"John Wilkes Booth."
There were gasps and the joke was risky, but this is how much Macfarlane should have been pushing all night.
Kickstarter, for those not in the know, is a site that helps projects find seed money from willing contributors who share in the initial costs.
There are a lot of fascinating Kickstarter startups out there, but Inocente made history today by being the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar.
It won for Best Documentary (Short Subject) and this is a major win for the site.
Maybe the Oscars, like life, just need more Bondgirls.
Or Bond themes.
All the nominees for Best Original Song didn't get to sing on stage, but Adele got her moment and shone: belting out the song live even better, and more evocatively, than she did in the opening credits of Sam Mendes' film.
For a minute there we almost forgave the Academy for not giving Roger Deakins the Cinematography prize.
She tripped on her way to pick up Best Actress. Amazing, this girl.
Can do it all. (And get away with it.)