Johnny Carson and Bob Hope Spinning in Their Graves

We've been away for a few days, so we're seriously behind on our favorite stories of the past week. First up, our impressions of the 2011 Oscars.
.

(anne hathaway and james franco open the show, and the horror begins... it's ironic that franco is recording the show to remember the moment, because everyone else in hollywood is desperately trying to forget it)

.We love James Franco. How much do we love James Franco? Are you kidding? We recently named him our East Village Afternoon's Sexiest Man of 2010, and we'd gladly lodge a couple of fingers under a boulder in a rock crevice if that's what we had to do to spend some time with him. But as Oscar host, boy, did Franco suck. In fact, it might possibly have been the worst Oscar hosting job of all time. Now, in hindsight, David Letterman and Whoopie Goldberg's notorious fails as Oscar hosts don't seem quite so bad, do they? Even Goldberg's misplaced Oscar fart jokes were better than Franco's "Walking Dead"-like presence.
.

(even dressing in drag couldn't save these two)

.It's not as if Franco doesn't have a fun personality, we've seen it on display on other television programs, but for some reason, he chose to dial it down for this gig. Dialing down is one thing, having your personality go into cardiac arrest is something entirely different. And poor Anne Hathaway, she wasn't much better. She was trying so hard to have fun and make the show "young and hip" that she ended up trying too hard. She seemed desperate... but can you blame her? She must have sensed she was on a sinking ship, and she was frantically trying to plug the hole.
.
(hathaway, franco and the night's winners celebrate the end of the show, but their cheering was nothing compared to the millions of Americans who were down on their knees, thanking jesus the nightmare had ended)
.
Franco and Hathaway were so bad, in fact, that we wouldn't be surprised if their Oscar hosting stints even affect their chances at future film roles. That might sound like a far-fetched theory, but remember that casting people, producers and directors are highly influenced by what they see in front of them, and what they saw on Oscar night was pretty frightening.
.
Everybody's playing the game of trying to come up with the perfect Oscar hosts for future shows. In our opinion, there is one very clear, obvious choice: the team of Tina Fey and Steve Carell. Come on, you know it's true.
.
(christian bale, natalie portman, melissa leo, colin firth)
.
We correctly predicted the four acting Oscar winners and the Oscar for Best Picture, but it wasn't difficult. Nowadays, one needs only to slightly pay attention to all the pre-Oscar Awards shows and pre-Oscar critics' awards to know who is going to win. There was some grumbling that "The Social Network" didn't win when it had almost completely swept all the critics' awards, but one must remember the most important fact when predicting the Oscars: Oscar voters are not critics.