Pro: Fabulous stage. Some good one-liners from Crystal, especially in the apparently improvised "what celebs in the audience are thinking" segment. Hipper orchestra. Few horrible outfits aside from Cameron Diaz and Erykha Badu. Longer clips of the nominated pics and performances -- major points for that. And a general sense of moving things along between segments, unlike last year's seemingly endless waits; having the offstage Peter Coyote announce many of the presenters via voice-over certainly helped.

Con: I'm probably in the minority, but I'd rather not have the behind-the-scenes shots after each award, and minimally if at all during the ceremonies anyway--it takes away from the splendor somewhat. (Save it for Meredith Vieira and the insanely, shriekingly annoying Tyra Banks.) Crystal was better than Whoopi, but not better enough; time for Robin Williams, if you ask me. And the length...

OK, it was still four hours long, even with the changes. That's because they made the wrong changes. Yes, they got rid of the dance number, but they need to eliminate the pointless montages. Young Actors montage? History in the Movies montage? Scrap 'em. Liked the "song nominees" sequence, though. Also: Billy should have done either the opening montage (but shorter) or the song parodies, but not both -- it was 20 minutes into the show before his shtick was finished.

Not sure whether I liked having all the songs at once or not. Saved a little time, I guess, but it's nice to use a song to break up long stretches of lesser awards.

I still think the five picture nominees should be shown at once, right before the winner is read. It's nice to bring up five big stars to each introduce one of the nominated pics, but boy does that eat up time.

And one final thought: Isaac "Haze" certainly had an appropriate last name, didn't he? :-)

-- Trip