American Oscar

by: Will Leitch, The Projector

Much of the pre-show discussion for this year's Oscars revolved around co-hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco. Sure, they're popular young movie stars who have been successful hosting "Saturday Night Live," but asking them to host the highest-profile live event in entertainment was a considerable risk. Ninety minutes into the show, you have to wonder whether it was a risk worth taking.

Melissa Leo's bleeped-out F-bomb during her acceptance of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar -- the first in Oscars history, the Academy confirmed to Variety -- nearly made up for the rambling nature of the rest of her speech. "I'm just shaking in my boots here," Leo said when she received her trophy. "I am kind of speechless. When I watched Kate [Winslet] two years ago it looked so much [expletive] easier." Backstage, Leo apologized for her language, saying: "I really don't mean to offend, and it's probably a very inappropriate place to use that particular word."

Kirk Douglas, looking healthier after his stroke than he did when he appeared on the show a few years ago, wringed some chuckles out of his protracted announcement of the award he eventually handed to Leo. Franco's joke about the technical award winners being "nerds" was a nice touch too, but the biggest laugh of the night might have been a cameo appearance by Franco's grandmother, pointing out that she just saw "Marky Mark."

Hathaway and Franco have certainly been game -- Hathaway is giving it her all; you half expect her to hold up an "Applause" sign and break into a tap-dance -- but there's a reason the show is usually hosted by comics. Hathaway got the hosts' biggest laugh with her "Brown Duck" character in the show's opening sequence -- in which the she and Franco

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