We're sure that Jon Stewart will have no problem shrugging off the reviews calling his hosting of the Oscars "too safe" or claiming that Hollywood doesn't "get" him, but no man can feel the sting of the Shaggy DA's rebuke and not be plunged into existential crisis:

Oscar party coverage continues with this NY Times report of Sean Young (of Blade Runner, being insane, and, more recently, guest spots on Reno 911 fame) using the confusion and excitement of Jennifer Aniston's arrival to gain entry into the ultra-exclusive Vanity Fair party:

Fox captured the online market for Adderal-abusing teens with its MySpace purchase, leading NBC Universal to pay $600 million to try and enslave the internet's female population by snapping up iVillage. [Variety]
Pick this one up, NBC, and the sins of Emeril and Good Morning Miami will be forgotten: NBC greenlights a pilot for Andy Barker, P.I., starring Andy Richter and co-written by Conan O'Brien, about an accountant who becomes a detective. [THR]
Jack Black joins Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Noah Baumbach's follow-up to The Squid and the Whale (the Best Picture of our hearts, not that it matters) for Paramount Classics. [Variety]
Phillip Seymour Hoffman gets his first post-Oscar gig (hopefully with his fancy new post-Oscar salary), starring with Laura Linney in The Savages for Fox Searchlight. [THR]
In case you weren't one of the chosen 130,000 few who got a screener—or even someone with $15 bucks to drop on the DVD— Crash will be re-released on 150 screens starting this Friday. [Variety]

After spending the last 24 hours or so self-inflicting paper cuts with a copy of the Crash script (the pages where Sandra Bullock is paranoid about her Mexican locksmith hurt the best) and seasoning the fresh wounds with a generous amount of table salt, we think we're ready to read some analysis about how Paul Haggis' little-race-fable-that-could pulled of its upset. Sure, you can blame actors, who were targeted with many of the 130,000 screeners the studio sent out, and who represent 22% of the Academy's voting members. But credit Lionsgate's Tom Ortenberg for his Rovian (this year, a better choice than the excess of a Weinsteinesque blitz) campaign strategy. Says The Envelope:

Two Washington Post staff writers were granted golden tickets to both the Vanity Fair and Elton John Oscar parties, and take us along on their Roald Dahlesque adventures. At VF they spot Madonna ("...she was heard to say 'oy' after experiencing a press photobarrage going in"), Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller sprawled on couches, J-Lo begging Marc Anthony to dance with her (he does not), Paul Haggis being gracious at a urinal (next movie: "Flush?"), and an affable, smoking Joaquin Phoenix; at Elton's: a bored George Lucas, alone but for his security guards, Pamela Anderson, and a "sea of women with Duck Face," including the world's reigning duck-faced monarchs, Amanda Lepore and Lisa Rinna. Spirits overall were high; but there's always the exception:

These pics from a pre-Oscar party remind us of a happier, simpler time, before Crash cruelly totaled the dreams of gay cowboy fans everywhere, and when a brave Jake Gyllenhaal, perhaps knowing that this was George Clooney's year, resigned himself to getting totally shitfaced and partying his ass off with some pals.

Keep in mind that there are two sides to every story as we all giggle at the jarring juxtaposition of "Yanni" and "domestic dispute": Yanni told the cops that his girlfriend kicked him and he may have injured his finger (we really wanted it to be "keyboard pinky," but there was no indication of such). How might you react if you thought you might lose a finger, thus leaving the future of New Age synthesizer music in the accursed hands of John Tesh? Yeah, we thought so.

Once Jack Nicholson cracked the Seventh Seal and read the words that ushered in Armageddon (we can't even bring ourselves to retype them), things seemed pretty bleak. But while we merely sat and waited for the Four Horsemen of the Hacky Apocalypse to gallop through our party and slaughter us like stuck pigs while we waited in the bathroom line, others were less passive about their post-Crash victory fate (warning: link very NSFW):

· Oscar Beat fills us in on what was going on backstage: "Owen Wilson gets the award as the most flirtatious celebrity. He spent his time in the wings chatting with one of the trophy presenters, while his brother Luke watched a monitor." [Oscar Beat]
· Movies.com's Oscar Blog pins Team USA's 2010 Vancouver medal hopes on one lone little green-unitarded Jew. [Movies.com]
· The Reeler also reviews the livebloggers, only his goes into greater detail, and without, you know, the hangover blur. [The Reeler]
· For some reason, the folks at MSNBC.com really wanted William Hurt to win Best Supporting Actor, but they redeem themselves by hating Crash as much as we do. [MSNBC.com]
· Even the Wonkette boys are in on the action! Wait 'til you hear them dish on Jennifer Garner and her Michael Kors gown. [Wonkette]
· The Carpetbagger stumbles back to the Sofitel after an evening of wrestling Micha Barton for one of the Vanity Fair party In n' Out burgers. (She's heartier, and hungrier, than she looks.) [The Carpetbagger]
· The Yahoo Movies blog likens Three 6 Mafia's win to "watching the Wu-Tang Clan crash a Bar-Mitzvah." In fact, it's nothing like that. [Yahoo! Movies]

· The Wadsworth Theatre hosts Reel Talk with critic Stephen Farber, who screens Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School. A Q&A providing any further illumination you require about moviemaking and/or ballroom dancing will follow with filmmakers Randall Miller and Jody Savin.
· Author Matt Madden signs 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style at Book Soup. There are, in fact, 100 ways to tell a story, but the final way is revealed only to those willing to sign up for thousands of dollars in personality tests.
· Music round-up: The Lashes with the Glass Family at Spaceland; or Matt Pond PA and Youth Group at the Trouabdour.

A Defamer operative claims to know what set off Tom Hanks' mysterious, expletive-filled tirade at the Oscars last night:

A Defamer operative much better connected than we are (of course, your average set PA has more juice than we do) snagged invites to both the Oscar pre-parties thrown by ICM's Ed Limato and CAA's Bryan "George Clooney's Oscar Date" Lourd. It seems that Limato's shindig skewed a little old, while Lourd's, as per usual, attracted Hollywood's biggest names with its grade-A-quality baby-eating buffet. Reports our partygoer:

The jury appears to still be out on Jon Stewart's Oscar host performance last night, with some feeling he juggled all the necessary elements to make for a decent, if safe, showing, and others feeling that, well, he sucked the big one. Regardless on where you stood, it was hard to deny that there was an underlying lack of fundamental Stewart love in the room last night. Take for instance the above reaction shot to one of his less-inspired comedic riffs: After mentioning that this year heralds a "return to glamour," Stewart notes that it's a huge improvement over last year's theme, "Night of a Thousand Sweatpants." (In his writing staff's defense, the quip does manage to completely avoid the subject of Dick Cheney, hunting, or shooting people in the face). We dissect the celebrity reaction, above, in decreasing order of fake enjoyment: 1. Charlize Theron: Lips pursed, jaw clenched, eyes angry. From a distance, could be confused with an actual smile. Close up, she appears to be fantasizing about what drain-opening solvents would cause the most internal damage to host Stewart. 2. Matt Dillon: Not a smile, but not entirely unamused. Oblivious, more than anything: Off in some far away place known only as "Oscar Winner, Matt Dillon Land." 3. Ludacris. Thoroughly unamused and doesn't care who knows it. Actively frowning. Thinking to self how Stewart's sweatpants jokes wouldn't even cut it at the Vibe Awards.

UPDATE: Mystery solved?

Unless you're Paul Haggis, we have no idea why you'd be Googling this particular phrase. But it does take the sting out of last night's troubling upset (read: nope, not even a little) to know that the search engine gods feel our pain.

Maybe a clue as to why Crash beat Brokeback Mountain last night can be found in the Oscars' ratings themselves: The audience for the "gay Oscars" was down significantly from last year, making it the second-lowest rated Oscars in history, behind only the year Chicago arguably a gayer movie than Brokeback, Capote and Transamerica combined took top honors. Could The Gays be ratings poison for Oscar?

Variety thinks Jon Stewart played it "safe" and "right down the middle" by not going too political or biting the industry hand that fed him. To be fair, he didn't have anyone as appealing as Jude Law to kick around like Chris Rock did last year. [Variety]
Ang Lee, like pretty much everyone with taste, was shocked that Crash beat Brokeback: "I was backstage enjoying the buildup I was familiar with: the writers (winning), then me (winning). It was a surprise, frankly. But congratulations to the 'Crash' filmmakers." [THR]
Crash's win gives Lionsgate its first-ever Oscar. Pardon us if we're not exactly popping champagne corks on their behalf, as that Best Picture fiasco probably cost us our Oscar pool. Thanks, LG! [Variety]
Everybody works during pilot season: Blair Underwood in CBS drama Company Town, Mena Suvari in CBS drama Orpheus, Lori Loughlin joins ABC comedy In Case of Emergency, and Rebecca Gayheart joins Fox drama Vanished. [THR]
Let's all climb back in our time machine and return to two days ago, when Brokeback took home the Independent Spirit Best Picture Award, and all was still right with the world. [Variety]

We know at least a couple of you made it through the meticulously sculpted shrubberies outside the Vanity Fair party, as well as partook of the small army of shirtless, chocolate-dipped caiter-waiter hunks at the competing Elton John soiree, and so we anxiously await your first-hand party reports. Until then, we'll just have to settle with what some anonymous wire reporter managed to eavesdrop at the proceedings:

During the first few minutes of the Oscars liveblog, an operative called our attention to someone Blackberrying behind Philip Seymour Hoffman. Another reader just sent in this screengrab of the moment, which seems to out Capote co-star Catherine Keener as the already-bored thumb-typist. (Even worse, the device looks more like a cellphone than a Blackberry, making the moment still more awkward—what star still fumbles through messages on a phone keypad?) We'd like to imagine that she had a good reason for ignoring the show so quickly after it began, like angrily texting her agent, furious about how he booked her an obstructed view seat behind Hoffman's gigantic head.