As predicted by many, Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) won over Heath Ledger for Best Actor. Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback) lost to George Clooney (Syriana) in the Best Supporting Actor category. Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) won Best Actress, beating out Felicity Huffman (TransAmerica)

Neither Katherine Keenan’s portrayal of lesbian writer Harper Lee in Capote nor Michelle Williams’ neglected housewife in Brokeback could nab the best supporting actress--that honor went to Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener).

Sunday night’s 78^th Academy Awards show hit the ground running, with the first of several Brokeback jokes. The first gag was a short film clip featuring past Oscar hosts, including Chris Rock and Billy Crystal in a compromising position in a tent, clips of Steve Martin and David Letterman, and finally, a dream sequence with current host Jon Stewart and film star George Clooney actually in bed together. 

Once onstage Stewart opened with a humorous if slightly transphobic reference to TransAmerica by welcoming “Ladies, Gentleman… and Felicity Huffman”.  He then jested about Capote, commending it for showing us how “not all gay people are gay cowboys--some really are effete New Yorkers!”

Before bringing on the nominees, Stewart treated the crowd to another Brokeback spoof.  Using cleverly edited film clips of classic Hollywood Westerns, one could see how Brokeback was definitely not the first homoerotically tinged cowboy flick.  The tongue-in-cheek montage also wryly revealed them ol’ western pistols and shotguns as the phallic symbols they truly are.

Queer moments of interest continued during the evening with Dolly Parton performing her nominated song “Traveling Through” from TransAmerica. Unfortunately, her perky lil’ country tune lost the Best Song category to Three 6 Mafia’s raucous rap song “It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp”, from Hustle & Flow.

John Canemaker (The Moon and the Son: an Imagined Conversation), won the Oscar for animated short film. He thanked his lifetime partner in his acceptance speech.

It has become an Academy Awards tradition to feature a living Hollywood legend, in person, each year at the Oscars.  Fans of golden age film goddesses will note this year it was Lauren Bacall. The stately Bacall introduced a film montage tribute to “film noir” of the 40s and 50s (a genre she was certainly no stranger to).

Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla, who won for Brokeback’s musical score, said in his acceptance speech,“Love makes us all similar, in spite of our being different”.

Mild mannered sweetheart Jake Gyllenhaal, although denied an Oscar, got to make a film montage presentation of his own, dedicated to Hollywood’s great film epics.

This year, the recipient of the Academy’s honorary Oscar was director Robert Altman. In a stream-of-consciousness acting skit that lampooned his directorial style, the famed director of such classics as Nashville and M.A.S.H. was introduced by lesbian actor/comic Lily Tomlin and 13-time Oscar nominated Meryl Streep.

In his acceptance speech for Best Director, Brokeback’s Ang Lee graciously thanked E. Annie Proulx’s two fictional characters Ennis and Jack (though he oddly omitted any thanks to his real-life actors). Lee saluted “not just all the gay men and women whose love is denied by society, but the greatness of Love itself”. Lee is Taiwanese and is the first Asian to take home the best director Oscar (in 2001, he lost out to Stephen Soderbergh for Traffic).