JON STEWART - OSCAR TELECAST BECOMES STEWART'S SHOW

Jon Stewart received generally high marks for his hosting duties at Sunday night's Academy Awards show, certainly far better ones than he received when he last hosted the Oscars in 2006. In a ten-minute monologue at the top of the show, he let loose with a series of zingers that landed with perfect accuracy at such targets as John McCain and Vanity Fair magazine. "Oscar is 80 this year, which makes him now automatically the front-runner for the Republican nomination," he said at one point. He later noted that among the "collateral damage" left over from the writers' strike was the cancellation of the Vanity Fair party. He added, "They said they did it out of, quote, respect for the writers. You know a way they could show respect for the writers? Maybe, one day, invite some of them to the Vanity Fair Oscar party." In fact there were few mentions of the writers' strike during the evening and no mention whatsoever of a possible strike by members of the Screen Actors Guild. As for the show itself, former Hollywood Reporter and TV Week editor Alex Ben Block represented the opinion of most TV journalists when he wrote on his Hollywood Today website that "producer Gil Cates once again pulled off a near miracle. The show was star studded, classy and while it ran over three hours, did not drag."

25/02/2008