Strictly speaking, and in boxing terms, the Academy Awards featured more of a split decision than an outright knockout. But more realistically, Sunday night was still a solid win for the pugilist drama "Million Dollar Baby."
Actor/filmmaker Clint Eastwood's latest was named best picture, he was named best director and Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman were named best actress and best supporting actor.
In all, the movie won Oscar gold four times, for which Eastwood thanked the cast and crew for the "wonderful adventure" of making the film, as well as actor Warren Beatty "for (his) confidence," since he predicted its win in a pre-ceremony red-carpet show.
"Million Dollar Baby," which was nominated for seven Oscars, joins "Rocky" (1977) and "Chariots of Fire" (1982) as the only sports-related movies to be named best picture.
But the film did face stiff competition from Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator." While Howard Hughes' biography lost out on the biggest award of the night, it still picked up five Oscars in 11 nominated categories, including best supporting actress (Cate Blanchett).
As for Scorsese, it was his fifth loss in the best director category, even though he was a sentimental favorite. (And ironically, in 1982 his own boxing movie, "Raging Bull" wound up losing Best Picture to "Chariots of Fire.")
Four-time nominee Freeman was the epitome of class in victory. His brief acceptance speech praised the film for being "a labor of love" for all involved.
His co-star, Swank, won for the second time in two tries, and said it came as a surprise for "a girl from a trailer park who had a dream."
Another split decision came for Jamie Foxx, who won one of the two Oscars he was up for, receiving the best actor trophy for his portrayal of Ray Charles in "Ray."
"Thank you, Ray Charles, for living," Foxx said, in honor of the late R&B musician.
Like Foxx, Blanchett also played a real-life person, four-time Oscar-winner (and 12-time nominee) Katharine Hepburn, whom she referred to as being "terrifyingly well-known."
Despite Oscar organizers' promises to cut speeches short and innovations intended to speed up the program (including handing out some awards in the audience), it still took than three hours to hand out two dozen awards, not counting the various tributes and honorary Oscars.
It didn't help that first-time host Chris Rock rambled on for nearly 15 painfully unfunny minutes in his opening monologue, which took potshots at fellow black performers Cuba Gooding Jr. and Halle Berry, hard-working actor Jude Law and President George W. Bush.
But he did get off one good jab at some of the changes in the ceremony, joking that "next year they're going to be handing out Oscars in the parking lot."
However, as lame as the majority of Rock's one-liners were, at least they weren't nearly as off-color as Robin Williams' impromptu stand-up routine a prelude to him handing out the Best Animated Feature Oscar, to the Pixar/Disney superhero comedy "The Incredibles." And they certainly weren't as outrageous as his pre-Oscar talk.
Still, Rock's immediate predecessor as host, Billy Crystal, was sorely missed.
So, too, was the late talk-show host Johnny Carson — the subject of what was probably the highlight of the evening, a "greatest-hits medley" of sorts that featured some of his best one-liners from his five stints as Oscar emcee between 1979 and 1985.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com