In the Rathskeller last night, bartender Matt Hudelston, post-undergraduate history major, and Rob Foster, liberal arts graduate student, look at an Oscar ballot provided by the All Campus Programming Board at the Oscar party hosted by ACPB.

Credit: Beth Rankin

The red carpet was rolled out last night for the 77th annual Academy Awards, or Oscars as most like to call it.

For the second year in a row, there was a viewing party at the Rathskeller. A red carpet with black and yellow balloons on each side decorated the entrance.

Katie Wallace, junior theater major, helped organize the event. She said last year’s event went well and was fun, so she and other organizers decided to do it again this year.

“It’s just fun,” Wallace said. “It’s nice to relax and watch the Oscars while having free food.”

Even the food related to the Oscars — each dish was named after various nominees. There were Hillary’s cocktail swanks, chicken and pineapple Shrek kabobs, Million Dollar Baby shrimp, Collateral-cubed cheese and vegetables and Johnny Dip.

The telecast was projected onto a big screen. Before the show started at 8:30 p.m., there were some lip-sync problems with the picture running several seconds behind the audio, but that didn’t seem to present a problem to those in attendance.

Senior nursing major Erin Jaeger attended last year’s event. She said she enjoys trying to predict who wins and seeing the different types of dresses the women wear.

At 8 p.m., the screen showed celebrities walking into the Kodak Theatre for the awards ceremony. Clips were shown from past Oscar speeches, including the one Tom Hanks gave in 1994 for his movie Philadelphia. Hanks was emotional during his speech and talked about the problem of AIDS.

Brandon Landers, senior criminal justice major, said he watches the Oscars every year. Landers is another person who watched at the Rathskeller last year.

“I’m hoping for a sweep of Million Dollar Baby,” Landers said.

Chris Rock hosted this year. He is the fourth different host in the past five years. The other hosts were Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Steve Martin. Martin hosted twice.

Rock’s opening dialogue contained his opinions on films from the past year as well as jokes about films he has done. One of his topics was the movie The Passion of the Christ. He talked about all the controversy surrounding the movie when it first came out.

“Jude Law could get in a club easier than Jesus or Mel Gibson,” Rock said to the Oscar audience.

Rock closed his opening by honoring troops that are currently fighting around the world.

The first award was for Best Art Direction and was presented by Halle Berry. The award went to Dante Ferreti for The Aviator.

Some people had ballot sheets from Oscar.com to keep track of the winners throughout the night.

Contact alumni affairs and career services reporter Joe McKenzie at [email protected].