The awards season ended with the Oscars on Sunday night in Hollywood. As predicted, movies that were early favourites, took home top honours. But many observers talked more about the youngish hosts of this year's award show.

Anne Hathaway and James Franco took the helm as hosts, filling in shoes that were as big as their predecessors- some of them appeared during the show either in the flash or on a big screen.

Billy Crystal made an appearance to talk about an old time Oscar host, Bob Hope.

Now Crystal is like an institution. He may very well be one of the show's most recognisable and well-respected hosts, though not its most popular in recent years.
But that's the thing about the Oscars. It's basically an academy of veterans in the motion picture business, and they are very much old Hollywood.
Now Hathaway and Franco were roped in to attract a younger audience, but clearly at times they seemed like a couple of kids in a midst of a party hosted by their grandparents.

Now that may not be a bad thing.

At times, the duo were like Akademi Fantasia contestants who were out to prove their mettle to experts in showbusiness. Their "judges" were not seated in front of them, but instead sitting at the media room somewhere in the Kodak Theatre, or reporting from their newspaper offices thousands of mile away.

An Australian newspaper described this year's Oscars as a mid-life crisis in which the show was confused whether it wanted to be young or remain with the oldies.

The online commentary went on to say that the Oscars mixed the old with the new: Parodies of Twilight at one segment, and a tribute to Gone With The Wind at another.

Even the winners were a mixed bag of youths and not-so-youths.

Melissa Leo (photo, left), who is at least in her early 50s (during her acceptance speech at a previous award show, she ranted about how her culture does not look kindly on actresses exceeding in age) gave a good speech when picking up Best Supporting Actress for the Fighter.

For starters, she actually used the F-word, without sounding too obscene. It was just so frank and fun.

"I watched Kate doing this 2 years ago and it did not look fucking hard," she blurted out only to quickly turn to her side and bow down in embarrassment after realising her boo boo.

She was in awe of the massiveness of the Kodak Theatre and may be the first winner to acknowledge the audience seated in the upper tiers.

Did I mention she had a fabulous dress on? It was a white with a lace floral motif with a high collar. Totally age appropriate, the cane-using Kirk Douglas

Leo also acknowledge her presenter, the cane-using Kirk Douglas, by joking "You don't look half-bad. What you doing after this?"

She asked Douglas to pinch her to see if it was all a dream. Very frank and I like that.

Now the other acceptance speech I loved was of course, Christian Bale (photo) for Best Supporting Actor for the Fighter. I have always loved Bale ever since he portrayed that precocious boy caught in the struggles of World War II in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun waaaay back in 1987.

And I always felt Bale was greatly affected since his once co-star Heath Ledger died in early 2008. Despite his notorious verbal rant on the Terminator Salvation movie set, he was, based on certain reports, struggling with personal demons.

So it was a fabulous for him to win, and his speech was self-deprecating when he acknowledged all the talented people in the audience, and wondered what the hell was he doing receiving an award on stage.

He held back tears toward the end of his acceptance speech when thanking his wife and daughter, whom he described as his sources of strength.