Seth MacFarlane Makes Hitler Quip as Oscar Nominations are Announced

Whether it's the glitz and glamour of the world's most beautiful people telling each other just how beautiful they are or the inevitable glut of wink-wink, nudge-nudge jokes from this year's host, Seth MacFarlane, the Academy Awards ceremony is testament to the vanity and vacancy of Hollywood.

But given the level of offence he seems to have caused in some quarters, it seems like MacFarlane will be giving even Oscar-naysayers a reason to watch the carnage. Most notably, he said this: "I read [Best Picture nominee] Amour was co-produced in Austria and Germany, right? The last time Austria got together and co-produced something it was Hitler, but this is much better."

He also told the Best Supporting Actress nominees, "Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein", and finalists for the Best Adapted Screenplay that they'd "basically copied stuff from Microsoft Word and pasted it into Final Draft". A few casual insults were, too, thrown at co-host Emma Stone, who surely matches MacFarlane in humour but outdoes him in subtlety.

Almost entirely despite itself, the Oscars remains an entrancing and addictive viewing experience. And, as such, I'm willing to excuse the hordes of actors-cum-models parading their Gucci undergarments and thanking their parakeets to find out who history will remember as the greatest performers, filmmakers, artists and writers of 2012.

The net is already abuzz with the extended diatribes of bloggers and punters who can't believe the Academy have snubbed Ben Affleck for his crowd-pleasing direction in Argo or how a movie as consistently wry and touching as Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom could miss out on just about everything. Yet what the nominations, and for that matter the long list of snubs and surprises, show is that 2012 was a rip snorter of a year for motion pictures. Whether it was the shocking wartime reality depicted in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, the overwrought yet utterly breathtaking beauty of Les Miserables or this year's best picture dark horse, Beasts of the Southern Wild, 2012 has been a monumental year in cinema.

While it is far from a two-horse race, the frontrunners to take home a chest full of Oscar gold appear to be Stephen Spielberg's epic biopic Lincoln and the 3D magic of Ang Lee's Life of Pi, which snagged 12 and 11 nominations respectively.

For the complete list of nominees for the 85th Academy Awards in feature films, click here.