The Academy Awards ceremony is far and away the most important event in Hollywood. But it’s also a popularity contest hosted by a bunch of old white men who don’t vote for people whose names they can’t pronounce (a voter actually said that — just Google “Oscar voter’s brutally honest ballot”). So I think we can all agree that the Oscars are also kind of a joke.

This year’s Oscars were definitely a joke, but not a funny one. I could go on about how Seth MacFarlane’s digs were stale and offensive, and don’t even get me started on all the crap tossed at 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis in the name of comedy. But hey, this is a movie column. So let’s take a look at how this year’s Oscars stacked up against my expectations.

**Best Picture** – This is one of the few awards I think went to the right people. “Argo” was well-written, superbly shot and executed to a T. It was just a class act of a movie from a technical standpoint, so I think its Best Picture win was deserved. Expectation: Met.

**Best Director** – Ang Lee is awesome. I mean, show me someone who doesn’t love Ang Lee, and I’ll show you someone who’s lying through their teeth. But Ben Affleck deserved at least a nomination, if not the win, and I just can’t get past that. Expectation: I wasn’t even trying here.

**Best Actor** – Another fair win, I suppose. Granted, I haven’t seen “Lincoln,” but I have seen Daniel Day-Lewis act and boy, oh boy that guy can get it done. I suppose he was a bit of a dull choice for Academy voters, though it was a boringly obvious category this time around. Expectation: Meh.

**Best Actress** – Look, I enjoy J-Law as much as anyone else, but best female performance of the year? I liked “Silver Linings Playbook” well enough, and I thought Jennifer Lawrence’s performance was consistently charming and slightly unhinged. But I simply cannot condone her win over Jessica Chastain. She handily carried “Zero Dark Thirty” from start to finish, and I can’t remember ever being so impressed by an actress. Expectation: Punched right in the face.

**Best Supporting Actor** – Christoph Waltz is a fine actor, and I’m not mad that he beat any of the imposing actors that rounded out the category. Then again, it could have gone to Tommy Lee “Grumpy Cat” Jones, and I would have had the exact same reaction. Expectation: Met with extreme apathy.

**Best Supporting Actress** – Honesty hour: “Les Misérables” was most assuredly not the best movie of the year. It might not have even been the best movie that came out at Christmas, but I’ll be damned if Anne Hathaway didn’t knock my socks right off with her supremely affecting performance. If “I Dreamed a Dream” didn’t inspire some kind of emotional reaction in you … I don’t even know. Don’t talk to me. Expectation: I’m not crying. Those aren’t tears on my face.

**Best Original Screenplay** – In a perfect world in which I call all the shots, “Moonrise Kingdom” takes home the award for best screenplay. Wes Anderson is from another world, a better one perhaps, because the dialogue in that movie was snappier and wittier than anything I could ever come up with. Expectation: Obliterated. But at least we got another drunk Tarantino speech. Those are always fun.

**Best Original Score** – It is an absolute travesty that “Beasts of the Southern Wild” wasn’t nominated in this category. I’m so mad about this. Go listen to the soundtrack on YouTube, and let it change you for the better. Expectation: Nope. Still fuming.

**Best Original Song** – All hail Adele for the magnificence that is “Skyfall.” This song is still stuck in my head. Expectation: If this hadn’t been met I would have set my roommate’s television on fire.

Overall, the Oscars had a pretty terrible host and about a 50 percent success rate of giving the right awards to the right people. But the good news is it can only get better! Tina Fey and Amy Poehler: you’re up.