Two questions existed before this year's Academy Awards: (1) Who would win Best Picture?; and (2) How would Chris Rock do? Clint Eastwood's vaguely overrated boxing drama is the first answer. The second one takes a little longer.

The 77th Annual Academy Awards (Feb. 27, ABC)

Well, at least it wasn't offensive. Chris Rock's opening monologue straddled the line between the routine he wanted to do and the one he felt required to do. Anyone who's seen his standup recognized the trademark pacing, handheld microphone, jittery hand gestures, and, most importantly, repetition of central themes. (The guy stays on message like a politician.) Before the broadcast, he had sworn to shape his comedy for the people watching at home — and not to cater to the in-jokes of the movie business that the Kodak Theatre crowd alone would enjoy. I'm glad he didn't go for the easy Jack jokes or Jen-and-Brad stuff. But nonetheless you couldn't escape the general gingerliness of the show, the forced politeness of the proceedings. The almost four-hour broadcast had the same awkward air as when you meet your girlfriend's parents for the first time. You try to be on your best behavior so badly you barely feel like yourself, as if you're trying to be somebody more neutered and homogenized than who you really are. It's the sign of the times, I'm told — we have to be careful not to offend anymore, and we sure as hell can't say anything controversial. Chris Rock did the best he could in such stifling conditions, but honestly the ideal 21st century Oscar host is Steve Martin, he of the dignified appearance and sneaky mind. Rock merely proved that one of the funniest guys in America can't make a dent in a culture obsessed with how bad for us Hollywood is. After the telecast, as if operating in some other reality where the laws of nature do not apply, Barbara Walters did her annual post-Oscar special, where she asked Desperate Housewives' Teri Hatcher how long it's been since she had sex. I'm sure there will be no complaints, no postings on the Drudge Report, about that. I just don't get it. I just don't get it.

Inside Deep Throat (Universal Pictures)

Hollywood loves mythologizing its history — especially its maverick '70s movies. So it was inevitable that porn would get the Easy Riders, Raging Bull treatment. Glib and glitzy, this documentary tells of the making of X-rated (back when there was such a thing as X) Deep Throat, using the now-comfortable arc incorporated in every behind-the-scenes history: impossible dreamers, shocking success, disastrous fallout, hard-earned redemption. There's an obvious parallel to be drawn between the censorship battles of the 1970s and the ones we face in '05, but the doc's breezy style doesn't have the depth to wring much indignation from the audience. In terms of substance and significance, this film amounts to a quickie — and a not very satisfying one.

Nobody Knows (IFC Films)

If you accept its slow pace and long running time, Hirokazu Kore-eda's film unfurls patiently, allowing the poignancy to creep up on you. These four Japanese children, abandoned by a maddeningly unreliable mother, form their own family in order to survive, led by their older brother, a model of love and sweetness. American films never seem to capture domestic life — or the lower class — with any sort of interest, but here we see it plainly, and it's a terribly sad sight. I would have preferred a shorter ending, but maybe like us Hirokazu just couldn't bring himself to let these kids go.

R.E.M., Monster (Warner Bros. Records)

Warner Bros. has remastered and re-released the band's major-label catalogue, usually a depressing sign that a group's vitality has faded into the remember-when category. Regardless, while Out of Time and Automatic for the People earned the strongest reviews and sales, this one might have been their most underrated, and maybe their best of the last decade. You're gonna have to do a little work first, though. You have to see past the album's wall-of-grunge guitars to get to the band's thematic conceit: volume as hormones, alternative rock as mature emoting. If Time was everlasting life and Automatic everlasting death, then this is everlasting sex — misguided sex, one-night-stand sex, pity sex, desperate sex, great sex. R.E.M. didn't come naturally to this glam-rock posturing, but Monster was them trying to shake loose their jangle of the '80s and the folk leanings of their early '90s without sacrificing their expressive content. They were a band falling apart and failing to see eye-to-eye, and the discord shows up noisily throughout the record's over-amped confusion. Or maybe that was the bad sex. Either way, they were a versatile enough band to make this experiment in persona modification and general tumult touching, tortured, and alive.

Madvillain, Madvillainy (Stones Throw Records)

Released last March, this album lodged itself into the hearts and minds of enough music critics to sneak onto many year-end top tens. I'm behind the curve, but I'm happy to report that Madvillain's appeal hasn't dated. Like DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, producer Madlib and rapper Doom construct a utopian hip-hop community subsisting on soulful samples and intelligent ... what's that word again? Oh yes: Flow. Used all the time to categorize an MC's rhymes and diction and inflection. But you won't understand flow unless you dive into the lyric sheet, and this is that rare rap album that includes one. (These guys must have known that the density of Doom's words would mean nothing without a helpful guide.) If most commercial rap is mere arena rock, this here is alternative music, hiding out in its apartment, knowing that the mysteries of life are right there in the record collection. These blunt-flavored, two-minute songs don't ask to be loved — they're meant to be obsessed over, guarded like a secret.

50 Cent featuring Olivia, "Candy Shop" (from the forthcoming The Massacre, Shady/Aftermath Records)

We know what "lollipop" he's referring to — subtlety isn't what's being sold here. But 50 Cent's crass come-ons work better than 10,000 sensitive poets' soliloquies because his have confidence. Plus, the poets aren't buds with Dr. Dre, who's in an Egyptian porn-movie mood here. I find this single obvious and kinda tasteless. But I was always more of a poet than a thug; I could never get the girls this way, and maybe I'm still a little baffled and envious of those who can.

Chronicles, Volume One (Simon & Schuster)

Around the time the deal was announced for Bob Dylan to write his memoirs, the singer-songwriter mused that there were some periods of his life he didn't remember too well. He made the most of his selective memory. This autobiography skips around from the early '60s to the late '60s to the late '80s and back to the early '60s, dealing less with who-what-when-where-why and instead emphasizing the poignant merging of anecdote and reminiscence. No matter the time period he covers, Dylan centers on his influences and artistic philosophy. He seems consumed by creative work — not his own, but rather his contemporaries' and heroes'. On occasion, his long-winded praises for musical touchstones like Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie can read as painfully as that of his Number One admirer Greil Marcus. But in shrinking his legend to human dimensions, his tell-all tells all about a young man who got into the music for one simple reason: It was the only element on Earth that gave him any sort of purpose.

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