“The Departed” took home the gold during the 79th Annual Academy Awards, but Oscar was concerned with “going green” on Sunday night. Winners like Alan Arkin, Best Supporting Actor (“Little Miss Sunshine”) and Guillermo Navaro, Best Cinematography (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), were shadowed by people like Al Gore and Melissa Etheridge whose message was not about movies, but the environment.

Oscar producer Laura Ziskin teamed with the Natural Resources Defense Council to create a more environmentally sound Oscar telecast. The message was clear, and frequent. We can all change the status of the world by changing the way we act.

“An Inconvenient Truth” was the winner of Best Documentary and Best Song, which was written and performed by Melissa Etheridge. “Happy Feet,” a cartoon with a global warming back story won Best Animated Feature Film.

Although global warming was not the only theme during the 79th Academy Awards, it was the most dominant. Between actors stating how much their opinion matters, to other actors telling the audience that it needs to change its evil ways, the Oscars turned a good message into a redundant position. The feel of the awards was almost as if Oscar was saying, “We care, and if you don’t than we’re better than you.”

There were performances that entertained without an environmental or political message, Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly had a message of their own. They sang a song about the Academy discriminating against them for being comedic actors. They vowed to get revenge by beating up the entire best actor and supporting actor nominees, except for Mark Wahlberg because, according to Ferrell, he’s “actually pretty bad ass.” The skit provided desperately needed comic relief because host Ellen DeGeneres lacked in the comedy department early on. However, as the show progressed, so did Ellen, going as far as giving Martin Scorsese a copy of a script she wrote and getting her picture with Clint Eastwood for her MySpace page right in the middle of the telecast.

There were awards being handed out in between all of the entertainment and speeches. Jennifer Hudson from “Dreamgirls” took home the Best Supporting Actress award. She followed her speech by singing three songs with other members from the cast and almost stole the show.

The king and queen of the Best Actor and Best Actress categories were Forest Whitaker (“The Last King of Scotland”) and Helen Mirren, (“The Queen”) who won each award respectively. Their individual performances were so strong that they made their movies stand out as two of the best in the past year and the Academy could not ignore them.

While Whitaker was the king of the Best Actor nominees, Martin Scorsese was the king of the 79th Academy Awards. His movie “The Departed” took home four major awards including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Director and Best Motion Picture. Scorsese has never won an Oscar before despite being nominated for Best Director five times and Best Writer of an Adapted Screenplay twice. In the past three decades Scorsese has made several masterpieces that have come close, but none of them have had the success of “The Departed.”

Brandon Van Meter can be reached at [email protected]