How did this win Best Picture???

Well, let's just assume first of all that most fans of movie musicals don't consider Gene Kelly a "vulgar toad." I think you lost most people there. Although if your goal is just to be controversial and confrontational, that's a winning line of reasoning.

The "tacked on" ballet contains the resolution of the dramatic plot. The movie would make no sense in the end without it. So that's pretty much the definition of something not being "tacked on." It's closer to being a movie tacked on to the ballet, than a ballet tacked on to the movie.

Whatever you might think of Gene Kelly, his collaboration here with Minnelli is very dynamic, once again the very opposite of "wooden."

"FUNNY FACE had the elegant Astaire and Hepburn,"

The movie is all the more disappointing because it misuses these great talents. If it contained lesser talents, it wouldn't even be worth talking about.

"gorgeous fashions and supermodels (remember Dovima?),"

no honestly I don't know any models or supermodels and I don't care about that kind of stuff. It does seem at times like the fans of this movie though care more about fashion than they do about movies.

"lovely and lively ballets that were actually incorporated into the story"

I only remember one ballet, and that was the bit that Hepburn does which is called "Basil Metabolism." It's a very nice scene but it has no relationship to the plot whatsoever. It simply functions to show that Hepburn is some kind of hipster who impresses the other "bohemians."

"and a sensational Gershwin score."

There is no Gershwin score. They took 3 or 4 songs from "Funny Face", which was indeed a sensational score, and then they mixed in a song or two from other shows, and then they added a bunch of lame crap songs by Roger Edens as if nobody would notice that half the songs were written by the greatest composer of jazz/pop music of the 20th Century while the other half were written by a hack associate producer. Exactly the same process by which Freed and Edens had ruined Gershwin's "Lady be Good" a decade earlier. Anyone who thinks that "Think Pink" and junk like that is as good as the Gershwin songs like "How Long Has This Been Going On" should have their head examined. Listening to the score of this film is a bit like listening to a compilation of the greatest hits of Aretha Franklin and Britney Spears.

"The "bohemian" theme was authentic. I know. I was one."

Well good for you, but I'm surprised that you weren't offended that all the "beatnik" types in the movie were ultimately discredited and ridiculed. The film would have us believe that beatnik culture was more superficial than 50s fashion photographers and models, which is laughably absurd.

"Unambitious, please. A graceful, chic, glamorous, contemporary little film. In the words of Little Edie Beale, "an artistic smash"!"

Contemporary? It was a movie that bashed everything that was the 1950s and praised everything that was 1930s. In every way, the film attempts to demolish the iconography of the 50s and proposes that the older styles were superior. Some of the scenes, like the one where Astaire and Kay Thompson sing "Clap 'yo Hands" and all the young people are mesmerized, are hilariously patronizing and false. The film clings as desperately to its idea of culture and glamor of the 30s as it does to the apparent notion that Fred Astaire himself has never left the 1930s. It's a horrible role for Astaire, a total step backwards. At least "Daddy Long Legs" acknowledged the age difference between the leads and made a joke out of it. "The Band Wagon" managed to wring real pathos from Astaire's status as a veteran actor/hoofer. But in "Funny Face" it's like the film-makers are asking us to accept that Astaire is still just some random youngish guy out on the town, and it's fully ludicrous. It doesn't have even a fraction of the ambition of "Band Wagon" or "American in Paris." It doesn't want to challenge us with new ideas -- it wants to lull us into complacent nostalgia.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

I haven't seen AAIP for a very long time, certainly three or four years, but have never thought it anything other than a fine and worthy Best Picture winner AND during a year of splendid movies both contending for the award and having been overlooked. It's a film of great style and of emotional substance, Kelly, Caron and the most wonderful score being pivotal to that whilst Vincente Minnelli's direction was as sweeping, considered and brilliantly crafted as it ever was, or would be.

A Streetcar Named Desire would also have been a worthy winner, as would have A Place in the Sun and The African Queen, whilst The Day the Earth Stood Still was a terrific picture in its own right. They were ALL fine pictures, but I can see how, and why, AAIP won, even if votes were split between Streetcar and A Place in the Sun... This was a visual and audible feast for the senses, sheer joy and that, I think, was something that still garners votes in 2010 i.e. let's see how well Avatar does for the same reasons!!!

NOW TARZAN MAKE WAR!

For me it works just as well as "Singing in the Rain", but I don't think I appreciated it quite as much right away when I first saw it. I'm really into the Gershwin music so that helps me to enjoy the movie for sure. I don't think the music in "Rain" is as good, and definitely there's nothing like the "American in Paris" suite itself in that film. I see it like I see Gershwin's suite or symphony or whatever you want to call it.... it's kind of an impressionistic version, not of Paris but of what an American's encounter with Paris would be.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'