The Envelope.com: A 'Daily' dose

NEW YORK -- Had the Academy Awards people asked, Jon Stewart would have told them how many films he's seen this year in a theater: 'One,' says the host of this year's Oscars broadcast. That would be 'The 40 Year-Old Virgin,' written by and starring Steve Carell, a veteran faux newsman from Stewart's own faux news show, 'The Daily Show.' 'Tremendous film,' declares Stewart. 'The acting. The cinematography,' and how it failed to garner major category nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences %u2014 well, he'll take that up with them when he gets out there. Stewart has only the lamest excuses for having gone to the movies once in the last year %u2014 something about having to put on that TV show almost every night while having one little kid at home and another on the way, now just arrived, in fact, the whole Trying to Be a Good Daddy defense. Stewart's own film career ('I like to think of it as an oeuvre,' he says) runs the gamut from 'Big Daddy' to 'Death to Smoochy.' Like one longtime host of the Oscars, Bob Hope %u2014 the first to host it for television %u2014 he does not have a gold statuette to use as a paperweight. He is bummed too that the academy did not nominate 'Grizzly Man' for best documentary, because of the high-concept commentary he might have wrung from Werner Herzog's existential rumination on the bear lover eventually eaten in the wilds. Stewart explains, 'I very much wanted to do a bit where the bear from 'Grizzly Man' and one of the penguins from 'March of the Penguins' came out to present best documentary. Only the bear would come out and I would go over and go, 'YOU PROMISED ME! YOU PROMISED ME! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID IT! WHAT ARE WE GONNA TELL HIS WIFE?'"