sad attempt to smoke out Billy Crystal." Several other people and companies participated in the production of the ceremony. Bill Conti served as musical supervisor for the telecast. Media firm The Ant Farm produced a thirty-second trailer promoting the broadcast featuring clips highlighting past Oscar winners to the tune of the song "Our Lives" by The Calling. Previous Oscar hosts such as Whoopi Goldberg and Steve Martin, and actors Mel Gibson, George Clooney, Halle Berry appeared in an opening comedic sketch. Actor Tom Hanks participated in a pre-taped comedic sketch lampooning Oscar speeches. Stephen Colbert (host of The Colbert Report, the sister program of Stewart's The Daily Show) narrated two different mock attack ads lampooning both the intense campaigning and lobbying during Oscar season put forth by film studios and political advertising during elections. Violinist Itzhak Perlman performed excerpts from the five nominees for Best Original Score. Box office performance of nominated films When the nominations were announced on January 31, the field of major nominees favored independent, low-budget films over blockbusters. The combined gross of the five Best Picture nominees when the Oscars were announced was $186 million with an average gross of $37.3 million per film. Crash was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees with $53.4 million in domestic box office receipts. The film was followed by Brokeback Mountain ($51.7 million), Munich ($40.8 million), Good Night and Good Luck ($25.2 million), and finally Capote ($15.4 million). Of the top 50 grossing movies of the year, 35 nominations went to 13 films on the list. Only Walk the Line (19th), Cinderella Man (41st), Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (45th), and Crash (48th) were nominated for Best Picture, Best Animated Feature, or any of the directing, acting, or screenwriting. The other top 50 box office hits that earned nominations were Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (1st), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2nd), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (3rd), War of the Worlds (4th), King Kong (5th), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (7th), Batman Begins (8th), March of the Penguins, (26th), and Memoirs of a Geisha (47th). Critical reviews Some media outlets received the broadcast positively. St. Louis Post-Dispatch television critic Gail Pennington praised Stewart's performance as host writing that he "did the Oscars proud Sunday night, turning in a four-star hosting performance that unfortunately