The Oscars

For the last ten years The Oscars has been slowly slipping away. It doesn't seem relevant any more. Are the Pictures nominated the best? The Actors and Actresses chosen may have given a great performance when compared to one another, but are they the nominees that deserved a shot? The presentation of the whole thing as it was showcased this year really was a train wreck. Where are the laughs? Where is the spectacle? The host was not funny. Was not entertaining. Was angry.

I cannot go on it was that bad. Billy. We miss you so much!

Having the Oscars (formerly known as The Academy Awards) in a train station makes so much sense - the show was a glorious train wreck.

From 2003 when a "prenup" won the Oscar, was a continuous downhill journey and 93rd Oscar is definitely the last time for me to watch it life. Never missed one since Rocky.

No fun No intrigue No joy No comedy No tradition.

The 93rd Academy Awards had no host, no masks, no Zoom, and almost no audience.

Hollywood's biggest night wasn't exactly the movie unto itself that producers Jesse Collins, Stacey Sher and Steven Soderbergh promised. However, no one took that very seriously, and the resulting relatively fast-paced and deeply personal ceremony actually might have been something more vital - a true Hollywood reinvigoration. But it didn't go well... The big swing Academy Awards will still likely be the least-watched Oscars ever, or one of the least watched at the very least, which is a real shame.

What do you do with The Oscars when a world-altering pandemic creates a shortage of mainstream films within a year? Look harder for the hidden gems? Search for new talent across the gulfs? Or do you just extend the eligibility period (all the effing way to February of next year) just to give the typical Oscar fare an extra shot (plus Promising Young Woman, for some reason)? Apparently, you do the latter. It's like moving the finish line a couple of meters back and also ignoring the ones who already crossed it.

In fairness, this year's Oscars ceremony (consisting of a much smaller venue and several nominees attending via satellite from England, Denmark, South Korea, et cetera) did feature some welcome titles. Thanks to the altered criteria, movies like Pieces of a Woman and Judas and the Black Messiah (which, judging from the Supporting Actor noms, has zero leads) stood a chance, not that I doubted their chances of getting nominated, say, next year. In any case, allow me to list some of the other highlights -- and yes, I will get to that phenomenal "f you" of an ending!

__

• The Surreal Nature Of It All: On top of how deeply weird it felt to see this ceremony being attempted in a post-COVID world, with a minimized venue and cheaper camera work, the pacing was also utterly wild. They breezed through the screenplay nominees before I had even realized they were actually starting to hand the awards out instead of f-cking around, and yet still finding the time for a completely genuine, completely spontaneous, completely unscripted moment of levity from Glenn Close. Equally bizarre was the way the Oscar wins were ordered; the acting-award presentations were tacked on AFTER Best Picture and here's where this broadcast cemented itself as a top-tier sh-tshow:

• Building Up To A Posthumous Win For Boseman, Only For Someone Who Snoozed At Home To Get The Vote: This was honestly the funniest sh-t to me. Despite the wide variety of different films from different countries and all the race-and-gender representation, this was one of the most predictable Oscar nights of possibly all time and the wins were mostly obvious. Most "predictable" of all was the fact that the late Chadwick Boseman would receive a posthumous acting award for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom as a final, solemn tribute.

It was just so obvious! Hell, they even had to move the Judas leads to "Supporting Actor" just to be able to hand that film an acting prize and still have one left for Boseman. And why else would they announce Best Picture early, thereby setting up a finale centered around the Best Actor announcement?

Well, it was certainly a finale to behold! Joaquin Phoenix walks out after a rushed thank-you speech from McDormand, whips out the card, announces that the winner is actually Anthony Hopkins -- who didn't even appear on any of the video feeds, let alone in person, and was probably at home napping -- before briskly ending the ceremony (since, no matter which one of the two men had won, there's nobody around to give a speech), causing both confusion and outrage on Twitter! It was absolutely hysterical.

To sum up: After all that's happened -- after all the tributes to Chadwick Boseman, all the petitioning from heartbroken fans, the arrangements for him to win without "snubbing" Judas, and the scheduling change that implied at least one person behind the scenes thought they had this one locked and was gonna end the ceremony on it -- they straight-up gave the Oscar to someone who was asleep at home and abruptly ended for the night. It was the funniest damn sh-t! And to their credit: if this was done on purpose to get some headlines, I applaud their cunning. It's also possible they knew they weren't gonna give Boseman the send-off and thought "Eh, people usually go to sleep after Best Picture so let's slap this one on at the end" but let's not be here all day.

• Amanda Seyfried's Dress: No kink-shaming in the comments, please.

• The In-Memoriam Music Choice: Definitely the right level of "upbeat" for that speedrun editing style. Stay classy, Oscars.

• "Travon And Martin" Winning For A Film About Police Violence: I know people think the Oscars are rigged or at least political but this is a straight-up Matrix glitch.

• Scandinavian Rep: Seeing Thomas Vinterberg among the Best Director noms was almost as delightful as his movie winning Best International Film. Likewise, even though I don't give one fraction of a f--k about the Eurovision Song Contest, seeing a partly Swedish song among the nominees was tons of fun too. Maybe I should watch the movie, even?

I don't really have much else to say. The show was bad but often funny-bad, and I can't really say it was as bloated as it might've otherwise been, though I did miss the song numbers and extravagance. Here's hoping that finale goes down as another epic faux pas from the Oscars and that this "safer" ceremony still becomes a notorious superspreader. Thanks for reading, folks! Wakanda forever!

The Covid pandemic has created a challenge for awards shows. It has also led to low ratings.

The Oscars decided to ban Zoom but this was an underwhelming reworking.

The show badly needs a main presenter, one who is a comedian. This one needed laughs. There was just a lack of fun with the reworking.

Some of the speeches from the presenters were overlong and dull. The In Memoriam segment rushed through the people who died in the previous 12 months but the introduction to it needed it to be shorter.

Also when you celebrate the work of the artists and the production crew. I would like to see an example of their work. I was not enthused with a factoid that a best supporting actor nominee once worked in a fast food outlet or such like.

Then there was the change of order. There was no need for the Best Picture to be given out so early.

The emotional moment of the evening was a damp squib. The Best Actor Oscar was held last in the expectation that the late Chadwick Boseman would be the winner. He did not win. Anthony Hopkins pipped him to the post and he was in bed in his homeland of Wales by that time.