Song of the day:
Video of the day:
Oh, Oscars…
I woke up this morning still irritated about last night’s Oscars telecast. Many thought it was a nice show until the end - I’ll get to that in a minute - but honestly, I thought it was pretty blah overall. It seems, as a friend and I discussed via text, that the Oscars aren’t much without the glamour they usually come with. I have a lot of questions.
Why was it held at a train station and not the normal theatre?
Why wasn’t everyone wearing masks until they took the stage?
Why didn’t they do virtual acceptances like almost every other award show this year?
I jinxed the whole show by texting my friend, “One thing I do appreciate is that there are no nonsensical interludes with silly dancing or comedy or whatever.” And then came that game of trivia. What, exactly, was the purpose of that? Sure, Glenn Close was funny, but that almost seemed scripted, like she was a little too prepared for that answer. To be fair, Glenn Close is brilliant so I wouldn’t be surprised that she knew all of that without being prompted. Still, the whole segment was unnecessary.
And someone please tell me how the show still managed to be more than three hours long without the standard host and hoopla?!
I didn’t see everything that was nominated this year, but that’s nothing out of the norm. I rarely see even half of the movies who get nominated for things. But I did see the winning animated short (If Anything Happens I Love You) and long (Soul) films, and loved them both, so YAY! I also saw Judas and The Black Messiah and Daniel Kaluuya was brilliant. That win was no surprise to anyone. I’m glad so many more people are learning of this man’s talent.
I was surprised, but not at all disappointed, that H.E.R. won best song for the same movie. Fight For You is a gorgeous song and she’s fantastic. Honestly, this was one of the best group of best song nominees I’ve seen in a while. It was anyone’s game going in. I also think it’s absolutely brilliant that Trent Reznor now has two Oscars to his name. He, of Nine Inch Nails fame, was part of the team who scored the best animated film, Soul.
I adored Yuh-jung Youn’s acceptance speech for best supporting actress. I’ve loved watching her throughout this awards season. What a lovely and joyful person. I need to see that movie (Minari).
I have no interest in Nomadland but love that its director Chloé Zhao, an Asian American woman, won for Best Director. It also won Best Picture and got Frances McDormand her third Oscar. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen anything she’s been in but clearly she’s a good actress and that must be quite a movie.
And then there was the last award of the night. Best Actor. Truly the moment that many of us had been waiting for all three hours and fifteen minutes of the night. Seriously, why was it so long???
It seemed clear that the producers of this show thought Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) was going to win Best Actor, as he had in most of the other award shows; otherwise why would they have made the announcement of Best Actor the last thing in the show? It’s always, and I mean ALWAYS, Best Picture. I was so confused when they announced that before the Best Actor/Actress awards. But then I thought, oh, this will be nice. Chadwick’s wife accepting this award will be the last part of the show. Because of course almost everyone thought he would win. Clearly even the producers thought that. But the thing is, no one knows who the winners are beforehand and in fact, he did not win. And the winner, Sir Anthony Hopkins (The Father), wasn’t there, nor was he elsewhere to accept remotely as a few others had throughout the night. I don’t blame him for this. He truly didn’t expect to win, though I’m not sure why not since he just won the BAFTA, but I digress. The presenter of the award was like, so yeah, he’s not here and we accept this on his behalf. And that was it. The end.
And people were NOT having it. Twitter went crazy, as I’m sure other social media sites did. And not because Sir Anthony Hopkins won the award. I don’t think anyone was mad about that; extremely disappointed, yes, but not mad. Our favorites don’t always win. But people were mad, and rightly so, about the obvious build up to the moment, a very conscious decision that someone made. They made us all believe that Chadwick was going to win. They even created a horrible NFT thing for the gift bags - truly, it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. And to capitalize on his death like that? Absurd. He was the last person they showed during the in memoriam segment; one more thing that kept us believing he was going to win the award. Had they kept things in the normal order, the disappointment of him winning would still be there but it wouldn’t feel so gross. Now it’s just this thing that sits there, like the whole La La Land/Moonlight incident a few years ago.
But rather than leave you on a sour note on a Monday morning, I’ll leave you with these tweets:
We don’t need the Academy to celebrate Chadwick Boseman. We are celebrating Chadwick and his tremendous performance regardless. - Frederick Joseph, Author of The Black Friend
Honestly not even stressed about Chadwick not winning, because I know Chadwick wouldn’t have been stressed about not winning. He would, however, want us to go back to work tomorrow aiming unconscionably high in both art and humanity. So that’s what Imma try to do. - Franklin Leonard, Founder of The Black List