I was only able to watch this year's Academy Awards sporadically throughout the evening, so I missed a lot, and wasn't able to catch up until the next day. So, when they announced the Best Picture winner shortly after 8PM, I thought that I had somehow missed a big chunk of the ceremony. Had everything shifted half an hour earlier? But no, the order of the awards had just been swapped around this year so that Best Actress and Best Actor were announced last. I can see the logic, since the frontrunners for Best Picture weren't popular films this year, and everyone expected the Best Actor trophy to go to Chadwick Boseman. However, it all backfired spectacularly. Winner Anthony Hopkins not only didn't show up to the ceremony, he didn't even bother to Zoom in from Wales.
It was a weird year in general. We all knew it was going to be a weird one, with the Oscars under a lot of pressure to deliver after the Golden Globes flubbed it, and all the recent awards shows delivered awful ratings. Steven Soderbergh was recruited to produce the show, and he made some big changes. First, because of COVID restrictions, the ceremony was split up over several locations, including the BFI in London. At the main stage at Union Station in Los Angeles, the space had been converted to accommodate socially distanced seating with cafe tables. The stage itself was fairly small, making the whole setup look like a Las Vegas dinner show. With no orchestra pit, the ceremony was DJd by Questlove, who didn't play off any of the winners. All the Best Song performances were moved to the preshow and broadcast remotely, so there was plenty of extra time.
Again, there was no Oscar host, but presenters like Regina King, Reese Witherspoon, Riz Ahmed, and Harrison Ford were recruited to deliver fun facts about the nominees and do cute bits before handing out the prizes. I will forever treasure Harrison Ford reading the studio notes about "Blade Runner." With the Hersholt award going to the MPTF and Tyler Perry, there was more emphasis than usual on industry solidarity and trying to put a positive spin on a terrible situation. The default for the Oscars is to be political now, like it or not. However, the speeches this year were not especially inflammatory. Daniel Kaluuya, Youn Yuh-jung, Emerald Fennell, and Frances McDormand were a lot of fun. The actual awards and winners are rarely the issue with Oscars telecasts.
Some of the other creative changes, however, raised some eyebrows. I initially thought we were in good hands as Regina King strutted her way into the ceremony wearing a fabulous dress. The show did a good job juggling all the different feeds and transitions. Technical glitches were few. However, the show felt awfully scarce on content. I'm generally not a fan of all the little filler segments, but this year there were close to none - Glenn Close shaking it to Da Butt was a notable exception. Not only were there no full Best Song performances, but most of the clips were missing. Actor and production nominee clips went MIA, in favor of clips for broader categories like Best Documentary, Best Animated Film, and Best Foreign Language Film. The In Memoriam segment went by at alarming speeds, cramming in a ton of honorees with barely any time to register the individual names.
I can't argue with most of the winners this year, though I'll privately grumble about "Soul" and the damn octopus movie. It was good to see the love being spread around, so most of the bigger nominees walked away with something. Anthony Hopkins was the only real surprise of the night, and his statuette was very deserved. As for the telecast, it was underwhelming and weird, but destined to be such an outlier that I feel it's too early for anyone to be predicting the demise of the Oscars. It does, however, puncture my theory about the awards being more accessible if everyone could watch the nominees from home.
I'll be looking forward to "In the Heights" and "West Side Story" bringing back the spectacle next year. And maybe getting a decent host again wouldn't be a bad idea.
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