Well, this was a rough one for me, folks. Aside from Ariana DeBose and Jane Campion, I wasn't too happy with who got the statuettes this year. I made my peace with "CODA" getting Best Picture a few days ago, after it swept the guild awards, but personally I ranked it dead last out of all the contenders. Jessica Chastain and Will Smith were boring choices for Actor and Actress, the screenplay winners were awful, and I'm relatively meh on "Drive My Car" and "Dune." Oh, and Lin Manuel Miranda really lost to the Billie Eilish song? Really?
So, instead I'm going to focus on the telecast itself, which was at the center of a maelstrom of drama for months because of the Academy's attempts to reverse the ratings nosedive that the ceremony saw last year. They decided not to announce eight of the categories live in order to save time, but still ended up going forty minutes over the allotted three hours. They settled on having three hosts - Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall - after going without one for the three years prior. Performances of the nominated songs were kept in the telecast, plus "We Don't Talk About Bruno" for good measure, after they were moved to a pre-show last year.
Having the telecast open with a thunderous Beyonce production number was probably the smartest move - it helped the ceremony open with a bang, and confirmed we would be getting big stars all night. There was a lot of ruckus over the inclusion of the Fan Favorite contests, which most commentators saw as a variation on the Popular Film category that the Academy leadership tried to implement a few years ago. However, no actual Oscar was handed out for winning - they didn't even merit a presenter. The rules for the Twitter-based voting were designed to allow for crazy vote manipulation by fans, so this was clearly a stunt from the beginning. I was fine with the quick montage countdowns as a compromise. Of all the audience attracting hijinks, this was honestly one of the most benign.
Wanda Sykes bumming around the Academy Museum was fun, and Amy Schumer's monologue wasn't bad, but most of the host segments were pretty mediocre. The Regina Hall bit in particular is one of those things that you could not get away with if the genders of the everyone involved were switched. I appreciate the livelier "In Memoriam" segment we got this year with the show choir and additional speakers. Anniversaries were a big theme of the ceremony, trying to get the audience to link the Oscars to their favorite films. I liked the 60th anniversary tribute to the Bond films, though it's a reminder that these films have famously been unrecognized by the Academy. The 50th anniversary tribute to "The Godfather" was less successful - a half-hearted montage followed by Francis Ford Coppola and his leading men thanking Mario Puzo and Bob Evans.
This telecast was marked by a lot of little awkward moments - Ryusuke Hamaguchi's stop-and-go speech, Chris Evans trying to segue into a "Lightyear" preview, teleprompter stumbles, a too-brief glimpse of Governors Award winner Liv Ullman, the nip slip, and the noticeably edited down pre-recorded categories being dropped into the telecast at random. Makeup and Hairstyling came after Best Actor! Was that BTS?! On the other hand, the sign language accommodations for the deaf "CODA" cast and crew were excellent. Troy Kotsur easily had the best speech of the night. Best presenters were the casts of "Pulp Fiction" and "White Men Can't Jump" - a reunion I didn't realize I wanted.
And, of course, the most talked-about moment of the night was Will Smith slapping Chris Rock onstage over a seemingly innocuous joke, while Rock was presenting for the Best Documentary Feature category. And then Smith won Best Actor a few minutes later and delivered a lengthy, rambling apology to everyone except Chris Rock. A day later, nobody quite seems to know what to make of this. I have no idea what to make of this, except to acknowledge that ABC and the Academy got what they wanted. Everyone's talking about the Oscars again, though for all the wrong reasons as usual.
There really is nothing like Oscar night, and against my better judgment, I'll see you all again next year.
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