I got
busy after work yesterday and didn’t have time to do a new write-up, so I put
up the Monkees post I’d written over the weekend and pushed this one back until
today. It was a bit of an odd Oscars,
still more than three hours long despite some definite streamlining, and while
many of the awards swung the way I expected them to, there were still some
surprises.
It was a
year when all eight Best Picture nominees went home with at least one award,
even if Vice’s was for makeup and
hairstyling – well-deserved, clearly, and awesome for the winners, but not one
of the big-ticket awards. Bohemian Rhapsody got the most awards of
the night, taking both sound categories and Best Editing before Rami Malek won
Best Leading Actor. Black Panther got all the style points, winning for its costumes,
production design, and score (featuring some terrific speeches!), while A Star is Born’s one Oscar win was for
Best Original Song – again, well-deserved.
The Favourite and BlacKkKlansman both got one award, but
in both cases, it was a major one:
Olivia Colman got Best Leading Actress and gave one of the most thrilled
speeches of the night (her award was the biggest surprise for me – I figured
Glenn Close was going to take it,) while Spike Lee and co. took home Best
Adapted Screenplay.
When Roma won Best Foreign Film, I figured
there went its chances for Best Picture.
Granted, if a foreign film was
deemed the best picture of the year, you’d think it would also be best foreign film of the year, but Oscars don’t usually
work like that, so I didn’t have high hopes for it. Still, the film – and Alfonso Cuarón – had a
good night, also picking up Best Cinematography and Best Director. However, the night ultimately went to Green Book (the one movie I didn’t see –
it’s Birdman all over again!),
winning Best Picture along with Best Supporting Actor (for Mahershala Ali) and
Best Original Screenplay.
I’ve
talked before about why I don’t have any interest in seeing Green Book, so I won’t rehash that
again. I’ll just say I wasn’t enthused
about its screenplay win or it getting Best Picture. Although I’d figured BlacKkKlansman probably didn’t have enough momentum to take home
the top prize, it was the one I was rooting for, and as such, Green Book didn’t feel like a great
trade-off.
As for
other awards, Regina King very rightly won Best Supporting Actress at the start
of the night for If Beale Street Could
Talk, and I was thrilled for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse winning Best
Animated feature – another great speech there.
Also, I never usually make my way around to any of the shorts, but the
documentary-short winner, Period End of
Sentence, really piqued my interest.
When it
comes to the ceremony itself, I didn’t miss having a host too much. There was no monologue, but I enjoyed Amy
Poehler, Tina Fey, and Maya Rudolph’s quick summation of what it would’ve been like if they’d given a
monologue, and I was fine with the lack of goofy bits that mostly just wind up
dragging on. The opening performance by
Adam Lambert and Queen was great and got the show off to a strong start. Plenty of enjoyable presenters: I liked Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree
Henry presenting the award for Best Costume Design in ludicrous costumes, and I
smiled at Diego Luna excitedly flitting between English and Spanish as he
introduced Roma. Constance Wu and Chadwick Boseman got my vote
for most telegenic pair of the night, and Awkwafina and John Mulaney hands-down
won for the most delightful pair – I loved them geeking out over the fact that
they were even there and how they prefaced both the categories they presented (the
animated and documentary shorts) with, “It’s a good one!!” Also, I really
liked Trevor Noah’s introduction for Black
Panther, discussing his “childhood in Wakanda” and getting in a choice Mel
Gibson dig.
And yet,
despite having no host, no extended “bits,” no Lifetime Achievement Award, and
a relatively-short In Memorium segment, it still wound up feeling barely
shorter than the average ceremony. I don’t
know what’s up with that. Maybe the
Oscars are like occamys from Fantastic
Beasts, always growing to fill the available space (and then some)?
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