2019 Oscar Awards

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)?