Oscars 2021

I don't have a problem with Nomadland, Zhao, Hopkins, or Youn Yuh-jung's wins tbh. That's a respectable, un-embarrassing roster.

Yuh-jung was, like the entire Minari cast, exquisite.

I don't think I have a problem with any of the top 6 with the obvious caveat that Nomadland didn't work on me. I am perfectly happy that Frances McDormand has joined the three acting Oscars club.

Also, the only best picture nominee that got scotched was Chicago 7, which, great!

so, I haven't actually seen Ma Rainey's Black Bottom yet, is it actually an injustice that Boseman didn't win this or did people just want him to win another posthumous oscar?

No injustice. Boseman, Hopkins and Ahmed were all phenomenal this year.

The last five best picture winners were:

Spotlight
The Shape of Water
Green Book
Parasite
Nomadland

The AMPAS is officially a schizophrenic organization.

Ope, sorry, Moonlight not Spotlight. Even more schizo.

Meanwhile, this one continues her descent down the J3ffr3y W3lls slide of anti-wokeness...

https://www.awardsdaily.com/2021/04/26/the-state-of-the-race-the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same/

Tyler Perry’s speech was a plea for unity – the kind Joe Biden should be making and never has wherein he asks us not to hate each other – not to hate people for skin color, not to hate cops because they are cops – to meet him in the middle. It was powerful and memorable and exactly what this country, and this industry, needs.

...

The Academy was somehow making their whole show about appealing to the black community

Every nominee in Best Actor was good to great except Oldman. The Best Actress category equally solid.

Golden Derby's post-mortem:

On paper, it looked like it was Boseman’s to lose. The late star had won the Golden Globe, Critics Choice and Screen Actors Guild Award, losing just the BAFTA to Hopkins. Many had dismissed the BAFTA result as a home-field advantage win for Hopkins, who was probably sleeping like a baby in his native Wales when he won the Oscar, which I had cautioned against doing. The fact of the matter is, Hopkins’ tremendous, GOAT-level performance connected with a lot of people. Do a quick search on Twitter (well, wade past all the Oscar reactions) and you’ll see nothing but praise for Hopkins. Many of the anonymous Oscar ballots from the past week featured voters stating how much they were floored by Hopkins’ performance and that they voted for him. And lest we forget, Hopkins, now the oldest acting winner ever at 83, received all-time raves for his turn after “The Father” premiered at Sundance in January 2020, which admittedly is a lifetime ago, and was the early frontrunner almost all of 2020 until Boseman came along.

https://www.goldderby.com/article/2021/anthony-hopkins-2021-oscars-win-how-beat-chadwick-boseman/

Hopkins winning isn't really that much of a head-scratcher. Posthumous awards are actually generally pretty rare unless they're cloaked in as much mystique (and box-office) as Ledger's.

plus Boseman already has a posthumous oscar. I don't know why there was an assumption that he deserves a second one when up against equally great performances (I'm guessing, given that I didn't in fact see either Hopkins or Boseman's performances).

He did not have an Oscar going into last night. He had a Golden Globe, tho.

oh, fuck for some reason I thought he was given one for black panther. Maybe I am Anthony Hopkins in the Father.

The only posthumous wins: Ledger and Peter Finch's. Even goddamn Spencer Tracy lost in 1967. James Dean lost two posthumous performances.

Even Peter Finch's win it feels must've in part been attributable to the Academy not quite being able to stomach handing Sylvester Stallone an acting Oscar.

but they had William Holden ready to jump off the George Washington Bridge for it!

Oscars 1976: The Death Hour

It's official: https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/tv-ratings-oscars-2021-down-record-low-1234960615/

turns out i wasn't the only idiot who was sometimes confused about the new presenting format!

https://www.sfgate.com/streaming/article/2021-04-oscars-academy-awards-winners-drew-magary-16128432.php

we tuned into a random 15 minutes in the middle during some technical award and it was so weird and awkward and the nominees clearly hated having a camera jammed in their faces and dealing with the presenter's overly-familiar banter. It was all too ramshackle and post-apocalyptic for me. I'll take gross + gaudy Oscar pomp over whatever that was any year.

"People who are not performers sometimes look less composed on camera than people who earn their living on camera. Therefore, the pandemic is fake."

Tyler Perry’s speech was a plea for unity – the kind Joe Biden should be making and never has wherein he asks us not to hate each other – not to hate people for skin color, not to hate cops because they are cops – to meet him in the middle. It was powerful and memorable and exactly what this country, and this industry, needs.

Tyler Perry is an anti-union piece of shit who was given ten minutes to make an autohagiographic advertisment for his own shop. Fuck that.

(ten minutes to air, not to make. ygwim.)

sic, that first sentence isn't wrong but that second is a gross accusation and the "pandemic is fake" wasn't even hinted at in that post.

The Oscars should change format every year! The Billy Crystal version sucks too, just have producers come up with new versions instead of going back to till it again.

A pomp and self-importance version really wouldn't have played with this year's slate, the nominees-only sort-of-distanced format aside.

(I assume OL would not have taken that comedic escalation seriously. But it's silly to complain about something distractingly acknowledging a pandemic and attempting to minimise the direct risk it's creating, when we are essentially at the peak of the pandemic, imo. We live here!)

that Magary piece was fun, tyft vc

But it's silly to complain about

When has this ever stopped u

it's silly to post at all tbh

Regarding ratings. I had to watch an unlicensed stream online because I don't have cable. Who has cable in 2021? ABC/Disney has multiple streaming services, they should have at least dumped it onto one of them.

p.s. thank you reddit

It was on free-to-air broadcast television.

Kind of feel like everyone should be holding onto those digital antennae for another couple years at least.

Who has cable in 2021?

Looked this up: 120.6 million households (out of 128.45 total), 65% of individuals in the USA (69% have a subscription to at least one streaming service).

Yeah, we need to go buy one of those. We cut the cable cord last year, but only learned just last night that not even Sling gets us ABC, so we didn't end up watching it at all.

I haven't really watched much of the show for years--maybe three minutes last night--but I guess I'm still somewhat interested in the results. I talked about the winners with a remote grade 5/6 class today and showed them a trailer for Nomadland. I really want to see the film--lots of beautiful shots in the trailer. Maybe picturesque colour photography is easy, but so is giving the cinematography award to Mank because it's in B&W--I don't recall taking any particular notice of the cinematography in that film.

thought the cinematography in Nomadland was really beautiful

also really liked the cinematography in Mank, but it was very, very dark. remember thinking I would probably most appreciate it in a dark theater on a big screen

as far as black and white goes, I didn't think the cinematography in Mank was as mesmerizing as that of Roma or Cold War from 2018

i saw mank in theaters and thought it was INCREDIBLY dark and hard to watch!

The cinematography in Mank also felt kind of eerily airbrushed and smoothed over. It was not like anything I remember seeing before

Meanwhile, this one continues her descent down the J3ffr3y W3lls slide of anti-wokeness...

I muted her on Twitter years ago because of her political ramblings, which seemed a little unhinged. But she's always had a big chip on her shoulder about something or other.

i was off ilxor all day today but just wanted to say this is super sharp and accurate analysis of what i posted. you've really acquitted yourself well here and in subsequent posts, bobo.

as a casual Oscar watcher (i see almost no movies and don't care who wins, etc.) this show was a major drag. missed the jokes, song performances and *especially* the movie clips badly.

I do NOT watch movies and have no interest in them. I am INFURIATED that I have not seen ten 19-second excerpts of some movies from last year, and have no way of doing so.

way too much talking. terribly solemn and boring.

It absolutely sucks that this year's ceremony did not involve ramming thousands of people shoulder-to-shoulder, having strangers hug each other, and making people sing directly into each other's faces. I have not watched and TV or read any news since last year's Oscars.

― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Sunday, April 25, 2021 11:33 PM (yesterday)

j/k, actually you are a total disaster and should log the fuck off and come back when you learn to read

to eephus!: i watch the Oscars (often out of one eye while working on a laptop) because they're a big event, you get to see celebrities making jokes and wearing pretty dresses, and it allows me to catch up just the right amount on a year's worth of movies i didn't see. if i laugh a few times and come away with a movie or two i think i'd like to see, then i consider it a success.

that show last night was honestly one of the worst couple of hours of TV i've seen in a long time. i do understand it's a tricky situation with regard to holding large events and the fact that people couldn't see movies in theaters for the past year.

this was enjoyable

The camera director direct Cuba Gooding Jr.'s acceptance speech at the Oscars 1997 is amazing. pic.twitter.com/zsuLPjA6zM

— chu (@chuuzus) April 25, 2021

SPEECH BY: DANIEL KALUUYA

FILM: "Judas and the Black Messiah"

Man, man. Thank you God. Thank you God. I can’t be here without your guidance and you’re your protection. I’d like to thank my mum. Thank you so much for pouring into me. You gave me everything. You gave me your factory settings. [laughter] So I can stand at my fullest height. Um, love to my sister, love to my niece, my friends, my family, everyone I love, from London Town to Kampala. I’d like to thank my team, incredible support. Bro, we out here, yo. Man. Man. It's good, come and dance. Ryan, Zinzi, Sev, Proximity, everyone at Proximity. Charles King, man, Everyone at MACRO, Bron, Participant. Nigel. Everyone at Warner Brothers. Thank you so much for everything you poured into this. Everything you poured into this. It’s so hard to make a film and make a film about a man like this, and they made it possible, they made it happen. I share this honor with the gift that is Lakeith Stanfield. The light that is [applause], yeah yeah, the light that is Dominique Fishback. [applause] The incredible cast, the incredible crew –you know what I mean -- Lucas Brothers for starting the journey. Will Berson. See, you know it's so incredible to look around you, to look around you and just go . . . you’re inspired by not only what they do but who they are. So that's amazing. Chairman Fred Junior and Mama Akua, thank you so much for allowing us into your life and into your story. Thank you, thank you for trusting us, you know, with your truth. I appreciate you deeply and it's an honor to partner up and stand side by side with you. And to Chairman Fred Hampton. Bro, man. Man, what a man. What a man. How blessed we are that we lived in a lifetime where he existed, do you know what I’m saying? I like thank you for your light. He was on this earth for 21 years, 21 years, and he found a way to feed kids, breakfast, educate kids, give free medical care, against all the odds. He showed, he showed me, he taught me him. Him, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party. They showed me how to love myself. And with that love, they overflowed into the black community and into other communities. And they showed us that the power of union, the power of unity, that when they play divide and conquer, we say unite and ascend. Thank you so much for showing me myself. And yeah, man, there's so much work to do guys, and that's on everyone in this room, this ain’t no single man job. I look at this room, and I look at everyone, every single one of you, you got work to do, you know what I’m saying. And I'm going to get back to work, Tuesday morning, because tonight I'm going up. [laughter] We’re going up, you know what I mean, we’re enjoying ourselves tonight because, what, we got to celebrate, celebrate life man, we're breathing, we’re walking. It's incredible it's incredible. Like it's incredible, my mum, my dad. They had sex. It's amazing. Like do you know what I’m saying, I'm here. You know what I mean? [laughter] So I'm so happy to be alive, so I’m going to celebrate that tonight, do you know what I’m saying? And I appreciate every single person in the room, appreciate everyone watching at home, you know, love, peace, love and onwards, we go again. Appreciate you. [applause]