The Oscars

The 88th Annual Academy Awards took place and diversity was in the spotlight.

Chris Rock was the host with a big opening but as the show went on the gags and sketches about race, the lack of diversity became grating. You think enough, the jokes are wearing thin now.

Mad Max: Fury Road was the early runner grabbing the technical Oscars. There were a few surprises, Sam Smith got the Best Song Oscar for Spectre despite his dodgy warbling during the ceremony.

Mark Rylance grabbed the Best Supporting Actor Oscar from front runner Sylvester Stallone.

As for best picture, despite only winning the Best Original Screenplay, it added the big one as its second one. I guess it is the Michael Keaton effect.

Best speech of the night. Louis CK when presenting the Best Documentary Shorts and how much the Oscar would mean to the winners rather than most of the millionaires in the front row of the auditorium.

The issue hanging over the Academy Awards this year was the lack of ethnic diversity among the acting nominees for the second year in a row. It was to be expected that host Chris Rock would tear the Academy (and Hollywood in general) a new one over that. He was as merciless as I expected (and I really liked his explanation of why African-Americans didn't protest all-white lists of nominees in years past). I also liked when he inserted black actors and actresses into the nominated movies, and when he went to Compton to ask the people there about the nominees (and got some, ahem, unusual answers).

Anyway, of all the nominated movies in all categories, I have so far seen only "The Revenant", "Mad Max: Fury Road", "Carol", "The Hateful Eight", "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", "Ex Machina", "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" and "Cinderella". I can't understand why they nominated "Mad Max: Fury Road" for Best Picture. It was impressive as an action movie, but not as anything that one would treat as a high-quality story. It sounds as though "Spotlight" did tell one of the most important stories (and the producers used their win to condemn the Catholic Church's cover-up). It was especially great that Ennio Morricone won for "The Hateful Eight", since he's deserved an Oscar for a long time.

Sam Smith erroneously called himself the first openly gay person to win an Oscar. Previous openly LGBT winners include Elton John, Melissa Etheridge, Pedro Almodóvar and Dustin Lance Black. As for Smith's win, it sounds as though the documentaries "The Hunting Ground" and "Racing Extinction" were the more important productions, so one of the songs from those should have won. It was a surprise to see Joe Biden introduce Lady Gaga's performance. The performance itself was great, especially when she brought the survivors of sexual assault - male and female - onto the stage. A controversy in that category was that the singer of the song from "Racing Extinction" didn't even get invited to the ceremony.

And then there was Leonardo DiCaprio's win. As with his Golden Globe win, he used his platform to draw attention to global warming and the plight of indigenous peoples. And then when Alejandro González Iñárritu won Best Director for the second year in a row, he again used his platform to condemn racism. Well said.

In the end, I liked the show.

Considering this is Hollywood's big night of the year, I found the show sorely lacking in execution.

1) wasting time with run-on and overly staged presentations; 2) lost time for honorees to speak due to length of time it took them to get to the stage; 3) disrespect to the honorees with attempts to play them off with the music.

2) At some point someone...hello director... should have decided to simply have the presenters already on stage ready to go and allocated the saved time to the people who actually got awards.

3) Also, if truly necessary to have music as a cue to get ready to end...again hello director... how about softly introducing it and gradually building up as time went on rather than just starting to play while honorees were mid sentence.

4)And finally, how about those last two songs getting some airtime.

Louis CK gets a shout out for helping to make sense of a part of the Awards, but here again, he got more respect than the Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy got because she was interrupted by the music.

For me, this was the peak of the Oscars. The Revenant stands as one of my favorite films ever so seeing it winning Best Cinematography, Best actor, and Best Director, it was amazing. All of the other contenders are top notch as well so this was definitely my favorite Oscar ceremony that I've seen.

"The 88th Annual Academy Awards" was one that moved along about the same pace as host Chris Rock bombed joke after joke about the no black nominees crisis, really he went overboard yet he tried to be funny. Still the music and presenters and parody parts were okay like the use of girl scout cookies and "Star Wars" robot appearances. Still the big surprise and most disappointing thing was Mark Rylance winning for supporting actor! This should have been Sly's night why did the voting members knock him out! Stallone has been in the business to long he deserves an Oscar. And as expected Leo finally wins a little gold man as his "Best Actor" win was well deserved for his raw and tough performance in "The Revenant". And again in a little surprise for best picture "Spotlight" wins true it was an excellent drama an investigative film with a good message of exposing corrupt religious leaders, as it's clear that Hollywood and voting members still love news and journalism films as it's brains over brawn and grit as the toughness of "The Revenant" could not match the grace and elegant powerful message of "Spotlight". Overall okay "Oscars" with Chris Rock speaking to much and a big knockout blow to Stallone, and a deserved win for Leo, and ending with a powerful film named "Spotlight" taking the top spot in front of the Academy light at the end!