The Oscars

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 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.

The 88th Annual Academy Awards happened today & after much fanfare, hype & ridicule (THE diversity issue), the prestigious ceremony delivered more ups than downs.

Lets face it, we love the Movies & we love knowing about the Oscars, even if we don't believe in them or don't watch them, we still do wanna know whats happening. And the Academy-Awards celebrate Movies royally, even if they don't get it right all the time in terms of their Winners.

After opening to a TERRIFIC Oscar-Intro, which featured clips from the very best films of the year, our host for the evening Chris Rock took upon the stage. Being a Black-Man, Rock did a stupendous job, while digging into THE Diversity issue, without offending many (Jada Pinkett Smith wasn't happy for sure, but then again, she wanted A Best Actor Nomination for After Earth for any of the Smith's). Rock spoke openly about the hypocrisy that exists within the Film Industry & how things have changed, but not the way they probably should have. It was a hilarious opening monologue & it was fun to see Rock in such comedic form after such a long time.

The very first Oscar of the night went to the astonishing Spotlight, picking up Best Original Screenplay. It followed with the scary economic drama The Big Short taking home Best Adapted Screenplay. A surprise followed when Ex Machina crushed its opposition to win Best Visual Effects, a surprise win, given the fact that Jedi's & Mad Max were also in contention.

And suddenly, The 88th Academy-Awards turned into The Mad Max: Fury Road Night. Oh yes, George Miller's breath-taking action-packed blockbuster won a total of 6 Oscars, as the night progressed, sweeping away with Sound Editing, Production Design, Make-Up & Hairstyling, Film Editing & Costume Design. Of What A Day, What A LOVELY DAY!

Mad Max's incredible winning streak came to an end, as Emmanuel Lubezki Won his Third Consecutive Win for Best Cinematography for his work in The Revenant. John Seale's work in Mad Max was furious, but it was Roger Deakins's matchless work in the masterful Sicario, that was the real trump card here, but that didn't stop Lubezki to create history.

Inside Out Won Best Animated Feature, Amy Won Best Documentary & Son of Saul Won Best Foreign Language Film. No Surprises in any of these categories!

And when Ennio Morricone Won Best Original Score for Tarantino's despicable The Hateful Eight, the world stood up in respect. The legend spoke in Italian & choked up, given the respect & adulation from everyone. You Deserve It!

Mark Rylance Winning Best Supporting Actor for his SUPERB Performance in Bridges of Spies, left me overjoyed. Though many rooted for Stallone's comeback performance as Rocky Balboa in the smash hit Creed, it was Rylance who defeated the hot favorite & ended up giving a beautiful speech. Alicia Vikander took home Best Supporting Actress for her sensitive performance in The Danish Girl, a film where the performances clearly made it what it is. Too bad for Jennifer Jason-Leigh, as her turn in The Hateful Eight, was the finest female performance in a Tarantino film to date.

Brie Larson continued her unbeatable streak, taking home Best Actress for her flawless performance in Room.

And then LEONARDO DICAPRIO Won the Oscar for Best Actor for his impressive (though not best) performance in The Revenant. As overwhelmed as we are for Leo, its kinda sad to know that the jokes, memes & prayers for Leo to win the Golden Statue are now a thing of the past. Michael Fassbender's portrayal of Steve Jobs, however, remained my favorite.

Best Director went to The Revenant's Alejandro González Iñárritu, A Second Win in a row for the master storyteller. George Miller's passion was killing, Tom McCarthy shook us all, but it was Iñárritu's year, yet again!

And Then Came The Night's Best & Biggest Win - SPOTLIGHT Won Best Picture. Well Deserved. Well Deserved. Well Deserved. This was a Landmark Film & it stood tall, despite strong contenders.

All in All, The 88th Annual Academy Awards rocked! After many years, The List of Winners were rather...correct!

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.