The Oscars

I will say this: thanks to the lack of a host, the ceremony went by a lot less vexingly than it could have done. I can count the total number of cringe moments on all of my appendages. That's nothing compared to what I'm used to.

__

• The Opening Number: You almost had me believing that this sh-t would be thoroughly exciting to sit through for a sec! The awkward attempts at audience participation were pretty hilarious, too, although I'm a little confused. The costumes suggest a "snubbed films" theme, what with the obvious Dolemite and Midsommar suits, yet some of the other dancers were inspired by Joker and Janelle was clearly doing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - both of those were nominated. Whatevs.
• The Recognition For Parasite In General: Since I haven't quite swallowed the narrative that nominating Bong Joon-ho, Lee Ha-jun, Cho Won-woo, Yang Jin-mo, and Han Jin-won is equivalent to the Academy "ignoring" Asians this year, I would say, on the contrary, that it is a sign of overdue progress that the masterful creators of South Korea are getting the recognition they deserve. If we are to truly, genuinely celebrate excellence in cinema, only looking within (and sometimes a little bit around) the Hollywood bubble isn't enough. And the Oscars may not truly matter - their opinions don't determine which pieces of art last forever - but the fact is, they help creators get more attention and funding, which Bong deserves without a doubt. And everyone else knows this, hence why they pushed for the Parasite crew to truly finish their speeches at the end of the show. And now that I'm done talking about something that I unironically appreciated, let us move on...
• Nightmare Creatures From Cats: Good.
• Rudolph And Wiigs' Little Song: We get it, it's very cute. The faces you're making are so funny. But to me, the great thing about this one is how the Academy, in lieu of an insufferable host, feels the need to think up other ways to waste our time.
• Colman Being All Real: I just remembered how happy I am she won during a completely different ceremony.
• Bong's Shoutouts To His Fellow Nominees And His Cast: Oh Bong.
• Scorsese's GIF-able Faces: Oh Marty.
• Random Eminem In-Joke Performance: I dunno either, Billie. But then, I dunno why the f-ck you are here either. The Zoomers aren't gonna watch you, Oscars.
• Multilingual Elsa: I still think Aurora has the best pipes of the bunch, however, and it's a little bit funny that the big Disney movie of the year only managed a Best Song nomination, and despite doing something this "progressive", still lost to my boy Elton. And while I'm on the subject of song nominations...
• Randy Newman Being Randy Newman: I like you, Randy, so I guess I'll try to get over the inevitable reality of Disney/Pixar winning Best Animated Feature over Klaus.

Why would you have like 5+ 'musical performances' at an event for film? Sure some of the songs that were performed were in some of the movies, but you're taking up over 20minutes of the event with music? It just seems stupid at a film event.

The oscars this year didn't have a host... instead they used a bunch of different actors to 'host' the oscars... the HUGE problem with this is that instead of having a great host who's funny & witty 100% through the entire awards event, you're now depending on 30+ people to be funny & witty (which just doesn't happen EVER). So you've automatically left with a less-funny & less-witty awards event, because you chose to not have a single host. Some of the 'hosts' were funny, but about 80% of them weren't funny or witty at all. Almost all the lines that they read off from the teleprompter were so stiff and flatly delivered, that you just KNEW they were going to deliver the punch line next, and if you know when the punch line is going to come, then a joke isn't funny.

Overall, the awards had too little funny, was too scripted and had too many musical intermissions. It didn't have many ads though, so that's good.

1. Hosts are funny! Without a host the oscars get boring and pointless mainly because of my next point 2. Stop making it political. No one wants to hear your complaint about the president. They wanna hear you thank everyone who got you this award. Stop talking about climate change and start thanking the writers, directors, producers and the fans!

Another thing is to everyone. The nominations are always fair. Just because there was no woman director nominated doesn't mean they are sexist. The nominees for best director were amazing, and it was probably really close. All the directors are some of the greatest of all time. Yes, Little Women was good, and Greta definitely did a good job, but the academy is the most PC group of people. They aren't discriminating.

Honestly, some of the best winners in all of the Oscars history were in this ceremony.

Parasite sweeping was absolutely deserved, and even to this day, monumental. There was no need for any competition in the categories it won. It also should have won Film Editing over Ford v. Ferrari, in my opinion.

Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) winning Actor, as well as the film winning Score, was absolutely deserved too.

Renee Zellweger (Judy) gave a great performance, but it absolutely should have been Scarlett Jóhannsson (Marriage Story).

Brad Pitt (OUATIH) winning Supporting Actor was a great win, and the film absolutely EARNED that Production Design win.

Laura Dern (Marriage Story) was an okay win, but I would have given it to Florence Pugh (Little Women).

Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi) winning Adapted Screenplay was very exciting! Granted, any of the nominees (except the Oscar bait that was The Two Popes) could have won, but still.

Toy Story 4 for Animated Feature is kind of a dumb win, although it is a great film, the winner should have easily been Klaus. Hair Love for Animated Short is actually exciting, though!

American Factory for Documentary Feature is completely undeserved (I don't even think it deserved the nomination), it should have been Honeyland or For Sama.

1917's three wins; Cinematography, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects were absolutely deserved.

Ford v Ferrari and 1917 splitting the Sound categories was a great choice.

Little Women winning Costume Design was somewhat deserved, but only because the other nominees weren't all that great. If Rocketman wasn't completely snubbed for Costume Design, that should have won over Little Women.

Speaking of Rocketman (which was severely snubbed for several other categories), the Song win was deserved.

Bombshell winning makeup was well-deserved too, even if I dislike the movie.

Still, what keeps this from being a truly great ceremony, besides a few undeserved wins, is the comedy. The academy did their damndest to have the presenters make horrendously unfunny, cringeworthy jokes. Wiig and Rudolph trying too hard to be funny and failing miserably was especially egregious, and so was the entire "Cats" segment. It was embarrassing! Otherwise, this was the best Oscar ceremony in the past 10 years.

Best Picture W : Parasite M : Joker

Best Leading Actor W : Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) M : Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

Best Leading Actress W : Renne Zellweger (Judy) M : Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story)

Best Supporting Actor W : Brad Pitt (OUTIH) M : Brad Pitt (OUTIH)

Best Supporting Actress W : Laura Dern (Marriage Story) M : Laura Dern (Marriage Story)

Best Director W : Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) M : Sam Mendes (1917)

Best Original Screenplay W : Parasite M : Knives Out

Best Adapted Screenplay W : Jojo Rabbit M : Joker

Best Cinematography W : 1917 M : 1917

Best Original Score W : Joker M : Joker

Best Vissual Effects W : 1917 M : Avengers Endgame