Also known as “the slap heard across the world!” Here’s what went down at the Oscars last night.
Firstly, it was great to see the ceremony back at the Dolby Theater. Although with that many people, I hope a new COVID variant doesn’t come out of the evening. Regardless, it also seemed like everyone was happy to be there. This was the first time I’ve seen three people host the event, but I thought Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer, and Regina Hall did a fine job. I enjoyed all of their jokes and I didn’t feel they were overused. And that’s a good thing because the ceremony rang in 20 minutes shy of a four hour broadcast! In my opinion, if you’re going to run that far over the three hours allotted, then there was no reason for categories to be cut from the live broadcast. Hopefully that changes next year.
As far as the winners go, there were absolutely no surprises in the acting categories from what we’ve been seeing all season. Ariana DeBose, Troy Kotsur, Jessica Chastain, and Will Smith took home the night’s prizes. There was a day or two before the ceremony that was giving Penelope Cruz some serious buzz, but it never came to be. Truthfully, I would have been okay with any of those women winning, as they all gave stellar performances. Now, as much as I enjoyed King Richard, Will Smith had to go and make his Oscar win uncomfortable. See, not too long before his name was announced, Chris Rock came onstage to present Bes Documentary to Summer of Soul (congrats Questlove!). Just before that though, he made a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith looking like GI Jane with her buzz-cut. Will Smith laughed and Jada rolled her eyes, and then a minute later Will walked up and “slapped” Rock. Then some stuff got bleeped and pretty obviously cut. The Australians all helped us out with an unedited clip that was hella awkward, revealing that what went down wasn’t a bit like I’d thought, but dead real.
In hindsight, what burned me up about that was that after that incident, Smith’s acceptance speech about love and protection went on forever, where just a little bit earlier, the director and winner of Best International Feature for Drive My Car was cut off by music twice! And his speech wasn’t nearly as long. Also, maybe these people and the cut categories could have had their due time in the spotlight had they not aired dumb, fan-voted categories that were meant to service Marvel in the top spot, but didn’t anyways. Fan-voted stuff is what the MTV Movie & TV Awards are for. So truly, those were the most strange and irritating things that happened during the ceremony, although the upbeat In Memorium was still pretty uncalled for. And perhaps my last gripe is to get presenters that are actually relevant to the films of that year, not athletes. Like, I would have much rather preferred to see Simon Rex or Isabella Fuhrman, who put in excellent work this year, instead of Tony Hawk.
Overall though, I was pleased to see CODA take home the top prize, and Jane Campion for directing. I was both surprised and not at all surprised with how many technical categories Dune took the trophy for. And I suppose Billie Eilish winning for Best Original Song was better than any of the other offerings in that category. Some collaborations I’d love to see in the future just based on seating arrangement and presenting pairs include Bradley Cooper in Kenneth Branagh’s next Agatha Christie film, and Simu Liu and Tiffany Haddish in literally any comedy film. While there were plenty of problems with the broadcast, it still makes me happy watching these awards shows, so you’ll catch me next year, too.