What We Really Missed at the Oscars...
So I woke up this morning to the confirmation that last night did indeed happen and was not a spice dream I had after eating Tex-Mex for three meals in a row over the weekend. If you’re here for a take on Will Smith, I am here to disappoint. I do, however, have some takeaways from the actual Academy Awards event itself so if you would care to follow me this way I would love to share a few thoughts:
Awards shows are ridiculous things, but I’ll always be there for the awkwardness and this event had it in spades. For a night that is created to celebrate preparedness, delivery, and intention, the Oscars is a cascading affair of unwieldiness and clunkiness. It’s The Office on steroids and there are so many Michaels in the room.
Dune! It won six Academy Awards last night (even though Denis Villeneuve was robbed of a nomination)! I can’t wait for the sequel.
To try and be more appealing to the youths, the Academy created a Fan Favorite Moment vote and to the surprise of everyone except Twitter, “The Flash and the Speed Force” won! It’s hilarious that they designed this for Marvelheads and then the Zack Snyder gang took it over to get top billing. Also, Justice League is so laughably terrible that I can’t even recall this scene. I have tried to block that movie from my memory and I’m happy to report that I have apparently succeeded.
I enjoyed Amy Schumer much more than I was expecting.
The real tragedy of “the slap” was Questlove’s overshadowed and sincere acceptance speech for Summer of Soul. It’s a great documentary and his love and admiration for music in general and that historical moment in 1969 radiated as he spoke last night. I’m so happy he won!
Those montages “honoring” historical anniversaries for James Bond and The Godfather felt thoughtless and quickly mashed together.
Kenneth Branagh is the Irish Jason Bateman. Now that you see it you won’t be able to forget it.
I’ll probably catch some flack for this, but while CODA is a pretty good movie it was not the best picture from 2021. Here’s how I would rank the BP nominees: (1) Drive My Car (2) Nightmare Alley (3) Dune (4) CODA (5) Don’t Look Up (6) West Side Story (7) King Richard (8) Belfast (9) Power of the Dog (10) Licorice Pizza. Also, I think ranking movies is mostly a stupid endeavor. I’m full of contradictions.
I wish I could give credit where it is due, but someone on Twitter pointed out how thoughtful Lady Gaga seems to be with elderly celebrities and I believe that’s a good thing to highlight. My mileage for LG varies but it’s a genuine quality about her and last night needed more moments of kindness.
The most most disturbing aspect of last night’s Oscars is the absence of one great film. The best movie of 2021, in my not so humble opinion, is Pig. No nominations, no recognition. It’s a real slap in the face. Go watch this movie right now.
Here’s my last take: I wish we could divorce the artistry of filmmaking from celebrity culture. As we witnessed last night, celebrity glorifies toxic behavior on a multitude of fronts and hides behind pontification and a facade of beauty and creativity. I love hearing from sound editors, mixers, cinematographers, designers and other creatives who truly make these films pop. It’s a shame their work was marginalized and other, more troubling voices were magnified. While events like the Oscars will always be awkward, I wish that we could figure out a way to celebrate this medium with a little bit more kindness and care.
That being said, if the Academy wants a way to shorten the speeches next year they can hire Will Smith to slap each winner into silence if they go too long. Just an idea…
Watching / Reading / Listening
Somebody Somewhere (HBO Max): What a delightful little show. One of the better features of “prestige television” is the zooming into unique storytellers and settings. Located in Manhattan, Kansas, this series follows Sam, a woman reeling from the recent loss of her beloved sister while navigating the turbulent waters within her family and trying to solidify her own identity. More than anything, this series showcases the formation of community and how we find ourselves when we find “our people” (which is a phrase I usually loathe but is quite accurate here).
92/100
Pam and Tommy (Hulu): The soundtrack to Pam and Tommy is almost too perfect. It’s also the best feature of this show, which is very sad to say considering the content and potential that this nostalgia trip had to offer. Semi-strong performances from Lily James and Sebastian Stan can’t cover the lack of storytelling of this overlong document. Screenwriters and showrunners have come up with nifty tricks to articulate their stories, such as the bottle episode or flashback quick cuts to provide larger context. However, when injected too much to supplement a lack of material, it increasingly rings false. I wanted to like this show, but found myself struggling to complete it (which I did).
68/100
Murderville (Netflix): Murderville’s premise: A scripted detective show wherein each episode Will Arnett’s Terry Seattle is paired with a new partner to investigate a homicide. While Arnett and the other actors are given a script to work from, the celebrity guest is goes in unaware of what will happen in each scene. They are there to work from the facts and then decide who is the killer. It’s a wonderful conceit but depends so much on the guest star that it makes for a very uneven watch. The high points of this series are guests Conan O’Brien and Ken Jeong. If you need a show that doesn’t ask much from you but is enjoyable overall, this is it.
82/100
Reacher (Amazon Prime): It took me two years into a pandemic for me to realize that sometimes all a person needs is to watch a generally good person beat the hell out a lot of bad guys. It’s not going to blow you away by any means, but I liked it much more than I was expecting.
83/100
The Mismatch (Spotify: Ringer Podcast Network): I haven’t watched a ton of NBA basketball this year but I have listened to quite a bit of NBA podcasts. I’ve often heard the refrain that sports are just soap operas for men, and while I find that degrading on so many levels, what I can tell you is that I love when other people gossip about NBA drama on and off the court. The Lakers make up over 80% of the action these days, but somehow I am always here for it. There’s also a surplus of thoughtful basketball analysis on here too.
89/100
The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman: Has anyone been able to finish a book this year? I haven’t. It’s almost the end of March and I’ve read so many books without actually completing any of them. Alas, I have overall been pleased with this dissection of the nineties from Klosterman. It’s less of a straight reflection on what actually occurred during this time period and more about how we remember the decade. It’s a reflection on top of a reflection.
91/100 (had to be in the nineties, right?)
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