The show didn't distinguish itself too fully this year-this is not an Oscars that we'll talk about a decade from now. Honestly, it was a fine show, if not really a particularly exciting one-there wasn't a lot of drama (more on that in a minute), and while I heard the ratings were low, I don't know that you can blame that on anything other than Hollywood didn't have the best year for film, and as we saw in 2016, it's hard for America to take a civics lesson seriously, even when you're getting that civics lesson from the most beautiful people on earth. On a night where it was clearly going to be politically-charged (which I'm all for-I love me some political awards shows), it's easy to see why people who are politics-ed out in the era of Trump just stayed home.
That said, the best part of the night for me was arguably a snooze for other people, and that was the multiple Hollywood legends coming out on-stage. Easily the best moments of the night were Eva Marie Saint, Rita Moreno, Christopher Walken, Jane Fonda, and yes, of course Faye Dunaway & Warren Beatty joining the stage for a standing ovation and the occasional bit of Old Hollywood glamour. They need to do this more; I know it sometimes seems a bit cruel (the jokes poor Kim Novak had to endure a few years back when "OMG-she got older!"), but this is what the Oscars are about-watching Hollywood history come alive. Hearing Eva Marie Saint refer to Alfred Hitchcock as "Fred"...who doesn't want that? More of this in the future please.
There were a few pairs of presenters that were terrific during the night, particularly Tiffany Haddish & Maya Rudolph and Kumail Nanjiani & Lupita Nyong'o. Haddish was having a blast, and had what may be the best "Meryl Moment" in a night glittered with them. The show was relatively brisk, even if people always complain about the length (Rant Time: The Oscars are long. You know what else is long-the fucking Super Bowl. It lasts twelve hours, but you never hear anyone complain about cutting the half-time show, so if you don't like it, don't watch, and let the rest of us enjoy our Oscars in peace).
Lastly, Jimmy Kimmel was good. He's a solid middle-of-the-road choice, even if some of his politics turns off a portion of America that quite frankly doesn't watch the Oscars anyway (and if they do, it's just to hate on the "liberals" and wonder why Adam Sandler hasn't won yet). You don't need a controversial host, as it makes everyone uncomfortable and makes it about something other than the movies (looking at Ricky Gervais there), so I hope they keep him on in a similar fashion to Bob Hope, as he's had two solid shows in a row. He let us see Luke Skywalker meet Wonder Woman, after all-if he doesn't deserve a third go-around after that, who does?
I'm more asking this as a question, but are we all fine that Meryl Streep has become the new Jack Nicholson? Every year we have to have our Meryl Moments, with literally every presenter chatting away with Meryl and an increasingly grumpy looking Don wondering when they can go home, and she has to do her flailing Meryl gesture of "who me, you're not exhausted by me?" moments. Listen, I love Meryl, but the jokes are tired at this point, so I just wanted to ask the question. If this is just Jack in His Sunglasses for a new generation, then at least play around with it. Have Meryl at the bar or in the back row or something one year just to mess with people's heads
And listen, I'm all for having Wes Studi presenting at the Oscars (if reports are correct, he's the first Native American to present at the show which seems WAY overdue), but did anyone else feel like his montage was a direct counter to select audience members (at home) who groaned during the diversity conversation so now we had to have a clip show for Red America? That's almost completely how it came across, particularly considering that we'd had films like Platoon and Wings already represented in that 90th Anniversary Clip Show (which I liked, but needed some sort of introduction). This felt glib and pandering, in my opinion, and it would have been nicer to have had Studi just introduce the anniversary clip rather than have a separate "Republican" clip, which was obviously what the producers were going for even though military appreciation is a non-partisan affair.
Okay, Oscar-we need to talk. This was easily the most predictable Oscars of my lifetime, in an era where the Oscars have become almost comically predictable. My personal score was 21/24, but that was only because I missed Documentary Feature and two of the shorts categories, which are notoriously hard to pin down and three of the categories with the least amount of precursors, so they don't have as much momentum headed into the night. The reality is that Sam Rockwell, Frances McDormand, Allison Janney, and Gary Oldman all won everything this year. Literally every televised awards show picked the same four people, providing zilch drama. These are all fine actors, and with the exception of Rockwell, all gave good performances, but there's no doubt in my mind that other performers gave equal (or, quite frankly, better) performances than all of them this year. The Oscars need to find a way to fix this as quite frankly we have really only had one "surprise" acting win in the past five years (Mark Rylance), and the ratings are going to continue to falter if the show is boring. I think it's time to relook at how you disperse ballots, maybe forcing people to see all of the movies again or only letting certain branches vote for the winners in their categories (or a grab bag ballot where you only get to vote in five random categories). Something has to give, though, as Oscar will become less important if everything is decided in advance. No one should get every traditional, feature-length category right simply by picking the frontrunner in each field, including me (even if it meant I blasted through my personal contest).
Also, it has to be said-we decided to honor Kobe Bryant on the same night as the #TimesUp movement? This looks bad, Academy, and like you only care about the victims of these crimes if they're on Good Morning America or happen to be movie stars, and not if they're normal people being victimized by a powerful man who is still "publicly acceptable." I'll leave Gary Oldman out of this for a second (though he should be included too), but Bryant is well-known for his involvement in a sexual assault case, and it feels disingenuous to, say, disinvite Casey Affleck to the ceremony but invite Bryant to the club. I haven't seen Dear Basketball, so I can't say with certainty whether he actually deserved the trophy or not, but it feels like picking-and-choosing, and if you're going to call yourself principled that's not an option.
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