Oh how cool is it that Parasite won? I'll reveal next weekend which of the movies from this year I would have given my top prize toward, but as you might remember, I loved Parasite. It's been a long time coming that the Oscars finally embraced foreign language cinema in such a way that it won Best Picture & Director, but if they were going to wait this long, it is exciting that it happened for such a breathtaking movie. Parasite is going to be a win that will age well for the Oscars, something akin to Moonlight or Silence of the Lambs; a win that was feasible at the time, but not guaranteed, and which will stand out as exceptionally good taste from a body that occasionally gives trophies to Green Book. Plus, Bong's speech during Best Director is going to go down as an all-time great.
In addition, I thought it was a brisk ceremony. Some of the comedy bits were good (Maya & Kristin, Will & Julia, etc) and the musical numbers were solid. I think that Elton John would have been more fun if he'd broken out into "The Bitch is Back" or "Crocodile Rock" (would literally anyone have objected?), but the bonkers opening number from Janelle Monae (using her own song "Come Alive") and the rap from Utkarsh Ambudkar were welcome, in my opinion, and while I don't entirely get why Eminem performed (all explanations make little sense to me), I was rapping along.
We are now in Year 2 of the "no host" experiment, and generally it worked. Like last year, we had an opening number to rev up the crowd and a long-ish introduction from established comedians (in this case Steve Martin & Chris Rock) to get people into a groove of the awards before abandoning this setup. I think this, for the most part, still works. The hosts are oftentimes more trouble than they're worth, but the best ones (Whoopi, Ellen the first time, Billy Crystal in the 90's, imho Jimmy Kimmel), are awesome, giving the shows their own personality, and adding flavor to the ceremony in a way that makes not just the films that won distinctive, but the Oscars themselves.
Some names that spring to mind are not only Rudolph, Wiig, Ferrell, & Louis-Dreyfus (all A+ presenters), but also names like John Mulaney, Tiffany Haddish, Awkafina, Melissa McCarthy, Emma Stone, or Chrissy Teigen/John Legend. The Oscars always fail when they go edgy (Chris Rock & Seth MacFarlane being two of the worst hosts, and lord help them if they ever subject us to Ricky Gervais), but I think after two years off they should return to a host next year, with keeping "no host" as a strong option for future years if they need to do so.
I'm going to nitpick for a bit here before I get to the two truly awful aspects of the ceremony, as generally this was a good show. A couple of things that I'm going to go after, though-the introductions to introductions felt a bit weird. People like George Mackay and Anthony Ramos were introducing presenters, which felt absurd (and like placating to younger crowds, even with figures like Ramos who have almost no connection to the film industry). This is something a host would normally do, but honestly, an announcer could do it just as well and quite frankly none of these "pre-presenters" did a good enough job to warrant this being a thing.
Secondly, I did feel that the star power was missing a bit this year. While there was a great deal of Young Hollywood (always a good thing), I felt like the stars kind of skipped the Oscars this year, with only figures like Tom Hanks and Penelope Cruz filling in as "eternal A-listers." Worst of all was the almost complete erasure of classic cinema. This was true in clips (take a drink every time during that Lin-Manuel Miranda clip of songs-connected-to-movies shows you anything before 1980 and you'll still be able to drive home), but also in terms of the presenters. Other than Hanks, Martin, Spike Lee, Sigourney Weaver, Jane Fonda, Steven Spielberg, and Diane Keaton, there were no actor with significant careers before 1990, and none of these actors aren't currently a big deal in film or television (so they don't warrant being called a "surprise"). This is a scant list compared to recent years where stars such as Eva Marie Saint, Kim Novak, Warren Beatty, & Faye Dunaway came out. Why not get Al Pacino onto the stage with Diane Keaton in a Godfather reunion (a way more effective way to do it than Something's Gotta Give) or get someone like Harrison Ford onstage since he's got a movie to plug in a few weeks? Not to mention, say, a long-lost A-lister like Tippi Hedren or Sidney Poitier or someone who would genuinely bring the house down. It can't always just be Hanks, Fonda, Keaton, & Spielberg-let's mix it up a bit and remember that cinema didn't start with John Hughes.
There are two thing that were noticeably bad about last night, one of which I bring up more because it leads into the other and less to chastise. The first was that this season was way too short. The Oscars snuck up on almost everyone (I'd imagine that ratings will be down so soon after the Super Bowl forced us all to get together), and didn't give enough time for some of these movies to breathe. That is being fixed in the future, but it's kind of a miracle that Parasite won under such circumstances and was able to overcome tthe hegemony of the Joker/Irishman/Hollywood/1917 quartet in the tech awards. The Oscars shouldn't be rushed, and I still think that genuine creativity that was starting to gain movement headed into the nominations (like Celine Sciamma for Best Director or Alfre Woodard for Best Actress) might also address some of the #OscarsSoWhite or #OscarsSoMale criticism that has been appropriately thrown at the Academy in recent years.
The other aspect is-someone needs to figure out how to stop this lock-step trophy stampede in the acting categories. For only the second time in three years, all four of the acting winners (Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger, Brad Pitt & Laura Dern) won every televised award. I didn't watch the Globes or SAG Awards this year and don't feel I missed anything, and honestly, how is the Oscars supposed to distinguish itself when it copies everyone else. This is threatening to be a death knell to the Oscars-eventually people are going to be sick of knowing all of the winners in advance of the ceremony (for the third year in a row I got over 20 categories correct-that's not a good thing, as I rarely pick someone who isn't the frontrunner). Surprise is where you will find viewers, and it shouldn't just be in Best Picture. Zellweger already had an Oscar-there's no reason that she shouldn't have had a tougher time against someone like Saoirse Ronan or Scarlett Johansson last night. Joaquin Phoenix won a role that another actor played (better) a decade ago-I'm fine with him having a trophy (he's a great actor), but seriously no awards body was willing to admit that Adam Driver was considerably better? Or hell, give a chance to a longtime trouper such as Antonio Banderas or Jonathan Pryce, who would have given a great speech? I'm not trying to make qualitative judgments here, but if everyone knows who's going to win before the ceremony (and anyone who paid attention this year did), then there's no point to watching. Particularly with categories like Best Actress or Animated Feature (Pixar? Again? Really?) where a surprise was BEGGING to occur, the Academy truly dropped the ball this year, and this poses perhaps the biggest existential threat to the Oscars going forward.
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