2019. február 26., kedd

Oscars 2019: Photo Recap


Welcome to my first ever Oscars recap! I've been planning to do this for years and what do you know, I finally got over my laziness this year and actually did it! Took pictures and everything! Hopefully it's not going to be a complete drag to read, and maybe my shameless attempts at trying to be funny will embolden some readers to share their own thoughts in the comments below. Also, forgive me for cutting out a good chunk of the winners, like most of the techincal categories. I'm just really not a good judge of those, you know? I still have no idea what's the difference between sound mixing and sound editing, for example, and let's be honest, as important as all these people are in making movies, their acceptance speeches are rarely among the more interesting ones. Right, here it goes!


In the absence of a host this year, the ceremony was opened by none others than Queen and Adam Lambert! I always loved him as their choice of new singer, even if nowadays he looks a lot more like George Michael than Freddie Mercury.



Obviously he's not Freddie, but who could ever be? He's still the next best thing the band couuld have chosen, and this performance was definitely THE best Oscar opener I've seen in a long time.




















Rami  and Lucy enjoyed it a lot too! But then, so did everyone else.



















The first presenters of the night were Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, and Amy Poehler, here to present the award for Best Supporting Actress, and make the obligatory joke about how they should have been the hosts. Oh and the first Trump mention of the night! Because we all love those, am I right?

"Something something border wall. I'm smart and funny!" Couldn't possible have one night that's just about entertainment and positive vibes, nope. Gotta show how relatable and in touch with reality these billionaire celebrities are.

Other than that, the ladies actually made for a really funny opener, showing off some intentionally tired jokes and "burns" that they would have cracked had they been the hosts, and even belting off a bit of Shallow for our entertainment.



















... yeah. Look, I like them a lot. Just less politics, please.

So Supporting Actress, and it went to Regina King, for If Beale Street Could Talk, a movie I haven't seen yet but will get to eventually, along with Green Book. I think they might be the only two movies out of this year's roster that I haven't seen yet, and that's pretty outstanding for me.

Rachel Weisz being nominated also gave us this moment:



















Awww. That's LOVE.

Next up was Jason Momoa and Helen Mirren presenting Best Documentary, and can I just say, I don't know who comes up with these pairings, but I'm so grateful.

Anyway, the film which won is apparently about a mountain climber, and the lady who accepted the award has an incredibly Hungarian name courtesy of his Hungarian dad, so that's cool!

Tom Morello came out to talk a bit about Vice, because...? Honestly, I don't know what his connection to this movie is. So I looked it up and instead of an explanation, I found an entire article about people being confused on Twitter. Apparently collecting tweets is a job now. Who knew!

Brian Tyree Henry and Melissa McCarthy chose to present the award for Costume Design in style...



















...and the audience loved it.




















You could hear people giggle all throughout their speech, and it was honestly pretty great. Black Panther won which was unexpected with so many period dramas also nominated, but I guess it had to win something, since there was no way it was taking Best Picture home. The lady who accepted the award gave a weird, potentially drunk speech about how "Marvel may have created the first black superhero, but through costume design we turned him into an African king", which makes zero sense since it was definitely Marvel who wrote him that way. I think I understand what she was trying to say but boy was it a weird way to say it.

It was time for the first song of the night and it fell to Emilia Clarke to introduce it. It was a ballad from the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary, and Emilia quipped "Khaleesi has nothing on her", which pisses me off becasue THAT'S. NOT. HER. NAME. And I know that Emilia knows this but then why did she say it? Honestly this is a huge pet peeve of mine, and every time someone answers the question "Who is your favourite Game of Thrones character?" with Khaleesi, my soul dies a little. Would a Robb Stark fan answer the same question with King in the North? No. So why is it so hard to say Dany's name instead of her title?

Anyway, Jennifer Hudson sang the song called I'll Fight, which I thought was a bit boring and overwrought, but as it turned out, so were all the other nominated songs not sang by Lady Gaga. Later we got one from Mary Poppins Returns, and some weird ass cowboy ditty from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and it was like they weren't even trying to make it hard for Shallow to win.

Speaking of, Serena Williams introduced A Star Is Born, so I started to sense a theme here: non-movie people introducing the Best Picture nominees. Then it was blown out of the water when later introducers included Queen Latifah, the dudes from Wayne's World, and Trevor Noah, who not only made some nonsensical Mel Gibson joke that 2010 would very much like to have back (seriously, was Mel Gibson even present? He sure as hell wasn't nominated), but also, apparently, that inspiring phrase that he spouted off in Xhosa? According to native speakers it actually means "white people don't know I'm lying". You know, unlike all the millions of black Americans, not to mention Asians, Indians, Middle Eastern folk, etc. who I'm sure all speak perfect Xhosa. It's only those damn white people that won't get it! Haha! What a joke!

And then of course someone just had to mention that damn wall again.



















Yes, Javier. You said a clever. Well done.

The award for Supporting Actor went to Mahershala Ali, and surely I can't be the only one who wondered about the hat?



















I mean it's such a bafflingly weird choice for an awards show, it has to have a special meaning behind it, right? So again I turned to Google and... nope, it's just a hat. But don't you just love how the writer of this article seems to assume that non-celebrities regularly go around buying hats for $350? That's half of my monthly pay, my dude.

The award for Documentary Short was awkwardly presented by John Mulaney and Awkwafina, who I would very much prefer to call by her beautiful real name, Nora Lum, but for some reason this is what she chooses to go with. The statue for the film Period was accepted by a lady who sounded like she was also gunning for Best Actress with her speech, as she breathlessly thanked the women featured in her film for "empowering women all over the world to fight for menstrual equality". I tried to look the film up to understand what this could possibly mean but when I googled "period film", I just got a bunch of Keira Knightley pictures. But joking aside, the documentary is about women in India where menstruation is apparently still seen as a stigma, so that's what the lady meant. A noble cause for sure, so I can almost forgive her for that speech.

By now I'm sure everyone who hasn't seen the show has heard about Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's emotional (what else?) live rendition of their hit song Shallow, and it really was a highlight of the evening. It wasn't perfect, as these Oscar performances often aren't, no matter how amazing the singers. Remember Idina Menzel's bungling of Let It Go? But they gave it their everything and it really is a great song, so yeah, I can forgive Bradley for sounding like a completely different person than he did in the movie. Also, they were really pretty together.




Obviously they won later and Lady Gaga gave another one of her trademark, tear-choked speeches, but at least this one was about fighting for your dreams and never giving up, not about how hard it is for female celebrities to be taken seriously (I still wonder where and how, exactly), so I'll let it slide.

The people who won Short Film were kinda adorable, especially when they thanked Fox Searchlight but it sounded a lot like... Fuck Searchlight!!!... to my ears, anyway. I know it was not their intention but it made me chuckle, so good job! You deserve it, probably.

Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay went to Green Book and Blackkklansman, respectively, and I'm happy that 'klansman won something because it was genuinely entertaining as hell for a movie about the KKK, and I'm eternally surprised that it didn't generate more buzz than it did. It's such an Oscar movie. By the way, after Barbra Streisand introduced it as the last Best Picture nominee, we got this marvellous image of Adam Driver wondering if he left the stove on.



















The award for Best Actor was won by Rami Malek, surprising no one, and I know there are people out there who say he didn't deserve it because he didn't sing any of the songs (gee, I wonder why), or because he didn't embody his prosthetics as well as Christian Bale did his... but you know what, I really don't care. I love Rami a lot and he was a wonderful Freddie, that's all that really matter to me (tooo meee....!). Plus how can you be mad at him when he did this:



















Get a room later, you two! And he's just genuinely such a nice and cool and likeable guy.



















So yeah I'm really happy for him! Christian Bale can win next year for playing an anorexic guy, or something.

The Best Actress race was a bit less certain because Olivia Colman and Glenn Close shared the awards pretty evenly so far this season, and while I adore Olivia with all my heart, I couldn't help but root for Glenn a bit more. She was nominated six times before and never won, come on now! In the end, though it was Olivia Colman who got to walk on stage and accept the award, and it's a miracle that she was able to, seeing how her director and co-star almost smothered her after the announcement.



















So much love and kisses this evening! And you know what, I usually hate these kind of "Oh wow I can't believe I really won, this is so unexpected!" type of speeches, but this time I actually believed it because as I said, it really was kind of unexpected.



















Of course, Olivia being Olivia, she didn't shy away from the elephant in the room. "Glenn Close, you've been my idol for so long and this is not how I wanted it to be.", she said, and God, I love her so much.


















Also I love that she called Emma Stone 'Emily', which is her real name, and now I wonder, do all of her showbiz friends call her Emily? I really hope they do. Also also, "Ahh Lady Gaga!"



















So yeah, it was a great speech, and it couldn't possibly be topped by the remaining awards going to Alfonso Cuarón for Best Director and Green Book for Best Picture.

So that's it! Overall, it was a pretty entertaining night, and I didn't miss having a host one bit, did you? I truly wonder how the Academy will decide next year. Please let me know what you think in the comments! Any additions and observations are welcome!

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