Well, they wanted people to talk about the show
Okay, so….we just got a new infamous Oscar moment that probably tops the year they gave out the wrong Best Picture winner, so that’s what we have to talk about right now. Will Smith got up onstage and slapped Chris Rock in the face for making a (rather mild) joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith’s shaved head. Jada suffers from alopecia, so the joke was perhaps in poor taste, although we don’t know if Rock knew that. Regardless, Will Smith jumping on stage to commit assault on live television and then being allowed to retake his seat and accept his Best Actor award moments later, where he was actually applauded and given a standing ovation by the people in the room, was an ugly, ugly moment that cast a pall over the entire rest of the evening and every award that came after. Awful. I know the Academy and ABC wanted people to watch and talk about the Oscars again, but is this really what they wanted? The takes to come about this stunning incident in the weeks ahead are unbearable to anticipate, as the die hard Smith fans are already defending him, while people who face reality can see how this psychotic behavior should never have been rewarded, showing America once again that if you are rich, famous and powerful, you can totally commit a crime on live television in front of millions of people and face ZERO consequences for it. His acceptance speech desperately defending himself as being tasked by God to protect women (give me BREAK) was just as gross and misogynistic.
2022 OSCAR WINNERS
BEST PICTURE: CODA
BEST DIRECTOR: Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
BEST ACTRESS: Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
BEST ACTOR: Will Smith, King Richard
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Troy Kotsur, CODA
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Belfast
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: CODA
BEST EDITING: Dune
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE: Drive My Car
BEST DOCUMENTARY: Summer of Soul
BEST ANIMATED FILM: Encanto
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Dune
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “No Time to Die,” No Time to Die
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Dune
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Dune
BEST COSTUMES: Cruella
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING: The Eyes of Tammy Faye
BEST SOUND: Dune
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Dune
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: The Queen of Basketball
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: The Windshield Wiper
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: The Long Goodbye
On the other hand, I guess we should talk about the winners, right? CODA prevailed in the end, going 3 for 3 and making history ala Grand Hotel, while there were very few surprises overall tonight. If you followed my predictions you did fairly well, as I went 21/23, making this one of my best years ever, aside from animated short and editing. The show itself was at first decent, with Amy Schumer surprisingly pulling off the best monologue- maybe she should come back? But after the opening we rarely saw the hosts again, and the way they disrespectfully edited the eight categories they pulled from the live show into the broadcast was especially pointless, as it saved ZERO time, which was ostensibly the whole point of cutting them! Seriously, the show was longer than last year’s. And the twitter polls the Oscars put out to get fan favorite movies into the show backfired dramatically, with the army of Zack Snyder fans swarming the polls to rig the results for Justice League and Army of the Dead (definitely the two most popular movies of 2021, right?), leading those montages to be what they always were in concept- a massive waste of time. But all anyone will be talking about (for the rest of Will Smith’s career, I predict) is the slap heard round the world. I guess the power of live events to lead to something unpredictable happening is still there, but man…is this what we wanted to see?
Troy Kotsur winning for CODA was a lovely moment at least
