Well I watched last night’s Oscars expecting nothing and enjoying despite everything. I generally don’t pay much attention to the Academy Awards that much generally finding them little more than an aging old boys club that publicly pats itself on the back once a year. But at the same time I frequently find the business of Hollywood almost as fascinating as the art of Hollywood so I find it interesting to guess what little political choices that were being made.
Unfortunately this frequently makes me question the choices that are made throughout. Was Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in The Revenant that good, or was it a case of “Oh Leo’s been in the industry for over twenty years and while we didn’t give the little whippersnapper anything for some great performances we think he’s due now” or “Sure we gave Ennrio Morricone a lifetime achievement award a few years ago but wouldn’t it be great to give him a real one?” (please forgive my cynicism for that last one, I thought Morricone’s win was the best one of the night)
Which really makes the whole controversy about the all white nominations confuse me all the more. It wasn’t a matter of the racism to me, it was the utter cluelessness. (which to a certain extant almost makes it feel worse than that they did it on purpose.) I have images of certain higher ups staring blankly at the reporters when the question was brought up and say “but Twelve Years a Slave swept the boards two years ago we’re paid up.” It would have been easy to play the usual political tricks of nominating individuals only to not vote for them. The Academy has played these tricks in order to look relevant before.
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Still it was fun to watch Chris Rock rip them a new one in his opening monologue and watch everybody try to do damage control for the rest of the night.
As for the actual awards it was really cool to see Mad Max: Fury Road sweep all of the technical awards, though it was a bummer that George Miller did’t win best director (regrettably I’ve found in the continuing quest for relevance Genre films never win), or, for similar reasons,Inside Out was only nominated for best animated feature and original script. I regret that in my normal habit of focusing on said genre films I hadn’t even heard of most of the nominees. Though now I might consider seeing The Revenant in the theater.