Today is the anniversary of Covid, which I have selected in 2021 as the traditional first day of the Marco Awards to commemorate the new streaming media. But the Oscars are messing with that schedule, moving them to the weekend before my big Awards for the second year in a row. It’s too much information and calculation back to back so I will, like last year, take a week off and break the Marcos next Monday. In the meantime, I thought it was great chance to revisit a post I did after the disastrous 2021 Oscars where Hollywood, a creature of habitual excess, tried too hard to scale back and do the right thing (The Night The Broke Oscar, here). In the end, all they did was embarrass and expose themselves. All of the Oscars, and most awards ceremonies in general, since have continued to stumble
For the last 4 years the Awards Circuit in general has tripped over themselves to appear relevant and safe and compliant and extra politically correct. 95% of their efforts have consistantly backfired. No one really cares about the Emmys anymore. The Tonys are always controversial with their easy ability to manipulate the system and rig what they want us to see as “art”. But the Oscars have been the saddest. A once grand evening of old Hollywood glamour has become ridiculous and senseless.
Everyone’s first ceremony back after the pandemic was embarrassing. The rushed out half-season of Tonys after a year and a half wait. The Emmys that kept all the winners in their living rooms but wasted live time with lame celebrity bits. But the Oscars doubled down on their pointlessness that year, not only sucking all the joy and celebration out of the event, but also moving the Best Actor category to the final award of the evening, just knowing that after sweeping the awards circuit they could count on a highly emotional posthumous award for the late Chadwick Bozeman. To their obvious miscalculation, only to find their voting body was the lone dissenter of the circuit and gave it to the old white guy who had previously won and couldn’t even make the trip over from England to accept it due to travel restrictions.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like the Oscars haven’t always had their share of trainwrecks, from Brando turning down his award for The Godfather via Sasha LIttlefeather, to Vanessa Redgrave hijacking her acceptance speech with a Zionist rant, to Miss Faye Dunaway misreading the Best Picture winner as La La Land. But the post covid Oscars have been a special kind of stupid.
Every year since has had other issues, but this year, I honestly feel that the evening surprisingly hit its stride again and gave us the best Academy Awards ceremony in more than a decade. It was not without its hitches, but this year it was nothing serious, and I have to give recognition that most of their choices made were steps in the right direction. Following is my analysis of the evening, glow-ups and stumbles:
THE SCOREBOARD
Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel was an adequate host. A comedian on the downside of his career arc, his opening monolog was safe to silly. The funniest bit was his acknowledgement of his completely lukewarm “partial standing ovation”. The rest was a mix of mildly humorous to mildly lame celebrity bits, inoffensive with some awkward skewering of the attendees. I maintain the best year for hosts was the year they went hostless, after firing Kevin Hart just weeks before the ceremony in an overkill of political sensitivity for some foolish gay jokes he told decades ago. That evening went seamlessly and barely anyone noticed the vacancy, showing us how useless and self-congratulatory the role actually is. Kimmel would have been a complete wash at 0 if he had not wasted precious after hours time with his silly bit with Guillermo and the champagne toast. Have we learned nothing from Ellen Degeneres’ stupid, self-serving pizza party.
SCORE: -2
The Extra Hour. Starting an hour earlier was pointless. Just admit you’re going to take all night. The new starting time made no difference and started the evening way too early. The only plus was they seemed to play off significantly less of the standard, wordy acceptance speeches, which is what we watch for, or use for bathroom and snack breaks.
SCORE: 0
John Cena’s Streaker Tribute. Apparently it has been 50 years since a naked guy dashed across the stage when David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor. A weird thing to commemorate and the plan was a bit dicey. But good-natured, naked John Cena presenting the Best Costume award was one of the funnier planned bits. Cena was a good sport to Kimmel’s tomfoolery.
SCORE: +1
Five Prior Winners Giving Nominee Tributes. This was maybe the best improvement Oscar has ever attempted. Reinforcing to every nominee that the nomination is indeed the honor and everyone of them is deserving of their moment of attention. It was humble, honest, and respectful, and more fuel that the hostless format is the way to go.
SCORE: +5
The Fashion. Overall, the attire was classier than usual, (good taste in attire actually reached a high point on the overall horrible return from Covid year), with just enough touches of the wacky to make it fun. All the best performance presenters and nominees were top class. But let’s not forget Billie Eilish’s emo-Catholic schoolgirl concoction, which she didn’t even change to perform in (no pink chiffon for this Barbie girl). Unconventional, but it kind of felt just right for her this evening. And then there was the babystep return to the fun of hideous gowns, mostly courtesy of the new witches from Oz, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, who gave featherbed fierceness and stegosaurus realness respectively with their awkwardly, horribly wonderful gowns. But let’s not feel we need to keep pressing the boundaries, ladies. The fashion highlight of the evening was Emma Stone’s charming “broken dress” announcement when she won. Don’t worry, girl, we all popped our seams a little over Ryan Gosling that night. You are not alone.
SCORE: +3
In Memorium. They usually botch this most sentimental segment of the evening with mishaps from bad camera work (focusing on the singer and placing the screen with the honorees so far in the background or at such a bad angle they’re unreadable) to just gross controversial omissions. But this year the top class act of Bocelli Pere & Fils didn’t need their egos stroked and they sounded beautiful as the camera focused on the screen. Yes there were a few omissions that they tried to burn off at the end, but it’s the most successful swing at this segment in decades.
SCORE: +3
The Batman Reunion. Teaming up former Twins costars Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger with the common thread being “We both tried to kill Batman.” was the best scripted moment of the evening. In their alter egos as The Penguin (Batman Returns) and Mr. Freeze (Batman and Robin), they proceeded to roast former Batman Michael Keaton in the audience, who gamely played along. As a lifelong Batman fan it was all worth it just to hear Mr. Freeze in formalwear call Batman a son of a bitch. If only Michelle Pfeiffer had joined them….
SCORE +4
Al Pacino. Pacino, a once brilliant actor who has starred in some landmark movies and revolutionized the look and style of film actors forever was the latest in a long line of incredibly old actors they ask to do the Best Film award. The producers told him to not recap the nominees because of lack of time so I don’t fault him. That’s another for Kimmel’s people. They didn’t have enough time to mention the ten films being honored, but we had enough time for Kimmel and Guillermo to do their vanity shenanigans. But lets remember that this once legendary actor has been stalled for the last 30 years in the character they finally gave him a makeup Oscar for, the “hoo-wah!” guy from Scent of a Woman. Pacino’s goofy, lame, myopic, possibly drunken, half-read of the winner was anticlimactic and disappointing. Second only to Dunaway giving the award to La La Land when an even less lucid Warren Beatty couldn’t read the card (which was actually quite hilarious in retrospect). However, I will give them a slight bit of slack because they did burn off 20 perfect candidates to present the award with the above legend to nominee salutes, which was totally worth the final product. Maybe the deciding factor in selecting the final presenter should be more than “old”.
SCORE: -1
Ryan Freaking Gosling. Gosling’s totally unexpected showstopping rendition of “I’m Not Ken”, complete with Barbie hot pink rhinestone tux, all his movie Ken brothers showing up (yeah, I saw you Simu Liu!) with a stage full of Ken wannabes paying tribute in an extravagant old school Debbie Allen-like salute to Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”. For five brief shining minutes, Ken got the attention he’s deserved since he was invented, Ryan Gosling’s star shot through the stratosphere, and Oscar hit a height it hasn’t hit in decades in an otherwise respectful and modest (by industry standards) evening. Which raised the only controversial call of the evening. How did all that flawless Ryan Gosling amazingness lose to the little Billie Eilish ditty? I have selected Gosling as my hill to die on for this year’s event. Ryan, you and all your Ken brothers got robbed. I call reverse sexism!
SCORE: Ryan:+10; Ryan losing: -15.
NET SCORE: -5
So even with the the Ryan Gosling debacle, the evening still ends up in the green with a tabulated score of +8, I deem this year’s Oscars a very shocking success. Let’s learn from this year and continue to progress in that direction. For the first time since Covid, I will return next year and look forward to the occasion becoming the grand evening the Oscars used to be. Reading my original post, it felt like that night three years ago, the national conscience was done with Awards Shows, and they rang hollow and pointless. We turned a corner this year. With Covid restrictions being relaxed yet again this week, I now feel a gentle hope of a return to normalcy. But can we take some of the lessons we learned from being under the microscope and make the evening a once glamourous event again, instead of the media circus it had descended to at its lowest point. Oh yeah, and give Ryan Gosling that makeup award you robbed him of last Sunday.
Come back next Monday for the 4th Annual Marco Awards, which hopefully will again be the high point of the season.