Last njght I watched nearly the entire Academy Awards ceremony for the first time in years. My wife and I have observed over the years that Oscars seem to be awarded in waves. Last night was no exception: it was clearly a Poor Things and Oppenheimer night.
Cillian Murphy was an obvious shoe-in for Best Actor for Oppenheimer although I was rooting for Paul Giamatti. If you haven’t seen The Holdovers, I recommend it (it’s streaming on Peacock which I get with my cable subscription). It’s a fine film, sort of a throwback to pictures that were made decades ago—no car chases or explosions, lots of dialogue. Da’Vine Joy Randolph won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress which I thought she deserved. Like all of the characters in The Holdovers, her role was a complex, layered one.
For me the toughest category to pick was Best Supporting Actor. I was gratified that Robert Downey, Jr. won for his performance in Oppenheimer but Mark Ruffalo, too, has been nominated many times without winning. IMO he’s one of the finer Gen X actors.
I was surprised that Emma Stone won Best Actress for Poor Things. I haven’t seen it yet but I probably will.
That Godzilla Minus 1 won for Best Film Effects was not a surprise but it did illustrate the conundrum in which Hollywood finds itself. GM1’s total budget was about $15 million—less that a tenth of the Hollywood blockbusters being produced these days. Clearly, there’s something wrong in Hollywood. They’re too darned expensive for such mediocre results—something that was called out, ironically, in one of the acceptance speeches. The chap doing the complaining had it wrong, though. Not only is it possible to make 20 $15 million dollar movies rather than one $300 million stinkeroo, it’s being done. The issue is distribution rather than production. And those $15 million dollar movies will have less box office appeal in China and India. Car chases and explosions translate better than dialogue.
One speculation is that its movies are being produced by committee. I suspect that, like all too many American enterprises, they are engines for making big bucks for a handful of people and have lost sight of their markets.
I watched the last 1/3 or 1/2 with my wife. Overall it was boring. Clearly, I’m not the target audience.
The most interesting part – a very low bar – was when Jimmy Kimmel did a live “mean tweets” bit and quoted what Trump wrote about him on Truth Social and made a joke about jail to cheers from the crowd.
The extent to which Trump lives rent-free in so many people’s heads continues to amaze me.
It was actually LESS boring than previous years.
I liked having previous award-winners, one per nominee, saying nice things about each nominee. I also like the earlier starting time.
That was LESS boring? Yikes….
Last time I enjoyed even a bit of it was when I saw a 90 something YO Mickey Rooney walking from his limo with a pretty blonde on each side about twice his height.
He was grinning and I’m pretty sure he was just showing off.