2017 Academy Awards: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Biggest Night in Hollywood! The Night The Stars Shine! The Night People Wear Suits and Dresses! The Night White People Dance Awkwardly! The Night That Never Ends! The Night Trump Thinks Is Overrated! The Night, The Night, The Night!
So we close the book on another culmination of cinema, and all the bitching and moaning, and whining and complaining that goes along with it. The 2017 Academy Awards was a decent enough event this year with buffoonery, self-indulgent jokes, a run-time that just wouldn't quit, and, oh yeah, some pretty nice moments as well. Here are just some of the Blondie, Angle Eyes, and Tuco moments from last night's BIG EVENT!
A good amount of movies got some love last night. While "La La Land" took home six awards (I mean they were up for 14), films like "Hacksaw Ridge," "Manchester by the Sea," shoot, even "Suicide Squad," yes, "SUICIDE SQUAD," took home an Oscar! Leonardo Dicaprio and "Suicide Squad" now have the same amount of Oscars. Martin Scorsese and "Suicide Squad" now have the same amount of Oscars. Al Pacino...well, you get it...
305 Standup! It was a big night for "Moonlight." Mahersala Ali took home the award for Best Supporting Actor, Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney took home the Adapted Screenplay Award and after one of the most awkward moment's in Oscar history, took home the award for Best Picture (more on that later).
The Supporting Actor categories in this year's show were some of the best in years, and I wouldn't have been mad about anyone winning, but seeing Ali, and afterwards, Viola Davis winning, it was a sight. This is the first time that I can say I was with the choices 100%. However, there is an argument to be made whether Davis should have been in the Best Actress hunt. She dominated the screen-time in "Fences." But at that point, who do you bump out of Best Actress. My pick would have been Meryl Streep, who already stole a spot that should have been Amy Adams'. Oh well, either way, I'm okay with the decision.
I'm over this notion that an award show has to be an extension of another show. This horrible trend started with Ellen DeGeneres and her selfies, and giving food to celebrities, and just this idea that we have to cater to celebrities who are already being catered to at an awards show. Enough! But this year brought things to a new level where we brought in people off the street with their selfie sticks and just general weirdness. It's not bad enough that most celebrities don't know how to act around people who are normal, ie, the general population, and say what you will, but Denzel Washington looked relatively bored and had of the face of "are you fucking kidding me?!" But that's just me. Stupid skits tack on time to an already over-bloated show.
It's embarrassing that people who win awards can't be there to accept an award because of the "President of the United States." Asghar Farhadi won the award for Best Foreign Language Film but wasn't attending the Oscars because of what people don't like to call the "Muslim Ban," even though it actually is, let's call it what it really is people. While Roman Polanski can't attend because he's a pedophile, Farhadi couldn't attend because he wasn't allowed by Donald Trump....YOUR President, America! There were also some shades of 1973's Ceremony as well.
Me, personally, it's pretty ugly to keep beating a dead horse. Yes, Hollywood, we know, you don't like Donald Trump, but it gets to a point where, yes, we get it. The fact that big award shows keep giving this guy, Trump, a platform, and keep bringing him up, over and over again, BY NAME, is just stupid at this point. Tweeting him in the middle of the show with #merylsayshi is just dumb. How about this; concentrate on the actual show, and don't give this narcissist a platform. The people who accepted the awards did a good enough job bringing up substantive content without our "fearless" host having to stop the show dead in it's tracks to tweet an idiot. Sheesh!
The bungle that was Best Picture was an ugly clusterfuck of epic proportions. Sure, at the end of the day it made both "La La Land" and "Moonlight" look great, but everyone involved looked stupid, and at the end of the day it looks like it wasn't Bulworth's fault. But man, how do you mess that up, especially with tensions already at a boiling point. The knee-jerk reaction was, "oh Warren Beatty is a racist." No, just no. Other people thought it was a sick joke, and laughed and wrung their hands in the air over Beatty's screwy excuse (I was one of those people). It was just awkward and ugly, but a few handled it with grace under fire, and at the end of the day, winners emerged, but Jesus, how do you mess that up?!
Overall, still a fun show with some great people winning, and it's always fun to see people argue about who should have won, and "La La Land" is overrated; stop people, just stop. Being edgy to be edgy is so 2016.