My Belated Commentary on the Academy Awards

Although this is long overdue, I cannot NOT give my feedback on the Academy Awards. I will start by saying that I am still on cloud nine because LEO GOT HIS OSCAR. It is about time. The only people that should be disappointed by this fact are the "Leo wants his Oscar" meme creators. But I will get back to that later.

To start, I have to comment on Chris Rock's hosting job. I was really curious and excited to see what he would do this year, considering so many people boycotted the Oscar's due to the lack of racial diversity. Of course, Chris Rock used this as the launching pad of his performance. I adored his opening monologue. I thought it was brilliant. His comments were very pointed and direct, yet funny. This was a great way to open the show, as it addressed the elephant in the room right away. However, this commentary continued throughout the entire program. While many people thought he did a wonderful hosting job, I think he relied far too much on the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Frequently when the camera panned the audience, people looked super uncomfortable. Nobody quite knew how to properly respond to Rock's remarks. This tone of hosting was continuos throughout the entire show. For example, Rock interviewed black moviegoers on the films they saw this year. It was sort of funny, but once again, mostly uncomfortable.

As for my random commentary that I care to touch upon, I really appreciated some of the newer tactics used for the presentation of the awards this year. For example, in the past, when nominees are announced the screen is full of tiny boxes showcasing each nominee- I always thought this looked a little tacky. This year, elegant shots of the nominees were projected on the actual stage rather than a different screen. This kept the attention on the presenter as well as the nominees, and looked very elegant.

I won't discuss every single win of the evening, as that would be a mighty feat. The most unpredictable win of the night was "Spotlight", which one Best Picture. There are years in which the winner of best picture is highly predictable- 2016 was not one of those years. It basically boiled down to a toss-up between "Spotlight" and "The Revenant". As stated in my previous blog post, I fully expected "The Revenant" to win due to the nature of its subject matter as well as the astounding cinematography and direction. That being said, I really genuinely hoped "Spotlight" would win, as I think it is the more important film. Once again, I wrote a separate post on my opinions about the two films, but ultimately "Spotlight" won best picture, and I could not be more pleased with the results. 

Also, just look how cute the cast of Spotlight were: 

I may have absolutely adored "The Revenant", but I am not at all disappointed that it didn't win Best Picture. It took home other awards, including Best Cinematography, Best Director (making Inarritu the first director to win this award two years in a row!), and Best Actor with Leonardo DiCaprio... which brings this post back to my boy Leo! I could honestly rant about why Leo deserves every award ever for hours, but for now I will stick to commenting on his amazing speech. While I'm sure he's been rehearsing an Oscar speech in his head for years now, his acceptance speech was truly incredible. For a man with this much talent to give such a humbling speech would make any publicists' dreams come true. Leonardo titles himself as an "actor and environmentalist", and brilliantly tied the film "The Revenant" to his mission to save the planet. He talked about the significance of climate change, and truly projected his philosophies effectively without sounding arrogant. Perhaps my favorite part of the speech was when Leo thanked Martin Scorsese- they have been my favorite actor/director duo for years. His speech melted my heart, and I certainly hope it is not the last acceptance speech we hear from him.

One of the more awkward moments of the night was Sam Smith's acceptance speech for the song "'Til It Happens To You", where he mistakenly referred to himself as the first openly gay man to win an Oscar (when in fact several have before). It's okay, Sam, that Oscar in your hand will shine bright for years to come regardless of your speech. One of the most surprising parts of the Academy Awards for me was the colossal volume of awards received by "Mad Max: Fury Road". This was one of the few nominees that I had not seen, and I have come to regret this decision. It swept up award after award. The final shock of the evening was when Chris Rock sold Girl Scout cookies to audience members to help out his daughter. This ultimately raised over $60,000, which was a smart move on Rock's part. Just look at how happy these celebrities are to get their cookies:

Mindy Kaling's Twitter Post of her cookies

There are many aspects of the Academy Awards from this year that could be touched upon, but these are the parts that stood out to me most. I was initially pleased by the hosting job of Chris Rock, yet ultimately disappointed (still an improvement over Neil Patrick Harris). Over all, I am very pleased with the outcome of the 2016 Academy Awards. Now time to patiently await next year!