Oscars

[rittchard]

I don't know if I even heard of any of those movies.

The only one I heard about was Minari and that was only because it has Glenn from The Walking Dead. I don't think he has much chance of winning but even getting nominated is pretty huge for an Asian American male.

[Jaymann]

So anybody else watching No host in a train station featuring movies no one has seen?

Best Picture = Nomadland. Well, that's depressing.

[Kraken]

Nope. I never watch it but usually have a mild interest in who won after the fact. This year, not even that. If I can't stream it on Netflix or Prime, it's dead to me.

[Rumpy]

This is the first year where I don't feel invested in any of the movies. Part of the reason for that, and I guess the fact that Covid has only made the situation worse, is that everything is so fragmented. Nearly everything is an exclusive on a streaming service somewhere, which means I likely won't ever get to see them, so any enthusiasm I would have had for them is non-existent. I don't remember it much being the case in other years, but it's only emphasized the issue this year for me.

[Jaymann]

Frances McDormand and Anthony Hopkins, at least they didn't play it safe.

[malchior]

So anybody else watching No host in a train station featuring movies no one has seen?

Best Picture = Nomadland. Well, that's depressing.

I watched this front to back. For a year where nearly all of the Best Picture nominees were very moving and depressing Nomadland was a fine choice. I was between Nomadland and Minari personally leaning towards Minari. The Father was excellent but too narrow in scope for a Best Picture but delivered Hopkins a deserved Best Actor nod.

[Kurth]

Made it through about two thirds of this and had to pull the plug. It was about as bad an Academy Awards show as I can imagine, and there have been some really bad ones. It was just so strange. So many things seemed off.

It started off oddly with Regina King (the not-host) explaining that all the folks in the audience had been fully vaccinated and were diligently social distancing and masking before the show started. But during the show, they wouldn’t be wearing masks, except during commercial breaks or whenever the cameras stopped filming, when they were all masking up again. Ok. Huh??? Smoove???

We were about an hour in when we realized part of the strangeness came from the fact that the audience wasn’t eating or drinking anything. Hell, half the fun of the Oscars is seeing who ends up getting rocked me doing something stupid. Instead, they were all just sitting there, looking hungry, thirsty and glum.

The production also seemed really short on clips showing the nominees’ work. It never really bothers me that I usually haven’t heard of half the films that are nominated. This year, it was closer to 90%, but I always see it as an opportunity to learn about new movies that may be worth watching. But tonight, except for a couple instances, there were like no clips. No visuals. Nothing. Here are the awards for best visual effects, but no need to see what visual effects they created; the winner is . . . Weird.

We did get plenty of great shots of the nominees themselves, though, like the Husavik guys from Stockholm:

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/im ... kw240b.png

Still not sure if they were real.

Not even gonna talk about Glenn Close doing “Da Butt” dance. Nope. Nothing more to say.

But I hope SNL has something to say about it. Honestly, the whole night played like a kind of sad, bizarro version of the Oscars. There were times like I almost felt I was getting punked. I feel like SNL could do a whole broadcast based on it, it was that rich.

[YellowKing]

This was the first Oscars I've missed in maybe 20 years. I hadn't seen (heck, barely heard of) most of the nominees, and really didn't want to see some weird pandemic version to remind me of the movie hell that was 2020. Sounds like I didn't miss much.

[malchior]

I agree it was weird. They wanted to put a focus on the winners which led to rambling acceptance speeches but also genuine great moments such as when Youn Yuh-jung won. It was at first hard to understand but then you get on the level with her that she was just astonished to be there considering she used to watch this program on a small tv back in Korea. It's worth watching her speech in particular because I thought it was special.

Note some people thought she was 'dissing' Pitt since he produced the movie but she made a joke about how he wasn't on set. Whatever. She was awestruck by the moment.



Edit: Beyond the COVID weirdness I thought the approach to the stage was shocking bad. They built a spiral ramp from the center of the floor but no one went that way instead stepping over a trip hazard awkwardly. I cringed as I watched people nearly fall over and over. I'm glad it didn't happen but just another misstep in a weird, weird awards year. At least there wasn't a fire in a trash can.

[ImLawBoy]

We were about an hour in when we realized part of the strangeness came from the fact that the audience wasn’t eating or drinking anything. Hell, half the fun of the Oscars is seeing who ends up getting rocked me doing something stupid. Instead, they were all just sitting there, looking hungry, thirsty and glum.

That's the Golden Globes. Everyone is usually sitting in a theater for the Oscars with no food or drink.

[Rumpy]

The production also seemed really short on clips showing the nominees’ work. It never really bothers me that I usually haven’t heard of half the films that are nominated. This year, it was closer to 90%, but I always see it as an opportunity to learn about new movies that may be worth watching. But tonight, except for a couple instances, there were like no clips. No visuals. Nothing. Here are the awards for best visual effects, but no need to see what visual effects they created; the winner is . . . Weird.

Yeah, I found that really odd given they were presenting about movies. And the names of everything flashed by too quickly. Lots of disconnect between what's being shown and what's being talked about.

There was one instance where they were awarding something, and I was expecting those who won to come and pick up their award, as they had shown them in the audience, but then they cut to different people receiving awards for a completely different thing?? I was very confused by that.