Review of The 88th Academy Awards

Hello!

Remember when I told all of you that this post will be my last post about the awards’ season. Well, I lied. I couldn’t contain myself and just had to talk about the awards season one more time, focusing solely on the crown jewel of the awards season – The Oscars Ceremony. For the first time in like 4 years, I watched the ceremony live and tweeted the whole event. I probably lost quite a few followers with my endless tirade of tweets with the hashtag #Oscars. Go to my Twitter account (@LunaTheia), if you want to see my brilliant ideas that make absolutely no sense. And cut me some slack, it was 5 am by the time the Oscars finished in my time zone.

Opening monologue, jokes and Chris Rock

Chris Rock absolutely nailed the opening monologue of the ceremony. He dragged everyone: those in support of racism and those against racism. He also seemed very relaxed. However, I wish that he would have prepared some jokes that were not about the current controversy, because, by the 3rd hour of the programme, black vs white humour just seemed very repetitive. There was also enough of awkward moments – the one with Stacey Dash. What was that? Sarah Silverman also had a weird rant. However, Louis C.K. killed his short monologue.

Presenters

The stars did a nice job presenting the awards. The bit with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe was quite funny. However, the best and the cutest presenter were definitely the two young actors that should have both been nominated – Jacob Tremblay and Abraham Attah. Loved that part!

Snubs and Surprises

I predicted all of the major categories like the majority of movie goers. I was also pleased with the winners of most awards and truly felt that these people deserved the statues, the praises and the honour. The only 3 things that I wasn’t that happy about and was a tiny bit surprised by was:

1.  The fact Best Original Song was awarded to Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes for ‘Writings on the Wall’ from Spectre. I was sure that Lady Gaga will get this one, especially after that stunning and emotional performance. But I guess Bond songs are favorites of The Academy – Adele got an Oscar for ‘Skyfall’ just a few years ago.
2. Best Supporting Actor – I was happy for Mark Rylance and definitely thought that he deserved the win. However, I did feel sad for Sylvester Stallone as this was probably his last chance to get an Oscar. Well, he might get a Special Lifetime Achievement Award someday.
3. Best Picture – I did like Spotlight as a film but felt that it was the most obvious, the most traditional and the safest choice for the Academy. I can understand why they did not want to give the award to Mad Max – I guess they are still against genre films, but then they should have at least rewarded the artisticness of The Revenant. Spotlight was a really good film about a serious and important subject, made by a team of accomplished, passionate and hard working actors and filmmakers. Nevertheless, it was  just way too conventional to be exciting.

Leonardo Dicaprio

I was really hoping that Leo would win and I kinda knew that he would. Nevertheless, I started running around my tiny student housing room and punching the air when it was actually announced that he won. I have never been so happy for a person that I don’t really even know. I also enjoyed his speech, just wished that he would have thanked his fans for sticking with him and rooting for him for a such a long time.

Winners

I was really happy to see Alicia Vikander and Brie Larson take the awards for acting, in a supporting and leading role respectively. The fact that Pixar’s Inside Out got the Best Animation Feature also pleased me. I also loved the fact that The Academy gave the visual effects award to a small budget film Ex-Machina  and that it awarded the 87-year-old Ennio Morricone his first Oscar for the best soundtrack for The Hateful Eight (if we do not count the Honorary Oscar that he recived in 2007). I was also proud of the whole Mad Max’s team for getting all of those practical and technical awards – 6 of them in total!

Performances

As I have mentioned, Lady Gaga’s performance just blew me away. I also did like Sam Smith’s performance and his acceptance speech. The Weeknd also killed it with the live performance of ‘Earned It’. While that song is not my favorite of his, I can’t wait to see him live this summer!

Overall, The 88th Academy Awards was an interesting but predictable awards ceremony. The surprises that we got were not that shocking. Chris Rock did a nice job, just could have had more range in the themes of his jokes. Overall, I enjoyed watching and live tweeting the event – it’s certainly an experience, participating in the online conversation and the guessing game with millions of movie fans from all over the world.

I promise (again) that I won’t mention the awards season or The Oscars till at least next October. Let’s all start the countdown to the summer blockbuster movie season, which basically starts next month with Batman v Superman.