A 93ª edição do Oscar

I'm a movie fan. I love watching and reviewing films, and I love keeping track of the awards-contenders that throughout the year embryo in cinemas and on streaming platforms. 2020 was a year nobody expected would turn out the way it did. We had a massive pandemic that not only sent us to isolation in our homes; it also provided us a strange selection of movies that mostly consisted of indies. I have followed the Oscars for five years now. I always make my predictions and keep a good eye on all of the precursor awards shows. It's fun. However, no matter how much or how little I liked the slate of films that were nominated for this year's Academy Awards, the show itself felt robbed for everything that makes the Oscars special. I usually only use this profile to rate Tv-shows, shorts, and documentaries, but this year I had too many thoughts about the ceremony I had to write something down.

My main thought about the show was that it didn't feel glamorous like it usually does. It didn't bring any of the Oscar highlights that I look forward to seeing, and even though they tried to speed up the show by not having too many things in-between the categories, it felt even longer than it has done the past years. It started pretty decent; awards were giving, and the winners held their speeches. From the very first speech which Emerald Fennell held to her win in the Best Original Screenplay category for her feature debut, "Promising Young Woman," it already felt like there was something special missing. Her speech was overlong, and it created a pattern for the other winners, which either held as long and monotone or even longer speeches.

They really shot themselves in the foot by switching around some of the categories: especially having Best Picture presented before Best Actress and Actor. What was the thought with that? A lot of people on Twitter have put a lot of the blame on Hopkins for no reason. It's the producer's fault that they miscalculated the entire show and made it end on a very weird and awkward note. The show itself was just too boring. It didn't feel like we were celebrating the movies. In a normal year, we would celebrate the crafts and the extraordinary achievements the team goes through in the making of a film. I cannot quite put a finger on what was missing; except for the film part.

When it comes to the nominees and winners, I will not blame the show for having a very limited taste this year. All of the nominees felt like a bunch of Indie Spirit Awards, which doesn't make them bad, but they all felt very heavy to get through, and in a year where depression and other concerns are stuff up my head, it wasn't necessarily what I had hoped to see. Many of the films are fundamentally good ones. I love "Another Round" and "Sound of Metal." "Nomadland" was a bit plotless to me, and "Promising Young Woman" won for its script, which was the single worst thing about the film.

"Mank" surprised with two wins, taking home Production Design and Cinematography. Though it's well-deserved, the film itself is a hot, boring mess.

Many of the other titles have not been available for me yet, so maybe they would brighten me up a bit more than those mentioned. "Another Round" is the only 10/10 of all the nominees.

Nevertheless, the 93rd Academy Awards was a failure, in my opinion. It aimed for something big that could have turned into some very intersting choices, but ended up in a messy stage. The most disappointing show I have ever seen. I sincerly hope 2022 will be a far greater year in films.

What do you do with The Oscars when a world-altering pandemic creates a shortage of mainstream films within a year? Look harder for the hidden gems? Search for new talent across the gulfs? Or do you just extend the eligibility period (all the effing way to February of next year) just to give the typical Oscar fare an extra shot (plus Promising Young Woman, for some reason)? Apparently, you do the latter. It's like moving the finish line a couple of meters back and also ignoring the ones who already crossed it.

In fairness, this year's Oscars ceremony (consisting of a much smaller venue and several nominees attending via satellite from England, Denmark, South Korea, et cetera) did feature some welcome titles. Thanks to the altered criteria, movies like Pieces of a Woman and Judas and the Black Messiah (which, judging from the Supporting Actor noms, has zero leads) stood a chance, not that I doubted their chances of getting nominated, say, next year. In any case, allow me to list some of the other highlights -- and yes, I will get to that phenomenal "f you" of an ending!

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• The Surreal Nature Of It All: On top of how deeply weird it felt to see this ceremony being attempted in a post-COVID world, with a minimized venue and cheaper camera work, the pacing was also utterly wild. They breezed through the screenplay nominees before I had even realized they were actually starting to hand the awards out instead of f-cking around, and yet still finding the time for a completely genuine, completely spontaneous, completely unscripted moment of levity from Glenn Close. Equally bizarre was the way the Oscar wins were ordered; the acting-award presentations were tacked on AFTER Best Picture and here's where this broadcast cemented itself as a top-tier sh-tshow:

• Building Up To A Posthumous Win For Boseman, Only For Someone Who Snoozed At Home To Get The Vote: This was honestly the funniest sh-t to me. Despite the wide variety of different films from different countries and all the race-and-gender representation, this was one of the most predictable Oscar nights of possibly all time and the wins were mostly obvious. Most "predictable" of all was the fact that the late Chadwick Boseman would receive a posthumous acting award for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom as a final, solemn tribute.

It was just so obvious! Hell, they even had to move the Judas leads to "Supporting Actor" just to be able to hand that film an acting prize and still have one left for Boseman. And why else would they announce Best Picture early, thereby setting up a finale centered around the Best Actor announcement?

Well, it was certainly a finale to behold! Joaquin Phoenix walks out after a rushed thank-you speech from McDormand, whips out the card, announces that the winner is actually Anthony Hopkins -- who didn't even appear on any of the video feeds, let alone in person, and was probably at home napping -- before briskly ending the ceremony (since, no matter which one of the two men had won, there's nobody around to give a speech), causing both confusion and outrage on Twitter! It was absolutely hysterical.

To sum up: After all that's happened -- after all the tributes to Chadwick Boseman, all the petitioning from heartbroken fans, the arrangements for him to win without "snubbing" Judas, and the scheduling change that implied at least one person behind the scenes thought they had this one locked and was gonna end the ceremony on it -- they straight-up gave the Oscar to someone who was asleep at home and abruptly ended for the night. It was the funniest damn sh-t! And to their credit: if this was done on purpose to get some headlines, I applaud their cunning. It's also possible they knew they weren't gonna give Boseman the send-off and thought "Eh, people usually go to sleep after Best Picture so let's slap this one on at the end" but let's not be here all day.

• Amanda Seyfried's Dress: No kink-shaming in the comments, please.

• The In-Memoriam Music Choice: Definitely the right level of "upbeat" for that speedrun editing style. Stay classy, Oscars.

• "Travon And Martin" Winning For A Film About Police Violence: I know people think the Oscars are rigged or at least political but this is a straight-up Matrix glitch.

• Scandinavian Rep: Seeing Thomas Vinterberg among the Best Director noms was almost as delightful as his movie winning Best International Film. Likewise, even though I don't give one fraction of a f--k about the Eurovision Song Contest, seeing a partly Swedish song among the nominees was tons of fun too. Maybe I should watch the movie, even?

I don't really have much else to say. The show was bad but often funny-bad, and I can't really say it was as bloated as it might've otherwise been, though I did miss the song numbers and extravagance. Here's hoping that finale goes down as another epic faux pas from the Oscars and that this "safer" ceremony still becomes a notorious superspreader. Thanks for reading, folks! Wakanda forever!

For the last ten years The Oscars has been slowly slipping away. It doesn't seem relevant any more. Are the Pictures nominated the best? The Actors and Actresses chosen may have given a great performance when compared to one another, but are they the nominees that deserved a shot? The presentation of the whole thing as it was showcased this year really was a train wreck. Where are the laughs? Where is the spectacle? The host was not funny. Was not entertaining. Was angry.

I cannot go on it was that bad. Billy. We miss you so much!

The Covid pandemic has created a challenge for awards shows. It has also led to low ratings.

The Oscars decided to ban Zoom but this was an underwhelming reworking.

The show badly needs a main presenter, one who is a comedian. This one needed laughs. There was just a lack of fun with the reworking.

Some of the speeches from the presenters were overlong and dull. The In Memoriam segment rushed through the people who died in the previous 12 months but the introduction to it needed it to be shorter.

Also when you celebrate the work of the artists and the production crew. I would like to see an example of their work. I was not enthused with a factoid that a best supporting actor nominee once worked in a fast food outlet or such like.

Then there was the change of order. There was no need for the Best Picture to be given out so early.

The emotional moment of the evening was a damp squib. The Best Actor Oscar was held last in the expectation that the late Chadwick Boseman would be the winner. He did not win. Anthony Hopkins pipped him to the post and he was in bed in his homeland of Wales by that time.

Most boring and confusing show ever. Look at Bafta!!!Thats how you do it during Covid,people!