by Conan Simmons – April 26, 2021 – 6:37 pm
Last night Hollywood celebrated the 93rd Academy Awards in a limited capacity held primarily at the Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, being among the producers of this years event, brought some of his visual flair primarily to the opening which featured Regina King entering the gala.
As everyone anticipated, the televised event was the lowest rated in history receiving fewer than 10 million viewers, down 58% from last years already awfully low viewership.
Just like every year, the awards show itself was a mixed bag of things that worked and things that did not.
WHAT WORKED:
The opening was well executed, even if Regina King did trip almost as soon as she took the stage.
The color scheme of the staging area was mostly blue and a lot more colorful than the usual dark auditorium adorned by red curtains in the theater where the event is usually held.
The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was awarded to two recipients this year: The Motion Picture & Television Fund and Tyler Perry.
The biggest highlight of the night came late in the program when, in a scripted moment, Glenn Close got up and danced to the 1988 funk classic “Da Butt” by Experience Unlimited from the Spike Lee Joint ‘School Daze’.
WHAT FAILED:
The show was mostly without humor. A conscious decision by the show producers due to the pandemic of the past year made them think jokes would be tone deaf. It’s an understandable sentiment, but as evidenced by Glenn Close’s “Da Butt” dance, a healthy dose of humor would have been most welcomed. It’s like they forgot the lesson of the 1941 comedy classic ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ – audiences go to the movies to be entertained.
The In Memoriam was sped up to fit the tempo of the song choice. Names and faces flashed across the screen so fast in most spots as to make the segment irrelevant and unneeded.
The biggest fail of the night was awarding the Best Picture category before the end. The Best Director award was handed out early on which was a risky enough move. By handing out Best Picture before the two lead acting categories I would think many turned the show off before the end. As it happened, once ‘Nomadland’ took Best Picture, it was somewhat of a let down when the hotly contested Best Lead Actress, which was almost anyone’s to win, went to Frances McDormand for ‘Nomadland’. Worst of all, the final award handed out, for Best Lead Actor which was highly anticipated to go to Chadwick Boseman, went instead to Anthony Hopkins in an upset that ultimately was very anticlimactic in that Hopkins was not in attendance to accept the award so presenter Joaquin Phoenix did the obligatory accepting on behalf. As there was no host for the evening the show ended abruptly right then and there.
How did ON GENRE do in predicting the winners? Let’s run down the full list of Oscar winners this year and find out!
BEST PICTURE: ‘Nomadland’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Nomadland’. No surprise there. A note to the Academy: put the Best Picture award at the end to build up anticipation and suspense, and definitely have a host next year.
BEST DIRECTOR: Chloé Zhao, ‘Nomadland’
ON GENRE’s pick: Chloé Zhao, ‘Nomadland’. Again, no surprise.
BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE: Anthony Hopkins, ‘The Father’
ON GENRE’s pick: Chadwick Boseman, ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’. With all the talk and hype I assumed Hopkins winning the BAFTA was a fluke of cultural differences. Apparently Hollywood Oscar voters really felt his performance was the best of the year.
BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE: Frances McDormand, ‘Nomadland’
ON GENRE’s pick: Andra Day, ‘The United States vs. Billie Holiday’. This was widely agreed as the most wide open category to win so I’m not surprised at all I got this one wrong. In a category of top performances I wouldn’t have been surprised if Vanessa Kirby pulled the upset for ‘Pieces of a Woman’.
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Daniel Kaluuya, ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’
ON GENRE’s pick: Daniel Kaluuya, ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’. As praised as the competing performances were none had the awards momentum to suggest anyone else would win.
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Yuh-Jung Youn, ‘Minari’
ON GENRE’s pick: Yuh-Jung Youn, ‘Minari’. Much like Daniel Kaluuya, the awards momentum for Yuh-Jung, once built up, showed no signs of abating.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: ‘Promising Young Woman’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Promising Young Woman’. It was the film most everyone felt would take at least one award and it did not disappoint.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: ‘The Father’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘The White Tiger’. This is what happens when I play favorites. I really like how ‘The White Tiger’ plays out as an Indian film noir. I knew ‘The Father’ was the frontrunner for the category but I chose to pick my favorite over diligent research.
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE: ‘Another Round’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Another Round’. This, like the Animated Feature category, was by far the easiest to predict.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: ‘Soul’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Soul’. Was there ever a doubt?
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: ‘My Octopus Teacher’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘My Octopus Teacher’. Filmed on the southwest coast of South Africa the underwater cinematography gave this film the edge to win.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: ‘Soul’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Soul’. Jon Batiste added to the already top notch Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor to make an unbeatable trio for this category.
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Fight for You” from ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’
ON GENRE’s pick: “Io Si” from ‘The Life Ahead’. This is what happens when I don’t play favorites. “Fight for You” is my favorite song in the category but it is very rare my favorite song wins. Especially as it hasn’t won the other major film awards. I’m glad it won, I’m just disappointed I didn’t pick my favorite.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: ‘Mank’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Nomadland’. This was arguably the most surprising upset of the night. There was a lot of vocal support for either ‘Nomadland’ or ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ to win this, and there was almost as much vocal criticism of ‘Mank’ not being favored. The only thing that could have been more surprising is if ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ had won this category.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’. This was a tough category to predict but due diligence paid off.
BEST EDITING: ‘Sound of Metal’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’. Repeating its victory at the BAFTA’s ‘Sound of Metal’ gained the Oscar. Even though ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ defeated ‘Sound of Metal’ at the Eddie Awards given out by the American Cinema Editors organization it was unable to take home the gold last night. It also makes ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ somewhat like this years ‘The Irishman’ in that it didn’t win any Oscars, defeating yet another of my predictions.
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’. Almost every review and mention of this film talks about how the characters look and it had a lot more awards buzz than its competition.
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: ‘Mank’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Mank’. It has the lavishness needed for a film to win this category. Regardless of what one thinks of the film practically everyone agrees the production design is very well done.
BEST SOUND: ‘Sound of Metal’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Sound of Metal’. You’d have to have seen this film to know how easy it was to predict it winning this category. Only those that didn’t see it would have thought otherwise.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: ‘Tenet’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Tenet’. It was mostly a given that ‘Tenet’ would win this award, though I think secretly many wanted an unexpected upset to occur and perhaps ‘Love and Monsters’ could have surprised everyone. That would have been a talked about moment!
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: ‘If Anything Happens I Love You’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘Burrow’. For the past few years I’ve surprisingly been able to pick the winners in the short film categories pretty well. That all came to an end this year where I suffered crushing defeat. ‘If Anything Happens I Love You’ was the only film in this category that I saw. It is emotionally devastating (to a high degree for an animated film) but I really thought a moment or two of the animation could have been smoother and so I picked a different film to win. My mistake.
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT: ‘Two Distant Strangers’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘The Present’. The only film in this category I saw was ‘The Present’ and I was impressed enough to pick it. It’s a good film that unsurprisingly won the BAFTA for this category. I really thought it would repeat the victory here.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: ‘Colette’
ON GENRE’s pick: ‘A Love Song for Latasha’. I mostly picked ‘A Love Song for Latasha’ because I liked seeing an avant-garde film get an Oscar nomination and so I really hoped it would win. Also the subject matter I felt was timely and relevant which I believed would increase its chances. It was the only film I saw in this category but that’s beside the point.
OVERALL SCORE FOR ON GENRE: 14 out of 23. For 61% accuracy. I was really expecting to match the 17 out of 24 I got last year.
That does it for the Oscars until next year when hopefully there will be far more films in contention. Most of all, and I believe I speak for everyone on this, next year the Oscars ceremony really needs a definite host!