I didn’t really find the Oscars all that comedic (save for the dynamic duo Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph, who should absolutely 100% host the Oscars next year, and possibly every other award show ever), but the home events around the Oscars were sort of comedy-of-errors-ish.
Anyway, so I haven’t watched the Oscars since I came to Ireland, because the state station only carries an abbreviated version, the night after, and what’s even the point. But I really, really wanted to see Keala Settle perform “This Is Me” in this year’s show, and it turned out Sky TV has a thing called NowTV which has a 14 day trial period etc etc so I signed up and we got it working on the tv and…caught up on some 4th season Agents of SHIELD…and…and some Lip Sync Battle…and then at EXACTLY MIDNIGHT OUR TIME, which is when the red carpet stuff was supposed to start, the whole thing crashed as, I presume, everybody in Ireland and the UK logged on to watch it.
I picked up my phone to tweet a complaint, and realized that for the first time in 138 days, I had forgotten to do my DuoLingo. Fortunately, I had a streak freeze in place, so I didn’t lose it, but that was the first time in almost five months I completely forgot. Then at 5AM I logged into Facebook to say I couldn’t believe I’d stayed up all night, and realized I’d forgotten to post about the 100 days count as I’ve been doing daily. So I was really having a banner day.
THANKS, OSCARS.
Anyway, we tried for most of an hour to get the wretched NowTV working on the tv again, but I gave up and watched it on my laptop, which worked just fine. I was holding out (unrealistic) hope that “This Is Me” would be one of the first couple songs performed so I could go to bed, but no, it was the last, and at that point there was only like 45 minutes left so I went ahead and stayed up to watch the rest of it.
Best dressed, AFAIC, went to Kelly Marie Tran, Jennifer Lawrence (who, wearing heels and having a 6 inch height advantage anyway, looked like an actual Amazon standing next to Jodie Foster in flats), Lupita Nyong’o, Chadwick Boseman, ARMIE HAMMER IN THAT DARK RED VELVET TUX OH MY GOD, JANE FONDA GOOD GOD WOMAN, RITA MORENO YOU ABSOLUTE QUEEN IN THE SAME DRESS YOU WORE 56 YEARS AGO, Danai Gurira, Allison Janney’s epic sleeves, Margot Robbie, ZENDAYA NOT MANY PEOPLE COULD ROCK THAT DRESS BUT WOW, *both* of Mary J Blige’s looks, Taraji P Henson oh my god, look, I better just stop now or I’ll be here all day.
Overall I thought the presentations were pretty flat–I rarely thought Kimmel was funny–and I actually even thought the musical numbers lacked energy/verve, but there were some great moments: the aforementioned Rudolph & Haddish, and Lupita Nyong’o and Kumail Nanjiani’s DREAMers speech, the final line of which, “To all the DREAMers, we stand with you,” damn near made me stand up and applaud them. That was beautifully done. *Beautifully* done.
I nearly fell out of my chair when Jordan Peele won the Best Screenplay Oscar. I’m so glad he did. And I desperately wanted Get Out to win the Best Picture Oscar, but I also desperately wanted The Shape of Water to, so I’m happy and disappointed all at once and I would have been either way. I thought there was an extremely good chance, once they’d given del Toro the Best Director Oscar, that, having filled their POC quotas, they’d give Best Picture to Dunkirk or Darkest Hour. I was *very* happy they didn’t. And I was very pleased for the old guy who got the best adapted screenplay one, that was nice.
I was straight-up disappointed that “This Is Me” didn’t win. None of the rest of them *disappointed* me, but that one really did. It’s cool that yer man is now a double EGOT, the first one in history, but while The Greatest Showman is not a great movie, Hugh Jackman got stiffed at the Golden Globes and I genuinely thought it was going to get its one Oscar to put on the mantle.
I was a little underwhelmed with…all the best actor awards, I think. I thought Metcalf from Lady Bird was gonna get the best supporting actress and was surprised but pleased that Janney did, except I hoped Blige would. I was just straight-up surprised that Sam Rockwell won. I thought Christopher Plummer had a shoe-in there. I didn’t think Oldman’s performance was a tour de force, so I was quite meh on his win and thought Daniel Kaluuya should have gotten the Oscar there, and if not Kaluuya, I hoped Timothée Chalamet would because he was so charming. And I knew Ronan wouldn’t get it, didn’t think Streep needed another one, and really hoped Hawkins would get it, so was kinda meh about McDormand getting it, although she gave a decent speech.
I have definitely not done Oscars since Twitter was a thing, and that made staying up until 5am really quite a lot of fun, participating in a global Oscars Party online. I’m glad I did, even if it was a perfectly ridiculous thing to do and I’m not bleary with sleep deprivation. :)