Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie gives a lost Jimmy Kimmel directions to the Oscars, in ABC’s extended trailer.

Oscar season is over at last! Tonight ABC aired the 96th Academy Awards, once again held at ye olde Dolby Theatre and hosted for a fourth time by ABC’s favorite trooper Jimmy Kimmel. This year’s soiree clocked in at 144 minutes, a surprising 14 minutes shorter than last year’s telecast. That’s after starting six minutes late and keeping the stopwatch running till the very end of the end credits, up to the final boilerplate disclaimer read by announcer David Alan Grier. Kimmel and his writing staff made only a single overtime joke in the monologue, then dropped that annual running gag for the rest of the night. It’s refreshing whenever a tired joke is crossed off the setlist.

In all, the field welcomed 53 nominees across 23 categories, not counting the Honorary Oscars, which were dropped from the ceremony years ago and henceforth receive only the barest on-air lip service. This year’s slighted honorees included the winner of this year’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, influential Sundance Film Festival exec Michelle Satter; and the latest trio of Honorary Oscar recipients — Angela Bassett, Mel Brooks, and Carol Littleton, editor of past nominated works such as E.T., The Big Chill, and Places in the Heart.

The 23 main awards were divided amongst the following 13 works, all of which we’ve previously reviewed here on MCC:

• Oppenheimer: 7 – Picture, Director, Actor (Cillian Murphy), Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Cinematography, Editing, Original Score
• Poor Things: 4 – Actress (Emma Stone), Costume Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, Production Design
• The Zone of Interest: 2 – International Feature, Sound
• The Holdovers – Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph)
• Anatomy of a Fall – Original Screenplay
• American Fiction – Adapted Screenplay
• Barbie – Original Song
• Godzilla Minus One – Visual Effects
• The Boy and the Heron – Animated Feature
• 20 Days in Mariupol – Documentary Feature
• The Last Repair Shop – Documentary Short Film
• War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko – Animated Short Film
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar – Live-Action Short Film

Nominees in the major categories that walked away empty-handed: The Color Purple, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, May December, Nyad, Past Lives, Rustin.

We pause here respectfully to acknowledge the only part my wife Anne ever cares to watch, the annual In Memoriam segment. ABC hates whenever folks embed that annual video, so please enjoy this direct link. This year’s edition began with a gut-punch into a fresh wound — a clip from the opening moments of last year’s Best Documentary Feature winner Navalny, whose eponymous subject knew even then he might not have had long to live. (The solemn quote attributed to Navalny, which most folks over 30 are well aware didn’t originate with him, was a silly Michael-Scott-quoting-Wayne-Gretzky distraction.)

The musical accompaniment was a string quartet and two gentlemen identified in the closed-captioning as “singing in foreign language”. One new enhancement was added for 2024: as the tributes wound to a close, dozens of remaining names were crammed into a split-second shot of an “And the Rest” memorial wall. All those dead studio executives no one’s ever heard of were far more important to cinema history than Burt Young, Ray Stevenson, Treat Williams and Lance Reddick.

R.I.P., all you deceased Honorable Mentions.

UPDATED 3/11/2024, 10:30 p.m.: Per MCC tradition we present Anne’s annual Roll Call of the Snubbed Dead — actors who died within the past twelve months with films on their resumés and weren’t covered in this year’s In Memoriam or last year’s (yes, she went back and double-checked), and didn’t even make the cut for the fleeting memorial wall:

• Robert Blake (In Cold Blood, the Our Gang shorts)
• David Soul (Magnum Force, Johnny Got His Gun, The Hanoi Hilton)
• Arleen Sorkin (Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker; screenwriter, Picture Perfect)
• Richard Moll (House, The Sword and the Sorceror)
• Phyllis Coates (I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Panther Girl of the Kongo)
• Carlin Glynn (Sixteen Candles, The Trip to Bountiful, Continental Divide)
• Pamela Salem (Never Say Never Again, Gods and Monsters)
• Noreen Nash (Giant, Phantom from Space)
• Anne Whitfield (White Christmas, Cookie’s Fortune)

Enclosed below are highlights from the notes I took along the way, buried here exclusively due to my retirement from live-tweeting. All stamps are Eastern Daylight Time.

7:06: The telecast kicks off late in its new time slot, after a round of extra ads, AMC-style. After a montage of nominees and a short Barbie-insertion gag, Kimmel takes the stage to a “partial standing ovation”. His monologue is hit-or-miss, same as any Oscar host ever. We as a world are unanimously okay with easy potshots taken at Madame Web and wannabe Hallmark Christmas star Katie Britt, but attempted repartee with Robert Downey Jr. bounces limply off his target, who’s dueled tougher opponents. His new annual tradition, whining about extra-long movies, is dumbly anti-film (“I had my mail forwarded to the theater”); more accurate is a nod to the quasi-reunion of Taxi Driver 1976 costars Robert DeNiro and Jodie Foster (“…now she’s twenty years too old to be his girlfriend”). Running down the ten Best Picture nominees, he lumps together the two darkest, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, with a comment that in Germany they’re both considered rom-coms. (Sandra Hüller, star of both, makes a face.)

7:20: Kimmel wraps up his monologue — his only full segment this year, thank the Lord — by soliciting sincere applause for the end of the dual strikes that brought Hollywood’s unions to a halt for months in 2023. (“Not the directors, you guys folded immediately.”)

7:21: Returning to a format not used in years, for each of the four acting awards a quintet of past winners presents each of the nominees. Those four segments drag on for several minutes apiece as each respective recipient is showered with effusive, overwritten praise, often by someone with whom they have zilch in common except gender and an acting career. It’s basically The Voice minus chairs. Per annual tradition, the producers make up for those extra minutes by rushing the “lesser” categories. Setting the pace with Best Supporting Actress, 12 Years a Slave‘s Lupita Nyong’o presents the winner — The Holdovers‘ Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who’s a crying mess even before her name is read, which in turn makes some of us viewers a crying mess along with her. (Paul Giamatti also tears up in his nearby seat.) “God is so good,” she begins as she thanks those who “saw” her, including her publicist, which is something she never, ever dreamed of needing. It’s a grounding reminder that not every Oscar winner is a spoiled multimillionaire. Next after the break, Kimmel gently points out to her she didn’t actually name her publicist. She mouths it to the audience camera.

7:35: Furiosa costars Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy hand off Best Animated Short Film to War Is Over! Alongside its directors, producer Sean Ono Lennon (who looks so grown-up now!) ends their stage seconds shouting “HAPPY MOTHERS’ DAY!” to Yoko out there.

7:38: In one of the evening’s few surprising upsets, the Spider-Verse sequel loses Best Animated Feature to Hayao Miyazaki’s Final Film No Really This Time He Totally Means It, The Boy and the Heron. Miyazaki is one of two winners tonight who isn’t in the house and didn’t send a proxy acceptor.

7:44: Throughout the show, mini-trailers are shown for each of the Best Picture nominees. After the one for the steampunk-porno Poor Things, Kimmel jokes that its clip had “all the parts we’re allowed to show on live TV.”

7:45: Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer launch into the two screenplay awards with an intentionally painful routine about what an Oscars ceremony would be like in a world without intros scripted by humans. (The alt-timeline isn’t necessarily that different.) Each nominee has tiny excerpts printed onscreen; the one from Maestro misspells “reining”. As Justine Triet and Arthur Harari approach the stage for Anatomy of a Fall, the orchestra cues up that film’s lethal steel-drum earworm and they are the CRUELEST ORCHESTRA EVER AND I HATE THEM AAAAAAUUUGGGH. Meanwhile, Triet remarks of the win, “It will help me through my midlife crisis, I think.”

7:50: American Fiction writer/director Cord Jefferson caps off his speech by revisiting the parting thoughts from his January 2024 Vulture interview with his old The Good Place boss Michael Schur, imploring studios to invest some of their blockbuster mega-millions in young filmmakers like him and fund more, smaller films like his — i.e., Films Like They Used to Make.

8:04: Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara are the evening’s second-best co-presenting comedy duo. The trio who accept Best Makeup and Hairstyling for Poor Things nod to Ms. Randolph with a gentle publicist joke.

8:09: In one of the evening’s two biggest guaranteed-viral moments, Kimmel points out it’s the 50th anniversary of that infamous Oscar moment when a streaker ran across the stage behind David Niven. Fast-forward to 2024, and John Cena hesitantly comes out wearing only an oversized Best Costume Design envelope over his crotch.

8:22: Our Best International Feature presenters are Dwayne Johnson and Bullet Train costar Bad Bunny, whose 30th birthday was today. Winning for The Zone of Interest, director Jonathan Glazer gives the only overt political speech about Israel-v-.Gaza, denouncing Hamas’ October 6th attack and the Gaza casualties amassed since then. If you listen closely to your wi-fi router, you can still hear sabers rattling, torches burning, trebuchets whirling, and battle cries resounding throughout all of social media even now. Out in the audience, Ms. Hüller is a crying mess.

8:25: The evening’s first-best co-presenting comedy duo are The Fall Guy stars Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, engaged in all-out insult war from their opposing sides in the great Barbenheimer rivalry of 2023. (Blunt: “The way this awards season has turned out, it wasn’t much of a rivalry!” Gosling mocks Oppenheimer‘s suffix status and box office: “You were riding Barbie‘s coattails all summer!” Blunt in turn sneers at his reliance on “painted-on abs”. Anyway, they’re here for a montage salute to Hollywood stunt people, apropos of The Fall Guy, coming soon to theaters. No, stunt people still don’t get an Oscar category like casting directors will next year, but AMPAS is, like, totally thinking of them.

(I just realized whoever’s the current AMPAS president waived their annual right to give a short, unmemorable on-air speech. Thanks for sparing us, whoever!)

8:32: In the interminable Best Supporting Actor sketch, Mystic River‘s Tim Robbins slips and nearly refers to Robert DeNiro’s role in Killers of the Flower Moon as “Oscar-winning” instead of “Oscar-worthy”. It’s a good thing he caught himself so he could make way for Three Billboards‘ Sam Rockwell to present to the actual winner, Oppenheimer‘s ex-superhero Downey. He thanks his wife Susan, his stylist, his publicist (running-gag hat-trick!), “my terrible childhood”, and his entertainment lawyer who spent immeasurable hours getting him “insured and out of the hoosegow.” After he’s done, audience reactions include Messi, the awesome dog from Anatomy of a Fall, sitting obediently in a seat while a pair of fake doggie paws applaud.

8:46: In a very special Twins reunion, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito bond over their shared history as former Batman villains, then issue threats from the pulpit to Michael Keaton out in the audience. Keaton glowers in character and makes “BRING IT” hand-motions. Mr. Freeze and the Penguin then award Best Visual Effects to the amazing colossal Godzilla Minus One. Director/VFX supervisor Takashi Yamazaki reads a list of special thanks from a rather large unfolded paper, haltingly the best he can, but the same orchestra that played that torturous Anatomy of a Fall earworm likewise shows him no mercy.

8:51: Arnold and Danny continue with Best Film Editing. Oppenheimer‘s Jennifer Lame, also a big Twins fan, is immensely grateful to producer Emma Thomas. Then she adds to Thomas’ husband, the film’s director, “Chris, you’re okay too!”

8:57: In-audience comedy-bit cameo by Guillermo Rodriguez, Kimmel’s sidekick from his ABC talk show. I missed out on a few yuks involving a giant bottle of tequila while hastily Googling him.

9:02: Barbie costars America Ferrara and Kate McKinnon prepare to introduce the two documentary awards. They each list examples in the genre; McKinnon’s includes the Jurassic Park series. When Ferrara attempts a correction, McKinnon looks toward Steven Spielberg in the audience and asks, “Dr. Spielberg, is this true?” A game Spielberg solemnly nods. Eventually Best Documentary Short goes to The Last Repair Shop, whose crowd include co-director/composer Kris Bowers (whose thanked entities include “the heroes in our schools” and his biggest influence, John Williams) and li’l Porche Brinker (Class of 2030), the first student we see speaking to the camera in the film.

9:06: In the evening’s first Ukraine tribute, Best Documentary Feature goes to 20 Days in Mariupol. Director/narrator Mstyslav Chernov theorizes he may be the first Oscar winner to say on stage, “I wish I never made this film.” We get what he means. He concludes in honor of his preyed-upon homeland, “We can make sure that the history record is set straight and that the truth will prevail…Cinema forms memories, and memories form history.”

9:14: Dune: Part Two MVP Zendaya gives Best Cinematography to Oppenheimer‘s Hoyte van Hoytema, who chides his competition they should check into that “incredible hip new thing called ‘celluloid’.” He ends with a cryptic thank-you to an acquaintance “for the candy apples.”

9:16: To the relief of all the Film Twitterati at large, Wes Anderson is at long last anointed Academy Award Winner Wes Anderson for the Best Live-Action Short Film, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Following Miyazaki’s lead, Anderson is Sir Not Appearing in This Telecast, nor do any of his 76 repertory actors accept on his behalf. Kimmel later jokes Anderson is at home working on “a diorama made of corduroy.”

9:25: Recovering addict John Mulaney delivers the evening’s second zinger at Madame Web‘s sorry expense, then hyperverbally riffs at length on Field of Dreams in such a dense and hilarious manner as if he were successfully auditioning to host next year’s Oscars and perhaps hasn’t quit all his addictions.

9:30: Guaranteed-viral moment #2 is Ryan Gosling’s performance of Barbie‘s Best Original Song entrant “I’m Just Ken”, a gargantuan pink-and-black Busby Berkeley extravaganza with a population and budget larger than the other four Original Song performances combined. All the dancers are wearing black cowboy hats, the audience is singing along to the parts they know, and his backing band includes extra-special guests Slash and Wolfie Van Halen. It’s a show-stopper for the ages. Next after the break, Kimmel brings Gosling’s pink pants onstage and begins soliciting bids, including an alleged $10,000 offer from Bradley Cooper’s mom.

9:38: Wicked: Part One costars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande present Best Original Score to Oppenheimer‘s Ludwig Göransson, who previously won for Black Panther. He thanks Christopher Nolan for allowing his violinist wife to play a major part in the results, and thanks his parents for buying him “guitars and drum machines instead of video games!”

9:42: Erivo and Grande stick around while Best Original Song goes not to beloved fan-favorite Ken, but to Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell for the other song from Barbie, whose name I can’t recall because all her songs are slow and therefore sound alike to me, including her previous Oscar-winning tune from No Time to Die, which I think was called “The Bond That Couldn’t Slow Down”. A stunned Eilish begins her speech, “I had a nightmare about this last night,” before awkwardly pausing and then even more awkwardly doubling over with laughter. She manages a shout-out to all her old dance and choir teachers, including one she suspects might be unimpressed: “You didn’t like me, but you were good at your job!”

9:44: Remember when I mentioned this year’s winners of Honorary Oscars and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award? As the show goes to commercial, we see their photos hanging on a wall angled partly away from us. Their names aren’t even all mentioned. That’s it, that’s their entire on-air tribute.

9:49: Remember when I mentioned the In Memoriam segment? That happened here. The final pictured actor in what Anne calls “the honor position” is Tina Turner, costar of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Tommy, and who was the mayor in The Last Action Hero.

9:54: The five Best Actor winners (Kimmel calls them “all five members of ‘N Sync”) come out to present the Best Actor nominees. Ben “Gandhi” Kingsley presents to Cillian “Oppenheimer” Murphy, whose thank-you list ends with “the peacemakers everywhere.”

10:03: After playing straight-man for so many comic gags, Spielberg comes onstage to pass the Best Director baton to Nolan. In the audience, Martin Scorsese nods sagely, for he had surely prophesied as much. Nolan hugs Spielberg really tightly.

10:10: The five Best Actress winners include Sally Field, two-time winner for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, who crowns Oscar’s latest two-time Best Actress winner Emma Stone, whose statuette for La-La Land now has a shelf partner. She and millions of others are shocked that she won over Lily Gladstone, but she soldiers on with a broken dress and a voice gone hoarse from singing along too loudly to “I’m Just Ken”. She announces her li’l daughter’s birthday is coming up just three days after Bad Bunny’s.

10:17: Kimmel makes time for a quick installment of his show’s renowned “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” feature, this time starring himself and an actual, live post from a certain former TV star, steak salesman and President. Assuming said viewer hasn’t already gone to bed, Kimmel responds to him from the stage, “I’m surprised you’re still up. Isn’t it past your jail time?” This is his best joke of the night.

10:19: On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Best Picture winner The Godfather Part II, Academy Award Winner Al Pacino offers to recite some Shakespeare before demurring, slowly tearing open the envelope with a somewhat arthritic grace, and mumbling the card’s contents that complete Oppenheimer‘s pretty decent run. A couple dozen participants take the stage led by Emma Thomas, whose freshly Academy Award-winning husband cedes the mic to her and to producer Charles Roven, who thanks studio execs and his family in that order. In the back of the crowd, Downey is fist-pumping.

10:25: Kimmel bids us all farewell. Confetti flies. Giamatti does a jig as the audience filters out. In a prerecorded bit, good dog Messi is outdoors on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, lifting a leg over Matt Damon’s star.

10:30: No, there’s no scene after the 96th Oscars end credits, just ads for corporate-partnered products from ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, and so on.

…

…and now, back to watching junk that’s bad for us all. Let’s get back out there and enjoy the magic of movies and whatnot!

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2024-03-10 04:16:17

Indianapolis Man Watches All 53 Academy Award Nominees, Receives Pat on Head from His Oscar Widow

Jon Batiste playing Carnegie Hall between awards ceremonies.

I am so, so tired. It’s been a loooong six weeks.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’24 has dominated my head space and made me neglect numerous other overdue blogging projects. I’m pleased to report I’m at long last finished: I’ve seen all 38 nominated features and all 15 shorts, marking my first-ever 100% achievement of completing my OQ24 scorecard before the big ABC ceremony. I don’t watch sports, so the Oscars are my Super Bowl, which makes me look weird to most folks in my circles. Nevertheless, once again my traditional hobby-journey was spellbinding, enlightening, maddening, exhausting fun.

Longtime MCC readers have already been privy to our reports on 46 nominees. Of those, I saw the following 18 films in theaters throughout the past year and devoted an entry to each:

• American Fiction
• Barbie
• The Boy and the Heron
• The Color Purple
• The Creator
• Godzilla Minus One
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
• Io Capitano
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1
• Oppenheimer
• Perfect Days
• Poor Things
• Robot Dreams
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• The Teachers’ Lounge
• To Kill a Tiger
• The Zone of Interest

…which added up to quite a few AMC and Landmark frequent-theatergoer points earned. The other 28 were capsulized in grouped entries:

ElementalThe HoldoversMaestroMay DecemberThe Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Anatomy of a FallThe Eternal MemoryKillers of the Flower MoonNimonaPast LivesSociety of the Snow

The ABCs of Book BanningThe AfterThe Barber of Little RockInvincibleIsland In BetweenKnight of FortuneThe Last Repair ShopLetter to a PigNǎi Nai and Wài PóNinety-Five SensesOur UniformPachydermeRed, White and BlueWar Is Over! A Tribute to the Music of John and Yoko

Bobi Wine: The People’s PresidentFour Daughters20 Days in Mariupol

We wrap up the Quest with the final seven capsules — the remaining nominees I streamed between the January 23rd nominations announcement and the final home-video release I was waiting for on March 1st. Let’s get this over with, with feeling:

* American Symphony (Netflix) This year’s only nominated documentary feature not nominated for Best Documentary Feature skated onto the docket through Best Original Song, always the most hodgepodge category, often giving refuge to the most mediocre honorees this side of Best Visual Effects. That is emphatically not the case with this sometimes lively, sometimes worrying piece about Jon Batiste, winner of five Grammy Awards as well as a shared Oscar for the score to Pixar’s Soul, not to mention longtime bandleader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. (Our family saw him live back in 2016!) Director Matthew Heineman (previously nominated for 2015’s Cartel Land) catches Batiste at an extremely up-and-down moment in time — he’s working hard at composing his first full symphony and he’s sticking by the side of his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, whose leukemia has taken a turn for the worse. He can only smile so wide while life volleys him back and forth, causing his own anxiety issues to flare up. Public success fights for his head-space with more vulnerable moments, such as a particularly intense concert that he begins by dedicating a song to her at the piano, then pauses for a tension-fraught eternity before his passion is overwhelmingly unleashed on the ivories. Then he’s gifted in that moment to let the music speak.

Vampire Pinochet has peculiar notions about vampire panache.

* El Conde (Netflix). Pablo Larrain (Spencer, Jackie) willingly deviates even more from history than normal with a horror-tragedy about five spoiled-rotten adult siblings who’ve disappointed their father — the tyrant who’s racked up more negative karma than all of them combined. Yes, that’s the plot of Mike Flanagan’s far superior Fall of the House of Usher, but this time Dad is an alt-timeline Augusto Pinochet who’s a centuries-old vampire. Instead of a smart but clueless homicide detective, the ostensible foil is an accountant-exorcist-nun sent by The Church to cook his books and his proverbial goose, in that order. Chileans in the know might “get it” more than us outsiders if they don’t mind the first 90 minutes of stylized tedium, but even the most insular viewer will perk up when the undead finally come alive in the last half-hour with a Sally Field homage and an out-of-their-gourds, eye-rolling, brilliant twist involving another political icon with about as many fans as Pinochet.

* Flamin’ Hot (Hulu). “Eh, close enough,” is the lazy motto of many a biopic maker, but they usually try up to a certain point, or at least confess to hiding behind an unreliable narrator. The amazing false story of a snack flavor’s alleged secret origin would’ve been more amusing if this had been a made-up farce about Pipin’ Hot Schmeetos, but they refused to peel the labels off and insist a debunked inspirational tale is still inspirational, because Cheetos dust works pretty much like fairy dust if everyone claps hard enough. Are we expected to believe the L.A. Times and NPR, who exposed all this months before filming even began, were in bed with Frito-Lay? How exactly would that work, and why bother? All told, mixed in with the cliched rags-to-riches trail mix are a few choice kernels (The Unit‘s Dennis Haysbert as Our Hero’s de facto factory-floor coach, Jimmy McGill’s nemesis Bill Oakley, a moppet who can tell “good-hot” from “bad-hot”) and the second half gets a little more comfort-schmaltzy if you shut your windows so you can’t hear the faraway sound of Dutton Peabody weeping into his printing press.

* Golda (Xfinity Rewards discount rental). Rated NC-17 for pervasive smoking, more than anyone’s lived through since Sterling Cooper dropped the Lucky Strikes account. The best parts of this mixed-bag biopic from Israeli director Guy Nattiv (an Oscar winner for the 2019 Live-Action Short Film Skin) are the justly nominated Makeup and Hairstyling crews who transformed Dame Helen Mirren — an Oscar winner for The Queen and costar of four Fast and the Furious sequels — into an ornery grandma from Shaker Heights who was this close to wiping Egypt off the map in 1973 in retaliation for the surrounding Arab nations’ coordinated attacks. At times she resembles Prime Minister Golda Meir until the interspersed archival footage makes the fatal mistake of letting us see the real Meir, who seems far more three-dimensional. The micro-documentary portions also mismatch against the incessantly One Perfect Shot-obsessed angle change-ups from one scene to the next, each individually suitable for framing yet existing in entirely different dimensions from each other. Most annoyingly, the singular focus on Meir sacrifices nearly any glimpses of the Yom Kippur War, performed offscreen as a radio drama called “EXPLOSIONS!!” It’s like the cast is eavesdropping on the louder, cooler flick screening in the theater next door.

Don’t be surprised if he wears this same suit in the Joker sequel.

* Napoleon (Apple+). Longtime MCC readers are aware of my weak grasp of world history, so I defer to the tsunami-sized backlash from historians and the entire population of France who gave themselves hernias guffawing at this old-fashioned epic’s depiction of events. (I’m pretty sure Ridley Scott could’ve found a better response to them than simply yelling back, “NEEEEERDS!”) The precious few wartime scenes justify its Best Visual Effects nomination (most impressively at Austerlitz, a raging tumult of ice and cannonballs and blood) and The Crown‘s Vanessa Kirby does what she can with Josephine’s allotted lifespan, but the buck stops with Joaquin Phoenix, the leader of this swingin’ Bring Your Own Accent party. As the notorious conqueror he kindasorta manages a straight face while barking lines like “Destiny has brought me this lamb chop!” and “No dessert for you!” and the meme-immortalized instant-classic tantrum, “YOU THINK YOU’RE SO GREAT BECAUSE YOU HAVE BOATS!” but not so much in the scene where he furiously yanks down on both his hat-handles like a Mad lampoon. I died laughing at the line, “Good morning, General Bluecher!” said exactly as a horse whinnies, which cannot possibly be anything but a Mel Brooks homage. Some have theorized this is supposed to be funny and it’s totally a satire from Scott’s British-scold perspective, which would explain Phoenix’s Frank Drebin vibe. Whether they meant for me to chuckle or not, I think I know slightly more about Emperor Bonaparte now than I did when I learned about him in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but…wait, no, I see a horde of wild-eyed Wikipedia editors waving red flags at me, so never mind.

* Nyad (Netflix). Inspirational sports dramas aren’t a go-to for me, but Oscar season is all about tiptoeing outside my circles of interest. AMPAS voters love seeing actresses enduring arduous deglamorization to play real-life personalities, and few have gone as hard as Annette Bening does here. She plays famed swimmer Diana Nyad, who in her 60s stubbornly took multiple tries to achieve her dream of swimming the dangerous 110-mile stretch between Cuba and Florida. Our Heroine weathers savage jellyfish schools, a blonde whelp trying to steal her glory, and the grim horror of spending so many hours submerged that upon surfacing she looks like Mitch McConnell. Co-directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin won Oscar gold with the 2018 documentary Free Solo and keep falling back on their factual source-material methods, sometimes inserting contemporaneous footage and news coverage between the dramatizations, as well as dashes of Nyad’s other pop-culture tangents. (An actual challenge to her from Andy Kaufman! Kate McKinnon playing her on SNL!) The crutches add context but subtract a little power from its suspenseful sequences and the winning ensemble camaraderie, which includes the first time I’ve seen Jodie Foster convincingly play a lighthearted character since…I dunno, possibly Candleshoe at the drive-in when I was 5.

“Okay, people, HERE is how you plan an Oscar campaign…”

* Rustin (Netflix). In 2008 screenwriter Dustin Lance Black picked up a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Milk, the Best Picture-nominated Harvey Milk biopic that went fully warts-and-all yet deified him in the end out of reverence for the historical milestone he represented for the gay community. 15 years later Black and top-billed writer Julian Breece (When They See Us) take the same approach here with civil-rights organizer Bayard Rustin. The flamboyant firebrand ostensibly taught Martin Luther King everything he knew about protests, civil disobedience, public speaking, speechwriting, and how to tie a necktie. He was the glue that held the warring Black activism factions together (with leading luminaries played by The Wire‘s Glynn Turman and a scowling Chris Rock, among others). But his significance was deleted from history books and contemporaneous reporting due to his sexuality. (Speaking candidly whitely here, it worked: I’d never heard of him till Selma gave him a foot in the door.) Colman Domingo is a flamboyant, energizing steamroller who dominates every frame and practically wills the March on Washington into being from the shadows, which may be accurate for all I know, but director George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) can’t convince anyone else to match his larger-than-life performance and escalates the proceedings to nothing less than heavenly-choired sainthood for the man. Acknowledgment of his contributions is overdue, but in aping Milk‘s template so closely, it risks feeling like Part 2 in a series of Time-Life gay-history educational films rather than a singular tribute.

…

…and with that, we are done. All that’s left to do are the formalities, by which I mean ABC being ABC, Jimmy Kimmel hosting, and winners being named. I’m so exhausted that the ceremony nearly seems beside the point, rather than the point.

To be concluded!

i-for-one-welcome-our-new-barbie-overlords

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Das Video zeigt eine Person mit grauem Haar, die in einem Garten steht und eine blaue T-Shirt mit der Aufschrift "MAKE AMERICA NOT EMBARRASSING AGAIN" trägt. Sie erzählt eine Geschichte, beginnend mit der Erinnerung an eine frühere Begegnung vor Disneyland, wie der Text auf dem Bildschirm zeigt: "so last time you saw me I was in front of Disney." Sie erzählt von einer öffentlichen Demonstration, bei der sie "yelling and screaming" war, wie der Text auf dem Bildschirm weiterhin zeigt. Die Person betont ihre Meinung über Jimmy Kimmels politische Ansichten, wie der Text "about Jimmy Kimmel being silenced for his political views" zeigt. Sie erzählt, dass Jimmy Kimmel sechs Tage später zurückkehrt, wie der Text "and now 6 days later Jimmy Kimmel is coming back" zeigt. Sie erläutert, wie dies passiert ist, indem sie erwähnt, dass der Writers Guild am Morgen nach seiner Absage eine Warnung ausging, wie der Text "The Writers Guild sent out an alert the morning after he was canceled" zeigt. Sie zeigt auch ein Bild von Jimmy Kimmel auf dem Bildschirm, um ihre Erzählung zu unterstützen. Der Text "here's how it happened" und "The Writers Guild sent out an alert the morning after he was canceled" wird gezeigt, um die Erklärung zu unterstützen. Der Text "Join us TODAY at 12 PM at the main Disney Gate at 2201 Alameda Ave in Burbank to protest ABC and tell them to bring back #JimmyKimmel" wird gezeigt, um die Demonstration zu bewerben.

Bereitgestellt von @altbot, privat und lokal generiert mit Ovis2-8B

🌱 Energieverbrauch: 0.745 Wh