Oscars 2019 Recap

And just like that, awards season is over and my life once again has no meaning. Well at least until the next scandal comes along.

Last night, the 91st Annual Academy Awards took place, and it was quite a unique awards ceremony. For only the second time in 91 years, the Oscars had no host. When I first heard the awards was going hostless, I was very against the idea. I thought a host was what the ceremony needed to keep everything running smoothly and to provide comic relief during the three hour long run time. I am happy to say that I was wrong. I don’t know what it was about yesterday’s show, but the presenters skits and stuff were actually funny. Usually they are super awkward and no one laughs, or they get like on chuckle, but last night everything was super funny! The show was opened by Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler who are all funny without even trying. One of my favorites was Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson’s little speech before presenting for Best Original Score. They talked about how when they hear the Jaws theme, they know it’s time to get out of the water, and when they hear the Titanic theme, they know two people are about to fall in love, before something else really bad happens in the water. Awkwafina and John Mulaney were also pretty funny as first time presenters, freaking out as we all would. And how can we forget Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree presenting the award for costume design dressed in the most elaborate and gaudy costumes ever seen. The show was closed by Julia Roberts who was also the presenter of the last award.

Going into the Oscars this year, I watched four out of the eight nominated movies and most of the movies in which actors were nominated for their performances. A lot of the winners last night were pretty predictable. I knew Mahershala Ali was going to win best supporting actor for his work in Green Book, I knew Regina King was going to win for her role in If Beale Street Could Talk, and I was pretty sure Rami Malek was going to win for Bohemian Rhapsody. Once Roma won for best foreign language film, I knew it was definitely not going to win for best picture. They would not give it both awards. Usually during these awards, there is one or two movies that sweep everything, but this time it was a mix of three. Roma, Black Panther and Bohemian Rhapsody went back and forth winning awards such as sound mixing, sound editing, cinematography, costume design and production design. Nothing really surprising here, these were the top movies of the year and were visually beautiful. When Black Panther won for costume design, I had no arguments against it, those costumes were phenomenal.

The two biggest surprises of the night, for me, came right at the very end of the awards. The first was that Olivia Coleman, not Glenn Close, won for best actress. I was rooting so hard for Glenn Close and was absolutely shocked and devastated when she lost. I mean good for Olivia Coleman and all but Glenn Close was SO good in The Wife, and I wanted it so bad for her. The look of pure shock on the faces of everyone in that auditorium said it all for me. No one was expecting Coleman to win and she herself even told Close, that this is not the way she had wanted the night to go. Glenn Close now holds the record for most Oscar nominations, without winning one, which is part of the reason I wanted her to win. The other surprise was when Green Book won for best picture. I was secretly hoping it would, but never did I actually believe it would. Everyone was thinking it was either going to be Roma, Bohemian Rhapsody or The Favourite. When Roma won best foreign language film, I was thinking for sure Bohemian Rhapsody was going to win, which would have been fine because I liked that movie too. When they called Green Book as the winner, I was so happy and surprised. This was definitely the pick me up I needed after Glenn’s loss.

Lastly, you cannot talk about last night without mentioning Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s performance of Shallow. My favorite thing to do now is to look up memes and tweets about the performance which frankly was so uncomfortable to watch. I mean the song is great, it won an Oscar for crying out loud, and they sounded impeccable, but I swear the whole time I was just waiting for them to start making out. I get it, you guys had great chemistry while filming the movie and you guys love each other more than we can understand, but the man was literally there with his wife. They were sitting next to each other on the piano and she put her head against his chest, and then they looked into each other’s eyes to sing the final note, um gag. I loved the movie when I first saw it and I think they are both extremely talented beings but I am so over that song and the movie it’s not even funny.

Some of my favorite speeches last night came from Rami Malek, Regina King and Rayka Zehtabchi, who won for her best short documentary entitled “Period. End of Sentence.” See the rest of last nights big winners and their speeches here.

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