91st Academy Awards Recap

It’s been a long and tire­some jour­ney, but we have fi­nally got­ten through this Os­cars sea­son. That means we are right on the doorstep of Hol­ly­wood’s biggest night: The Acad­emy Awards. The 91st Acad­emy Awards took place on Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 24 on ABC. For me, it has al­ways been my fa­vorite time of the year when we get to cel­e­brate the best in en­ter­tain­ment. Just like every other year, the win­ners leave peo­ple ei­ther cheer­ing for joy or shak­ing their heads in dis­ap­proval. With some of the win­ners cho­sen this year, it’s no dif­fer­ent.

Be­cause there was­n’t a host this year, the cer­e­mony went by pretty quick, for the most part. Turns out, no host is ac­tu­ally bet­ter in the long run. There weren’t any skits in-be­tween that made the al­ready three-hour show bor­ing, and the pre­sen­ters just did their job to pre­sent the awards. Queen and Adam Lam­bert kicked off the show with a solid per­for­mance of both “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Cham­pi­ons”.

Af­ter a mon­tage of last year’s film, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, and Amy Poehler fol­lowed to in­tro­duce Best Sup­port­ing Ac­tress, and they were hi­lar­i­ous. Why could­n’t they have hosted?

The show over­all ran smoothly. De­spite the lack of a host, the show was still fairly en­ter­tain­ing. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s mu­si­cal per­for­mance was stel­lar. There were also some good ac­cep­tance speeches. At least there weren’t any mishaps that were go­ing to be talked about the next morn­ing.

Greek Book pulled an up­set as it took home the big prize of the night that of Best Pic­ture. The film also won Best Sup­port­ing Ac­tor (Ma­her­shala Ali) and Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play. De­spite the con­tro­versy that the road trip dram­edy from Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures gained for its in­ac­cu­ra­cies, it was able to suc­ceed in win­ning, even with­out a Best Di­rec­tor nom­i­na­tion. Per­son­ally, I re­ally en­joyed Green Book, and I know peo­ple who did love it.

Other mem­o­rable wins went to the film that many were ex­pect­ing to earn Best Pic­ture: Roma. The Net­flix orig­i­nal went on to win Best Di­rec­tor for Al­fonso Cuarón, Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy, and Best For­eign Lan­guage Film. It was sad know­ing the film did­n’t win Best Pic­ture, de­spite be­ing the front run­ner from cer­tain award cir­cuits. But the stream­ing ser­vice should still be proud. It’s go­ing to take an­other movie to get Cuarón that Best Pic­ture win.

The film that took home the most wins was Bo­hemian Rhap­sody, with four Acad­emy Awards. Rami Malek won Best Ac­tor for his un­canny por­trayal of Fred­die Mer­cury. The di­vi­sive Queen biopic also went on to win Best Edit­ing, Sound Mix­ing, and Sound Edit­ing. Know­ing that if the movie wins any­thing in ad­vance, the amount of “ugh” and “eye rolls” will be all over this.

The biggest sur­prise of the night that no­body saw com­ing was Olivia Col­man win­ning Best Ac­tress for The Favourite over Glenn Close for The Wife, who was the choice for the longest time. I was­n’t even mad at this up­set be­cause she was bril­liant. Her speech was also a fa­vorite of mine. At least The Favourite was able to win one award out of its 10 nom­i­na­tions.

The biggest stand­out from the en­tire show, was Spi­der-Man: Into the Spi­der-Verse win­ning Best An­i­mated Fea­ture. This now means Phil Lord and Chris Miller are Os­car win­ners. “Shal­low” from A Star is Born, the only lock of the night, went home with Best Orig­i­nal Song mak­ing Lady Gaga an Os­car win­ner. Black Pan­ther won three Os­cars, in­clud­ing Pro­duc­tion De­sign, Cos­tume De­sign, and Orig­nal Score, mak­ing it the first movie in the Mar­vel Cin­e­matic Uni­verse to win mul­ti­ple Os­cars. Spike Lee won Best Adapted Screen­play for co-writ­ing BlacK­kKlans­man. A long over­due win for Mr. Lee af­ter be­ing snubbed for Do the Right Thing.

The Os­cars sea­son is over, and I could­n’t be hap­pier. In my opin­ion, the right Best Pic­ture nom­i­nees all walked away with some sort of award. The best part is look­ing for­ward to the movies that are com­ing out this year; many of them could be good con­tenders for next year’s Os­cars.

Final Score: 16/24.

The complete list of winners from the 91st Academy Awards:

*Indicates What I Correctly Predicted

Best Picture: Green Book

*Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón- Roma

*Best Actor: Rami Malek- Bohemian Rhapsody

Best Actress: Olivia Colman- The Favourite

*Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali- Green Book

*Best Supporting Actress: Regina King- If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Original Screenplay: Green Book

*Best Adapted Screenplay: BlacKkKlansman

*Best Animated Feature: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

*Best Foreign Language Film: Roma

Best Editing: Bohemian Rhapsody

*Best Cinematography: Roma

*Best Production Design: Black Panther

*Best Costume Design: Black Panther

*Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Vice

Best Visual Effects: First Man

*Best Sound Mixing: Bohemian Rhapsody

*Best Sound Editing: Bohemian Rhapsody

Best Original Score: Ludwig Göransson- Black Panther

*Best Original Song: “Shallow”- A Star is Born

*Best Documentary: Free Solo

Best Documentary Short Subject: Period. End of Sentence.

*Best Animated Short: Bao

Best Live-Action Short: Skin