Oscarathon 2020: Final Oscar Thoughts

In All, Movies by David

A strange awards season has come to an end. A faster than normal season (that left me slower than normal when responding to it) saw the rise and fall of many contenders before an ending that seems to be begging everyone to forget about last year. After taking some time to reflect as I try to do, here are my final thoughts before putting the 2020 Awards season to bed.

PARASITE!!!

Image result for parasite wins best picture

AHHHHH! Everyone is so happy!

Who would have thought we would be here after the debacle of last year? This whole Oscar season hinted at the deep love the Academy had for this movie, but it just seemed like it would fall short at some point. Joker is the film that got the most nominations in 11, The Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were high-quality efforts from Hollywood royalty, 1917 had won the Golden Globe, PGA, DGA, and BAFTA, and so it goes and goes, but ultimately none of this could stop Parasite from making history. Then add in the fact that not only did it win, but it won while winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Film in the first year of the category being renamed. It is quite the accomplishment and one that everyone from Twitter to the people in the room at the Oscars to random film lovers across the country clearly wanted. Parasite is clearly the best film of the year, and to see the Oscars actually support this notion was simply spectacular. But how did this happened? How!? Well…

Roma died so that Parasite could run

Image result for roma

Thank you for your service, Roma.

Let me ask you if this sounds familiar, an international film from a highly acclaimed and respected director from an outsider trying to really break into the elite levels of the film industry wins many prestigious international awards before doing quite well during the lead up to the Oscar awards season and considered by many to be the best film of the year. That describes Parasite, but more importantly, it describes Roma, and Roma, arguably, might have had even more international support (depends how heavily you want to weigh Parasite’s Palme D’Or win). So how did Parasite succeed where Roma failed? Well, the obvious answer is one was released by Netflix and well won wasn’t. Netflix made some concessions with Roma as it allowed it to come out a couple of weeks exclusively in theatres before it came to Netflix, but only in theatres that played by its rules. This meant that many people ultimately watched Roma at home instead of in theatres, and were thus constantly reminded of the outsider status of Netflix in the awards game.

Meanwhile, Parasite even with smaller distributors Neon and CJ Entertainment, went all in. It played everyone it could and well has made over 200 million dollars internationally. In big cities, it has played often and liberally. It got big theatre chains to buy-in and play it many many times a day. The fact that Neon has a lot of ties to its own movie theatre chain in the form of Alamo Drafthouse certainly didn’t hurt. This idea of watching movies in movie theatres instead at home was a common thread this awards season with Netflix trying to be an even bigger player this year. It was so big that honestly, a huge part of 1917‘s seeming frontrunner status was that it was an experience that could only be truly given just and told in a theatre. This was the film for moviegoers. Instead, though it was Parasite that shown benefited most from being able to be seen in a theatre.

Make no mistake though Roma‘s efforts to force the Academy to reckon with international films was highly important to getting many voters comfortable with the idea of voting for Parasite this year. Last year Roma was only able to break through on Best Director and Best Cinematography, but were ultimately done in by the Academy losing it’s goddamn mind and picking Green Book as the Best Picture winner. Speaking of Green Book, did guilt from last year drive this result? Maybe, but honestly Green Book literally never deserves credit for anything, and if we all simply wanted to pretend the 2019 Oscars simply never happened I would be fine with it. But enough of this let’s get back to what is important… Parasite.

… But seriously Parasite and more importantly let’s talk about Bong Joon-ho

Everyone loves Bong Joon-ho, they love him so much that they all seemed to ignore that his movie was in every way possible shitting on the privileged lifestyle that many in the Academy live. Bong Joon-ho was such a delight during the telecast. His speeches were so earnest and sincere, and when he won for Best Original Screenplay and later for Best International Film he appeared to be contented and ready to move on from what seemed like inevitable losses, and then he won for Best Director and the room collectively lost its mind. His stun speech as everyone realized that Parasite was likely heading towards a Best Picture win was amazing even if it got a bit weird when after praising Martin Scorsese the entire room gave Scorsese a standing ovation (it was also very sweet and inspiring, but still weird that everyone felt compelled to honor the person that had just lost when they could have just voted for him if they loved him so much).

It is a little sad that Sam Mendes had to get lumped into the same sentence as Todd Phillips as Mendes is a marvelous director who would have been a deserved winner this year if he had won, but at the same time fuck Todd Phillips. Speaking of Mendes, he becomes only the fourth person to lose the Oscar after winning the DGA Award, and really in the truest sense as both Ron Howard and Ben Affleck were not even nominated so only Rob Marshall had ever before actually come to the ceremony before expecting to win only to lose so that Roman Polanski could get fawned over being the Academy. Luckily in Mendes’s case, he had already won before, but still, it is a tough loss.

Except he lost to Bong Joon-ho, which made it far more palatable likely. Bong was able to join a very exclusive list as the winner of three Oscars and even rarer list of people to win three trophies in different disciplines (it is basically like 14 people including just to name a few Walt Disney, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Roma‘s Alfonso Cuarón who joined last year), and he was the first since Walt Disney to actually go up on stage to accept four trophies (even if Bong doesn’t get to keep the International Film trophy as that belongs to South Korea). It was a great night for Bong Joon-ho, and if you need any other convincing just look at how Spike Lee was to actually give this award to this man.

Image result for spike lee bong joon ho

Maybe we do need a host…

So yeah, last year the whole hostless gimmick worked pretty well, but this year it was just kind of a mess. There was just a real lack of cohesion between everything, and it made the whole show feel disjointed. Making it worse is that every time you had Steve Martin and Chris Rock coming out to act as hosts to do the opening to the show, and later Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig being amazing presenters who should probably get a chance to host. It just made everything weird. The hostless experiment worked great last year, but it is likely time to bring them back next year because that was likely just catching lightning in a bottle.

Make up your mind Academy do we want this to short or not?

Look let it be said that I stand firmly on the side that the Oscars should be seven hours long if they need to be. They happen once a year, and to act as if even their weakening numbers wouldn’t basically be better ratings-wise than almost anything a network could air in that time is ludicrous. But if your goal is to make it short you can’t have shit like slightly famous people coming out simply to introduce more famous people, long montage of acting clips when announcing the acting awards, a random rap recap, another stupid montage about movies in general, and then Eminem coming out and confusing half of the audience as to why he is performing. I mean just to be clear I thought it was cool, but like for a show that had the audacity to try and cut categories out of the telecast just last year, and then pull shit like this is simply infuriating. Make up your mind, let it be long or keep it short ( or well as short as you can), but don’t put pointless shit like that in and complain that it is too long.

Once again, though, I must emphasize, I thought it was awesome, and want the Oscars to do way more weird shit like this, but I mean just admit that’s what you are doing and don’t try to pretend otherwise.

1917 becomes the latest war film lost in the shuffle

It has now been ten years since the last time a war film won Best Picture when Hurt Locker accomplished it (which was 13 years after the previous time when The English Patient won). It seems like that may just be the trend now. The Oscars constantly nominate war films, but have become increasingly resistant to letting them win. There could be a lot of reasons for this, but honestly, it may just be everyone kind of agrees that no matter how good a war film is, it is still just a war film, which well we have kind of seen every version of. Both 1917 and Dunkirk at least tried to do something different with their war movies, but still, it was just too hard for the film to overcome such a beloved film in the form of Parasite, which felt so much fresher to many watching. Still, it is unfortunate at some level because 1917 is a truly great movie that just picked the wrong year to come out.

It just wasn’t meant to be for another war film.

Netflix made progress in a lot of ways, but still has a long way to go

So Netflix was such a player during awards season this year that it almost was too successful as it had to basically sacrifice The Two Popes in order to really push Marriage Story and The Irishman. Ultimately, though, its stubborn resistance to letting its films be released in the same way as other films continues to be a problem. Now I am not ready to say this is a fatal flaw because at some point if Netflix keeps doing this it is going to win, but it certainly is not helping its cause, and there is clearly real pushback against the streaming giant for its refusal to say let The Irishman get a real theatre release as Scorsese originally wanted. At some point, the Academy will get over this, because umm Netflix is kind of the future whether everyone wants to admit it or not, but if Netflix had been the one to release Parasite this year, it is very likely the film would have lost because these races are so close right now that even the smallest thing can cost you (unless you are Green Book, which ruins everything).

Taika Waititi

It is a real bummer that Greta Gerwig got shut out again, but Waititi is such a delight, and his acceptance speech was so humble and moving. More importantly, this completes the cycle of of Taika Waititi dunking all over Todd Phillips, which is just the greatest thing ever.

Basically, after Todd Phillips had the audacity to suggest that he can no longer make comedies because of woke culture when he fucking made Due Date could only truly be responded to by Waititi winning for writing a movie about a young boy in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend was fuckin Hitler. Truly delicious, also fuck you Todd Phillips.

All the acting winners were clearly so over giving speeches

I don’t really have much to say here other than man, they were all clearly done. After a season in which pretty much everyone outside of some early critics’ awards agreed that Joaquin Phoenix, Laura Dern, Renée Zellweger, and Brad Pitt were winning these awards so they have been giving speech after speech after speech and all of them were just done. Even Phoenix, who has been using these speeches to speak out against injustices in the world seemed to just be throwing out B+ material at best. It got to the point where I was like maybe they should all just go up and just give a thumbs up before moving on. Hopefully, next year there is actually some drama in these categories to help make these speeches have a bit more life in them.

Hildur Guðnadóttir is a mood

So Joker didn’t get completely shut out as it won two awards, and really that is fine. Phoenix was deserving even if this isn’t anywhere close to his best performance, and even though the Academy’s weird fascination with Joker is kind of disturbing. Meanwhile, Guðnadóttir became only the fourth woman to win this award (and well she is the first woman to win the category in its current consolidated form). Somehow, a film that has been beloved by the incel and its toxic masculinity bullshit benefiting a woman more than almost anyone else is kind of a fitting middle finger to the problems in this film. Also, however, though Guðnadóttir was simply marvelous in her speech. So sweet and kind, and clearly overwhelmed in the moment. She made it impossible for you not to cheer extra loud for her, and she was just one of the many many feel-good winners of this year’s Oscars that made the ceremony work so well. Just watch this speech!

 

An Expected Ending, but what a Year for Best Animated Film

I am not going to dwell on this too much no one is going to yell at the Academy for picking Toy Story 4, but man it is kind of a bummer after a season where so many different films got honored during the awards season for Disney/ Pixar to get another trophy. Especially when you have things like Klaus, which actually tried to do something different with American animation, which is well not something that happens. Missing Link may not have been Laika’s strongest effort, but it is still quite the feat as well, and well it just feels wrong that How To Train Your Dragon never won an Oscar for any of its films, and lost Disney/ Pixar all three times twice against Toy Story films and once against Big Hero 6 (which is still ridiculous). Still, when you add in I Lost My Body, Weathering For You, Lego Movie 2, and even hell Frozen 2 this was a strong year for animated films, and also at least the industry as a whole is seeming less and less beholden to only rewarding Disney/ Pixar films.

Well at least Best Song tried

This was pretty cool, so keep trying, at least you did better than last year.

So umm, I guess they tried to do something at least, with everyone Best Song performance getting some sort of bell and whistle added to it with the exception of Randy Newman, who clearly was just like it’s fine we just need me and my trust piano. So after yelling the category last year for being a boring mess they at least tried to make it less boring, but ummm yeah let’s umm keep trying because I don’t think we have quite gotten there yet… but still thanks for trying.

That’s it for this year’s Oscar season. After the roller coaster of last year’s Oscars, this was umm so much better in so many ways. I am going to go off and enjoy things after a delightful and great awards year that yada yada whatever PARASITE won y’all that is all that really matters!

-David