Hello it’s me, The Blog Complainer. I just watched the 2020 Academy Awards and it was certainly a surprise.
2019 was a really good year for movies and which was reflected in this year’s Oscars as I actually enjoyed watching it for a change. There were some genuinely good speeches and only one person was cut off this time which, I guess, is progress. There were some good musical numbers, my favourites would be The Mr Rogers opening and all the different Elsa’s singing. There were some good picks and some fun surprises and that’s all you need from an awards show and this is definitely an improvement on past years.
There were still some bad parts too like I’m not a fan of the political comments in the Oscars because it just feels too preachy and forced for my taste. Every comedian after Steve Martin and Chris Rock I found pretty annoying. Lastly Eminem was at the Oscars and it was definitely a surprise, but why? Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy weren’t allowed at the Oscars, but Eminem was!!
Anyway, onto my thoughts on the winners, starting with the only one that really annoyed me. The winner of the Best Animated Feature category was easily my least favourite of the nominees. I thought this would be the year that they broke the “pick Disney/Pixar” mold as we had some really good competition this year. I guess they won this award because Disney didn’t win anything else. Frozen lost to Elton John and Star Wars lost to Joker, which feels very satisfying to say.
Most of the other awards were what I was expecting as these are the same winners that smashed all of the other award shows. How many awards has Renee Zellweger won? I’m cool with Brad Pitt winning Best Supporting Actor and Bombshell getting Best Hair and Make-Up, but it would have been nice to have some different picks so the show feels less predictable.
Still it’s surprising that the movies with the most nominations, Joker and Once Upon a time in Hollywood, only won two awards. It’s sad The Irishman is walking away with nothing. The biggest shock is that Bong Joon-ho is walking away with four Oscars including Best Picture, making Parasite the first non English language film to win Best Picture and I couldn’t be more happy about it. I said in my review of Parasite that I first watched this on the plane because movie distribution sucks where I live. I feel hopeful that Parasite’s win will encourage companies to make these films more accessible to the public in the future.
Kind of like the DCEU the Oscars are improving and hopefully in four years time I might stop viewing them as a bit of a joke. Only time will tell and if you have also tuned into this year’s Oscars I would love to hear your thoughts. I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.
