Oscars..

[shadowkat]

Well so far so good.

It's very different. They did best original screenplay, and best adapted screenplay first.

*Emerald Fennel - Promising Young Woman, as I expected, won best original screenplay. I'd have given it to her. [I saw the movie - the dialogue is biting and the script is rather good.]

[What's interesting is how Regina King is introducing each person - telling us who these people are. And showing them from across the world, if they aren't in LA.]

* The screenwriters for the Father won. (I can't watch the Father - it's about Althzheimers through the point of view of those suffering it. And that's my Dad, so I can't. Too painful.}

The Oscars are kind of an abbreviated version, with no major performances or hosts, no real fanfare. Instead of red carpet, they did a spotlight - with the songs performed then.

Mother: Are you watching the Oscars?
ME: Uh no.
Mother: Instead of the red carpet they are doing the musical numbers.
ME: Damn. I missed it
Mother: Sorry, should have called you earlier. Oh I watched Sound of Metal today.
ME: What did you think?
Mother: It was extremely good. I enjoyed it.
Me: I loved it.
Mother: So did your brother. He couldn't get into Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
Me: Yeah, I struggled with Trial of Chicago 7 which he loved. Has he seen Promising Young Woman?
Mother: no. But he troubles finding the same one you were looking for, Minari.
Me: Yeah - that I couldn't find it either.

[See? My family is into discussing movies.]

Now they are doing Best Foreign Film...

*Another Round - the film with the guy from Hannibal (Mads Mikleson - if you are a fan, you should watch Another Round for him), that everyone loves? I predicted it probably would, so not surprised. It's the Denmark film. It's about letting go of control - and features four men who just stay drunk.

[Most thought Que Vadis would get it.]

Ah finally, Best Supporting Actor.

[This is interesting - it has the most black men nominated for Best Supporting Actor in history. 3 people.]

* Daniel Kaluuya won - for Judas and the Black Messiah. I love this actor. He's so powerful. (Although I could not get into the movie at all.)

Ooooh...The West Side Story - Steven Spielberg version looks really cool. They released the trailer just now. It looks good. (Although, it's going to be hard to beat George Chakris, Rita Morena, and Russ Tambolyn from the original.)

Best Makeup and Hair Styling

* Ma Rainey's Black Bottom got best hair and makeup (well deserved)

Best Costume

* Ma Rainey's Black Bottom - Ann Roth (who figures out the costumes by what people do with the clothes when they go to bed at night.)

Best Director

*Chloe Zhao won for Nomadland - history making, first Asian female director to win. "Everywhere I've gone, I've looked and found the goodness in people and the place." That was Nomadland...actually.


Best Sound

* YAY - Sound of Metal won - which it should, that movie did things with sound that amazed me.

[So far I'm agreeing with who is winning these awards, that's kind of rare. I usually don't agree for 3/4 of the awards. In fact I groaned through the last four or five awards...with few exceptions. ]

Best Live Action Short

[I've not seen them. I'm not a fan of short films. But the Oscars do draw attention to them.]

* Two Distant Strangers

Speech: "Yesterday, three people were killed by police, today three people have been killed by police, and tomorrow three people will be killed by police. James Baldwin once said the worst thing people can do is to be indifferent to other people's pain. So we ask you please, don't be indifferent."

Movies, television shows, art, music and books - stop us from being indifferent - they take us inside the pain, the joy, another's mind, another's views, often different than our own... and if well done? Make us feel it.

Animated Short

*If Anything Happens, I love You

[I wish they'd show the films, they used to - it's hard to know without seeing them.]

Animated Feature Film

* Soul - (YAY)

...

Okay I'm losing interest. It's and I'm not up to staying up until 11.

Comments

[shadowkat]

Ah, my GIF. And I feel old now. Yeah, you can't go to a high school in a nice area of California without going with famous people. The Cheney daughters went to the same college I did - while I was there, I never met them. They probably knew who I was more than I knew who they were at the time (I was active in college). They were about a year or two below me. As did Sydney Pollack's daughter - which is why I met Pollack, actually, for a film course in the 1980s.

And, my parents close friends from their days in Chicago have a son who was into acting, then left it to do something else. But he was friends with John Cusack in Chicago (went to the same college or high school - before Cusack made it), and Nick Coppola in California (my parents friends moved to California when he was in college). This was before he was Nick Cage. My sister-in-law? Her parents went to school with Deborah Harry, Andy Warhol, and the beat underground film makers like the guy who did Hairspray and Pink Flamingos. They were close friends, so much so that her Dad took pictures of their closets for an art book. Her uncle was Kit Carson who did Paris Texas with Sam Shepard (actually Kit wrote the film, and Sam took the credit). Kit also sponsored and mentored Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson's first film - Bottlerocket instead of my sisinlaw and bro's film project. Kit was married to Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces) and their son Hunter was in Paris, Texas. My brother worked on the film Love Crimes with Kit.

I give you this list to let you know that my sis-in-law and brother have been telling me about famous people since I was 21. For a while it was every visit. Now, less so.

I don't personally know anyone famous (thank god), but I know a lot of folks who do. My friend CW apparently grew up with Lionel Ritchie. My mother transferred out of an English Lit course taught by Larry McMurtry, and one pal took a course taught by Barbara Jordan.

[mefisto]

I don't personally know anyone famous, nor did I go to school with anyone. It's weird to me that other people have such contacts.

[shadowkat]

It's not to me. Famous people are just people - they happen to be famous because of their work mostly. They are basically the front guys on the band, or the poster kids. I don't envy them - fame is not something I'd want - it's toxic. People don't handle that type of attention well, and fans can be nasty - not all, but enough for it to be horrible. A lot of people have a tendency to objectify famous folks - see them as the product they are promoting, or the character, but not as a person with kids, a family, who goes to school, and struggles just like them. (I mean you have almost no privacy - people see you as a thing or something that they have a right to. They have people stalk them. It's insane.)

I just finished the Obama's memoirs - and neither was happy with the fame component. And on Renegades - neither Bruce Springsteen nor Barack liked being famous. George Cloony calls it the cancer of success. And it kind of is.

My brief flirtation with it in 2002 -2003 due to my meta on Buffy, was more than enough for me. And that was with a pseudonym on a posting board. It's why I don't really like conventions or fandom events - because fawning over someone famous makes me uncomfortable. That said, you can also have really kind interactions - but usually when you remember this is just another person just like you, who happens to have a job that places them more prominently in the public eye - and requires a lot of self-promotion. The smart ones - hang back from social media, and limit it a bit.

[mefisto]

I've never wanted to meet any of my idols. I suspect they all have feet of clay. And I'd never survive celebrity culture if I ever became famous.

[shadowkat]

Same. At the end of the day, we're all flawed humans, capable of great and horrible things, often at the same time. I think the mistake is idolizing or putting folks on pedestals or worshiping them.
Which we all have a tendency, I think to do. Sooner or later that person will fall off the pedestal - just look at Bill Clinton, Joss Whedon, Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Virgina Woolf, Hemingway, Mother Teresa, and so many others.

People have a tendency to demonize famous folks who fall hard off of pedestals. Or immortalize them as Saints, like Princess Diana.