This year, non-white nominees will be absent for all of the major awards at the Oscars for the second year running. Once again, I ask myself why Todd Haynes was not nominated for “Carol” – considering that his film is purely a manifestation of directorial virtuosity. You’ll have to listen to Lawrence Welk forever.
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Rock is going to have a walk a pretty tricky line between celebrating the Oscars and criticizing them, and proving their irrelevancy to the moviegoing public at large might be the best way to do it. The first two touch on real-life issues that affected millions of people in the here and now, the latter is a 19th-century tale of revenge in an unforgiving wilderness. They determined – surprise! – that “the film industry still functions as a straight, white boy’s club“. “There’s 3,349 people in the voting thing and only two black people, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte”.
Regardless of what the Oscars’ host and producer may add to the diversity conversation, they plan to present the traditional 24 awards and feature musical performances by original song nominees Gaga, Smith and Weeknd and a special appearance by Dave Grohl.
“I told my agent I wanted to present because it’s like, what’s easier and better than presenting?”
“So essentially, you have the black elite giving out Oscars that night to the white elite”, he said.
Who should win: “Spotlight” is a legitimate contender and the longtime front-runner, but it feels like Oscar bait to me.
“I think Rampling probably regrets phrasing it in the way that she did”, says David Paul Kirkpatrick, former president of Paramount and Disney, and a voter in the Academy’s executive wing. “It’s kind of like the Def Oscar Jam tonight”.
We were lucky enough to go back stage to see where the stars get ready, take the walk that every star makes if they win and we even got to stand in that special spot where the famous Ellen selfie took place in 2014. While mainstream recognition from an institution like the Academy is not necessary to validate the contributions and experiences of black performers, it still carries significant implications for the economic realities of the movie industry. You get names like Barbershop. They know that movie stars usually step aside and let men and women with nerves of steel take the literal fall for them on camera. That little statuette, valued anywhere from $500 to $900 depending on the price of gold, won’t fetch you anything on the open market (all winners are contractually required to offer it first to the Academy for $1), but it can be a significant career booster if the circumstances are right.
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Crystal hosted the 84th Academy Awards, marking his ninth time as ringleader, and took heat for a comment following Octavia Spencer’s best supporting actress win for The Help. “He’s just going to do what he wants to do, and I support either way”. Crystal had played Davis before, most memorably on Saturday Night Live, but the backlash was still strong. Rock told The Hollywood Reporter in December that he was considering pay inequality and superhero movies as joke subjects, but it’s likely that has changed by now. “Tonight, we honor Hollywood’s best and whitest – sorry, brightest”. Yet another important question, how about the total absence of any black nominees in the acting categories?
