Neena is back with her take on the Academy Awards. You might not agree, but she never holds back even being maybe the only person in the world who wasn’t gaga over Gaga. A must read for the TV or Oscars fans. – Ed.
OPINION
TV Bites
17th Annual Oskerbites
by Neena Louise
Worst Dressed Female
Jenny Beavan
It seems she was confused and thought she was going to a biker bar, not the Oscars. I supposed the leather jacket and ill-fitting pants was an homage to Mad Max, but the 65-year-old Beavan just looked…sad and pathetic. Considering she won for costume design, you’d think she would’ve dressed better.
Runner-up
Heidi Klum
It seems she wore a discount bridesmaid dress from Walmart.
Worst Dressed Male
Jared Leto
Leto was all dressed up to play in the high school band with his weird black tux with red piping and a giant red carnation at his neck. Get a stylist, dude!
Best Dressed Female
Daisy Ridley
I’m not normally a fan of such blingy dresses, but Ridley rocked it.
Best Dressed Male
Leonardo DiCaprio
Dressed in a simple, classic black tux. Others [cough cough Leto] should take note.
Worst Accessory
Olivia Wilde’s choker necklace
The blingy dog collar Wilde donned was just…weird. Made me wonder where the leash was.
Best Accessory
Cheryl Boone Isaacs’ earrings
The large blingy diamond-and-ruby drop earrings gave me earring envy.
Worst Hair
Saoirse Ronan
I guess her hair was supposed to be “tousled”, but I could only think “get a comb”.
Best Hair
Whoopi Goldberg
Goldberg’s cornrows were swept back and enhanced with blingy accessories. Hands-down the most interesting hair of the evening.
Worst Acceptance Speech
Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Director, The Revenant)
There were so many to choose from with everyone taking advantage of the huge audience for their political spew, but Iñárritu takes it for just not shutting the fuck up.
Best Acceptance Speech
First the first time ever, there just weren’t any that deserved a nod. Most were just a bunch of political spew. Those that weren’t, were just plain boring.
Worst Song Presentation
“Til It Happens to You”, (Lady Gaga, The Hunting Ground)
I could only think one thing: cheesy. From Lady Gaga’s idiotic facial expressions to the people coming out, holding hands, to the undeserving standing ovation, it was all just plain cheese. Made me gag. And while we’re on the subject: why were only 3 of the 5 nominated songs performed? Who made that idiotic and disrespectful decision?
Best Song Presentation
“Earned It” (The Weekend, Fifty Shades of Grey)
Could’ve done without the silly dancing and weirdly-squatting violinists, but it sounded great.
Worst Shout-Out
Chris Rock telling Louis Gossett, Jr. “You’re diabetic. You can’t eat [Girl Scout cookies].” Not only rude, but perpetuating the myth that diabetics can’t eat sweets. They can – just not a lot.
Best Shout-Out
Chris Rock, wanted to beat “Mrs. [Linda] Dunn” for selling the most Girl Scout Cookies. It worked, too: he sold more than $65,000 worth of cookies(!) – and made me crave some in the process. Bet whoever “Linda Dunn” is, she’s cringing.
Least Deserving of an Oscar Nomination
“Til it Happens to You” (Best Song, The Hunting Ground)
Not because it’s a bad song, but because the movie (which is about rape culture on college campuses) was seriously flawed. Not only did it make a myriad of false claims, a staffer was caught changing Wikipedia entries in order to make the movie more “factual”. Rape is a serious issue and fake documentaries only serve to diminish the seriousness.
Most Deserving of an Oscar Nomination
Cinderella (Costume Design)
It’s been a long time since I even cared about the Costume Design category, but the costumes in Cinderella took my breath away.
Least Deserving of an Oscar
Every one who got one deserved it.
Most Deserving of an Oscar
Ennio Morricone (Original Score, The Hateful Eight)
One of the greatest film score composers of all time, with more than 500 credits to his name, he totally deserved his first non-honorary Oscar. About time.
Least Surprising Winner
Inside Out, Animated Feature Film
What not a shocker.
Most Surprising Winner
Spotlight (Best Picture)
Runner-up:
Ex Machina (Visual Effects)
Not that it didn’t deserve it – the effects in Ex Machina were very cool – but up against heavyweights like Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian and Star Wars, its win was very surprising.
Worst Presenter
Patricia Arquette
So blasé and rote, she sounded terribly bored by the whole stupid Oscar thing. I wondered if she even wanted to be there at all.
Best Presenter
Andy Serkis
Charming and clever, was he even reading anything off the teleprompter? If so, it didn’t show.
Worst Reaction of a Winner
No bad reactions that I noticed.
Best Reaction of a Winner
No good reactions, either.
Biggest Loser
The Martian
Seven nominations and not a single statue. They were robbed!
Chris Rock did a decent job as host, but he just couldn’t save the inherent stultifying dullness of the Oscar broadcast. He didn’t take himself too seriously, which was somewhat refreshing, but I got so bored with his opening monologue that just wouldn’t stop, I kept changing the channel.
The Oscar stage wasn’t as strange as it has been in past years, but it was still odd. From the impaled Oscars to the weird sunburst things, it was almost comical. And so unnecessary. The whole show is so glittery that it just isn’t needed on the stage.
I’ve never been a fan of those in the entertainment industry using the huge Oscar broadcast audience for their political spew and this was the worst year yet. Just about everyone took advantage to get on their soapbox to spew. And spew. And spew. Everything was covered: gays, wars, sexual assaults, racial diversity…blah, blah blah! I just about fell off my chair when VP Joe Biden took to the stage, then rolled my eyes when it was all about some website dealing with sexual assaults. Seriously? I got so tired of the whole “lily white” thing, I was ready to stop watching. I just kept thinking “oh get over yourselves”. So, visible minorities want to get an award they don’t deserve just because they’re not white? I saw more of the nominated movies than usual this year, and I just didn’t see any performances by non-whites that would have deserved a nomination. Will Smith’s accent was so distractingly bad, I couldn’t barely watch Concussion. Michael B. Jordan in Creed was good, but Oscar-worthy? Hardly. Those are just two examples. The problem is that minorities aren’t cast in Oscar-worthy roles, not that they’re not nominated simply by virtue of their skin color. That’s the issue, not the Academy’s votes. Perhaps if more minorities were cast, there would be more nominations (duh). I wish there was more focus on that than all the whining about only white people getting nominated this year. How much do you want to bet that next year’s nominations will be full of non-whites that don’t deserve a nomination? Is that what they want? To win something they don’t deserve and become token minorities? I wouldn’t think so. The one bright spot of the whole issue was Angela Bassett’s “Black History Month Minute”. The movies and credits she listed made you think she was talking about Will Smith, but it was…Jack Black. Ha!
Overall, it was standard fare for the Oscar broadcast: overlong and boring.
For those who missed them:
Picture: Spotlight, Michael Sugar, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin, Blye Pagon Faust
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, The Revenant
Actor in a Leading Role: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Actress in a Leading Role: Brie Larson, Room
Actor in a Supporting Role: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Actress in a Supporting Role: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul (Saul fia), Hungary, László Nemes (director)
Cinematography: The Revenant, Emmanuel Lubezki
Original Screenplay: Josh Singer, Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Adapted Screenplay: Charles Randolph, Adam McKay, The Big Short
Documentary Feature: Amy, Asif Kapadia, James Gay-Rees
Documentary Short Subject: The Girl on the River: The Price of Forgiveness, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
Live Action Short Film: Stutterer, Benjamin Cleary, Serena Armitage
Film Editing: Margaret Sixel, Mad Max: Fury Road
Makeup and Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road, Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, Damian Martin
Production Design: Mad Max: Fury Road, Colin Gibson, Lisa Thompson
Sound Mixing: Mad Max: Fury Road, Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff, Ben Osmo
Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road, Mark Mangini, David White
Visual Effects: Ex Machina, Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington, Sara Bennett
Costume Design: Mad Max: Fury Road, Jenny Beavan
Original Score: Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight
Original Song: “Writing’s on the Wall”, Spectre, Jimmy Napes, Sam Smith
Animated Feature Film: Inside Out, Pete Docter, Jonas Rivera
Animated Short Film: Bear Story, Gabriel Osorio, Palo Escala
Honorary Oscars: Spike Lee, Gena Rowlands
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Debbie Reynolds
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