91st Acad­emy Awards Re­cap

It's been a long and tire­some jour­ney, but we have fi­nally got­ten through this Os­cars sea­son. That means we are right on the doorstep of Hol­ly­wood's biggest night: The Acad­emy Awards. The 91st Acad­emy Awards took place on Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 24 on ABC. For me, it has al­ways been my fa­vorite time of the year when we get to cel­e­brate the best in en­ter­tain­ment. Just like every other year, the win­ners leave peo­ple ei­ther cheer­ing for joy or shak­ing their heads in dis­ap­proval. With some of the win­ners cho­sen this year, it's no dif­fer­ent. 

Be­cause there was­n't a host this year, the cer­e­mony went by pretty quick, for the most part. Turns out, no host is ac­tu­ally bet­ter in the long run. There weren't any skits in-be­tween that made the al­ready three-hour show bor­ing, and the pre­sen­ters just did their job to pre­sent the awards. Queen and Adam Lam­bert kicked off the show with a solid per­for­mance of both "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the  Cham­pi­ons".  

Af­ter a mon­tage of last year's film, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, and Amy Poehler fol­lowed to in­tro­duce Best Sup­port­ing Ac­tress, and they were hi­lar­i­ous. Why could­n't they have hosted? 

The show over­all ran smoothly. De­spite the lack of a host, the show was still fairly en­ter­tain­ing. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s mu­si­cal per­for­mance was stel­lar. There were also some good ac­cep­tance speeches. At least there weren't any mishaps that were go­ing to be talked about the next morn­ing. 

“Greek Book” pulled an up­set as it took home the big prize of the night that of Best Pic­ture. The film also won Best Sup­port­ing Ac­tor (Ma­her­shala Ali) and Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play. De­spite the con­tro­versy that the road trip dram­edy from Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures gained for its in­ac­cu­ra­cies, it was able to suc­ceed in win­ning, even with­out a Best Di­rec­tor nom­i­na­tion. Per­son­ally, I re­ally en­joyed “Green Book”, and I know peo­ple who did love it. 

Other mem­o­rable wins went to the film that many were ex­pect­ing to earn Best Pic­ture: “Roma." The Net­flix orig­i­nal went on to win Best Di­rec­tor for Al­fonso Cuarón, Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy, and Best For­eign Lan­guage Film. It was sad know­ing the film did­n't win Best Pic­ture, de­spite be­ing the front run­ner from cer­tain award cir­cuits. But the stream­ing ser­vice should still be proud. It's go­ing to take an­other movie to get Cuarón that Best Pic­ture win. 

The film that took home the most wins was “Bo­hemian Rhap­sody,” with four Acad­emy Awards. Rami Malek won Best Ac­tor for his un­canny por­trayal of Fred­die Mer­cury. The di­vi­sive Queen biopic also went on to win Best Edit­ing, Sound Mix­ing, and Sound Edit­ing. Know­ing that if the movie wins any­thing in ad­vance, the amount of "ugh" and "eye rolls" will be all  over this. 

The biggest sur­prise of the night that no­body saw com­ing was Olivia Col­man win­ning Best Ac­tress for “The Favourite” over Glenn Close for “The Wife”, who was the choice for the longest time. I was­n't even mad at this up­set be­cause she was bril­liant. Her speech was also a fa­vorite of mine. At least “The Favourite” was able to win one award out of its 10 nom­i­na­tions. 

The biggest stand­out from the en­tire show, was “Spi­der-Man: Into the Spi­der-Verse” win­ning Best An­i­mated Fea­ture. This now means Phil Lord and Chris Miller are Os­car win­ners. "Shal­low" from “A Star is Born”, the only lock of the night, went home with Best Orig­i­nal Song mak­ing Lady Gaga an Os­car win­ner. “Black Pan­ther” won three Os­cars, in­clud­ing Pro­duc­tion De­sign, Cos­tume De­sign, and Orig­nal Score, mak­ing it the first movie in the Mar­vel Cin­e­matic Uni­verse to win mul­ti­ple Os­cars. Spike Lee won Best Adapted Screen­play for co-writ­ing “BlacK­kKlans­man." A long over­due win for Mr. Lee af­ter be­ing snubbed for “Do the Right Thing." 

The Os­cars sea­son is over, and I could­n't be hap­pier. In my opin­ion, the right Best Pic­ture nom­i­nees all walked away with some sort of award. The best part is look­ing for­ward to the movies that are com­ing out this year; many of them could be good con­tenders for next year's Os­cars.  

My fi­nal score for the night: 16/​24.