Okay, what we here have are the Oscars from year 2022. The broadcast ended minutes ago, so this review will be as fresh as it gets and I will just elaborate on everything that stayed in the mind from this show. Unfortunately, you can see from my low rating that this was not a ceremony to be proud of. I will start with the positive though. There were two big winners that night and one would be CODA, a film that focuses on a young woman who wants to become a singer. Her family background is that her parents are deaf. I believe this is a remake of a French film in fact from a few years earlier. I am glad CODA won Best Picture. Really, really happy that The Power of the Dog did not succeed, which would have made the ceremony even worse. I think it was such a mediocre film to be honest and that is still a gentle way to put things here. CODA has lots of heart in contrast to that and CODA was nominated three times only and won all three, including a now beardless Kotsur. Good stuff. The second big winner of the night was Dune. This film won by far the most awards. All about technical categories here pretty much, but this should not take anything away. I guess Daniel Craig's final Bond movie was just unlucky to have such strong competition this year from Denis Villeneuve's film with all the pandemic delays 007 had to face. Billie Eilish won though, just like almost everybody expected. I am okay with this win. I listened to pretty much all the other nominees and was not blown away by either. So Bond goes three out of three for Best Song and now I feel even worse for Chris Cornell. May he rest in peace. I did like that they included stage performances of the nominated songs. This is how it should always be. And please also always the full song.
Another idea I liked were these tributes to films having a round anniversary. They all felt deserving. Except White Men Can't Jump. No idea why this was included. Maybe Cabaret, The Godfather and Pulp Fiction were too White. It is pretty easy to see though that the basketball movie is the odd one out from this group and I am saying this as somebody who loves Woody Harrelson. The Pulp Fiction folks were hilarious. The Godfather folks were icons. Still are. Not too happy about FFC's Ukraine reference there, but I guess we can be happy they did not let the Ukrainian President speak, which was also considered an option for the show. Had this happened, the Oscars really would have lost all their credibility. Keep politics out please. You can have your opinion, state it as often as you want, but this is an awards show. Oh yeah, Liza Minnelli. Seeing her in a wheelchair in the end and clearly struggling with her health made me a bit sad to be honest. I really like Cabaret. What made me angry was that they put Lady Gaga there with her. Okay, she has won an Oscar, but Gaga is not even close to the level where she should be presenting Best Picture. What a joke. Pick Costner for all I care if he is around. Or Hopkins of course. A true icon no denying. He was not there last year to accept the trophy, but he came this year and he is as classy as they come. That is really all the positive I can think of. Now the negative: The in-memoriam tribute was totally awful this time. The music did not fit the memory of the lost at all. How can they really pull through with this? Nothing against Betty White, but she was never a particularly renowned big screen actress, so strange inclusion for a lengthy tribute. She would have deserved it at the Emmys maybe, but at the Oscars I disagree. Oh yeah, another horrible decision was to just include pre-recorded footage for some categories to keep the show shorter. How incredibly disrespectful to all the winners and nominees there!
Was it Chris Evans who congratulated Kotsur and then told us we will now see a few scenes from his newest movie? What was that? Please do not use the Oscars to promote your upcoming films. Seriously. The three hosts were Schumer, Hall and Sykes. I expected nothing from them and got nothing. Completely miscast really. The opening was awful to watch. I am not sure, I think there was one scene in which the two Black hosts told Schumer that only they were allowed to make jokes about Black people. Not sure I understood it correctly. Not a native speaker here. Schumer nailed it though when she said that she is the one they call if Melissa McCarthy is not available. They should have called her. The BAFTAs were already pretty low with Rebel Wilson this year, but the Oscars were even worse. I mean we are getting closer to the 100th edition now and this is what they give us? What a travesty! Good news is the three hosts were not really present during the ceremony for the most part. Oh, I forgot one thing I liked. Kenneth Branagh finally has an Oscar. Nice. I liked Belfast more than Licorice Pizza and the screenplay category was surely between him and Paul Thomas Anderson. Love some of Anderson's stuff too, but this is not the film he should be winning for. I hope he will soon. And I liked that Power of the Dog only won once. Best Director, which was never in doubt. More about the winners later. Another extremely random inclusion was a list of memorable moments from films that looked like a high school project basically. I mean including Reeves' spectacular scene from The Matrix where he dodges a bullet made sense, but the rest was so random really and it just felt out of place like almost the entire rest of the night. What was it with these presenters? I mean big respect to Hawk, Slater and White for their careers, but these are not the People's Choice Awards. Haddish, Garner, Beatriz, Mendes, Kravitz etc. Are also questionable inclusions.
Oh, back to the hosts, I must mention one scene. I mean the little idea where she gets these actors on stage and pretends they need to be tested again for the virus and then it's a joke and she just wants to use her tongue on them. This was so-so. You could feel a bit of a shock in the audience that they were joking with this topic. But it got really worse when briefly afterwards she began to touch Josh Brolin inappropriately. Where is gender equality there? Imagine a man (color doesn't matter) getting five female actors on stage and making sexual references, then starting to physically harass two hot actresses in front of everybody. Absolutely disgusting. What is worse than what she did is also that she will not get the slightest bit of criticism for it from the mainstream media. For me as a German, it was interesting that two Germans won. One for Dune's visual effects, but he did not get to speak sadly. The other is Hans Zimmer, who finally won his second Oscar. He was there every year pretty much, but this time he could not be there. Unlucky. Happy for him though. What I am not happy about are the winners from the short film categories. Live action was a total abomination. All about politics and hardly any filmmaking quality. I wish the Swiss film could have won, the one that tells a really haunting story about abductions of young women in Asia who are then married against their will. Oh yeah, that means Riz Ahmed is an Oscar winner. Animated short, the winner was a surprise, maybe my third favorite from the bunch. Documentary we got the expected winner in Summer of Soul. Animated movie there were upset possibilities, but Disney's Encanto pulled through. Foreign language feature I am not too happy with Japan's winner either, even if it is not a bad film. Bhutan would have been better though. Or Germany, but we weren't even nominated this time, although the submission was great. Documentary short I cannot say if the winner is deserving, but the statement on female sports felt a bit shallow and also if you don't want to go to jail, then don't get caught with drugs.
As for the female acting winners, DeBose was 100% safe and Chastain managed to confirm her frontrunner spot too. I expected a Kidman upset, but didn't happen and Chastain is okay, even if Stewart would have been better. Male actors, Will Smith was the clear favorite and won and delivered a tear-filled speech, while, as I mentioned earlier, Kotsur thank God managed to win over Smit-McPhee. It was always between those two. Now I must of course also mention Will Smith. He was not too happy about a joke from Chris Rock who presented the Best Documentary category. I mean if you know Smith and especially his wife, they have been dishing out at so many people and called everybody racist all the time and they are letting the world know that it is perfectly okay if Jada has several lovers during her marriage with Smith and they can handle it any way they want for all I care, but it's really questionable if you have to expose private stuff like this in interviews. And if you do, then you should also be able to deal with the echo. These two clearly cannot. I thought Jada was the really negative driving force in this relationship, but after this show it can be said that Will is not any better. Let's not go into detail about his kids who are simply not good actors, but then again their father isn't either. Anyway, my biggest applause and adoration to Chris Rock. I loved him before the show because of his brilliantly politically incorrect humor and because of how he is a comedian with wit and talent and not one who just constantly declares himself a victim because of his color. After tonight, I am an even bigger fan. He should be hosting in fact. He was awesome in 2016. For me, he was the big winner this night and not Will Smith. The latter turned into the biggest loser in the entire room. I mean look at how he comes from comedy and still cannot defend himself with words. He could have gone up there and said something. It still could have been cringe, but what he did was a complete joke that managed to make an already pretty bad awards show turn into something truly horrendous. Diddy had to try to calm people down haha. Entire show was such an unreal mess.
Another idea I liked were these tributes to films having a round anniversary. They all felt deserving. Except White Men Can't Jump. No idea why this was included. Maybe Cabaret, The Godfather and Pulp Fiction were too White. It is pretty easy to see though that the basketball movie is the odd one out from this group and I am saying this as somebody who loves Woody Harrelson. The Pulp Fiction folks were hilarious. The Godfather folks were icons. Still are. Not too happy about FFC's Ukraine reference there, but I guess we can be happy they did not let the Ukrainian President speak, which was also considered an option for the show. Had this happened, the Oscars really would have lost all their credibility. Keep politics out please. You can have your opinion, state it as often as you want, but this is an awards show. Oh yeah, Liza Minnelli. Seeing her in a wheelchair in the end and clearly struggling with her health made me a bit sad to be honest. I really like Cabaret. What made me angry was that they put Lady Gaga there with her. Okay, she has won an Oscar, but Gaga is not even close to the level where she should be presenting Best Picture. What a joke. Pick Costner for all I care if he is around. Or Hopkins of course. A true icon no denying. He was not there last year to accept the trophy, but he came this year and he is as classy as they come. That is really all the positive I can think of. Now the negative: The in-memoriam tribute was totally awful this time. The music did not fit the memory of the lost at all. How can they really pull through with this? Nothing against Betty White, but she was never a particularly renowned big screen actress, so strange inclusion for a lengthy tribute. She would have deserved it at the Emmys maybe, but at the Oscars I disagree. Oh yeah, another horrible decision was to just include pre-recorded footage for some categories to keep the show shorter. How incredibly disrespectful to all the winners and nominees there!
Was it Chris Evans who congratulated Kotsur and then told us we will now see a few scenes from his newest movie? What was that? Please do not use the Oscars to promote your upcoming films. Seriously. The three hosts were Schumer, Hall and Sykes. I expected nothing from them and got nothing. Completely miscast really. The opening was awful to watch. I am not sure, I think there was one scene in which the two Black hosts told Schumer that only they were allowed to make jokes about Black people. Not sure I understood it correctly. Not a native speaker here. Schumer nailed it though when she said that she is the one they call if Melissa McCarthy is not available. They should have called her. The BAFTAs were already pretty low with Rebel Wilson this year, but the Oscars were even worse. I mean we are getting closer to the 100th edition now and this is what they give us? What a travesty! Good news is the three hosts were not really present during the ceremony for the most part. Oh, I forgot one thing I liked. Kenneth Branagh finally has an Oscar. Nice. I liked Belfast more than Licorice Pizza and the screenplay category was surely between him and Paul Thomas Anderson. Love some of Anderson's stuff too, but this is not the film he should be winning for. I hope he will soon. And I liked that Power of the Dog only won once. Best Director, which was never in doubt. More about the winners later. Another extremely random inclusion was a list of memorable moments from films that looked like a high school project basically. I mean including Reeves' spectacular scene from The Matrix where he dodges a bullet made sense, but the rest was so random really and it just felt out of place like almost the entire rest of the night. What was it with these presenters? I mean big respect to Hawk, Slater and White for their careers, but these are not the People's Choice Awards. Haddish, Garner, Beatriz, Mendes, Kravitz etc. Are also questionable inclusions.
Oh, back to the hosts, I must mention one scene. I mean the little idea where she gets these actors on stage and pretends they need to be tested again for the virus and then it's a joke and she just wants to use her tongue on them. This was so-so. You could feel a bit of a shock in the audience that they were joking with this topic. But it got really worse when briefly afterwards she began to touch Josh Brolin inappropriately. Where is gender equality there? Imagine a man (color doesn't matter) getting five female actors on stage and making sexual references, then starting to physically harass two hot actresses in front of everybody. Absolutely disgusting. What is worse than what she did is also that she will not get the slightest bit of criticism for it from the mainstream media. For me as a German, it was interesting that two Germans won. One for Dune's visual effects, but he did not get to speak sadly. The other is Hans Zimmer, who finally won his second Oscar. He was there every year pretty much, but this time he could not be there. Unlucky. Happy for him though. What I am not happy about are the winners from the short film categories. Live action was a total abomination. All about politics and hardly any filmmaking quality. I wish the Swiss film could have won, the one that tells a really haunting story about abductions of young women in Asia who are then married against their will. Oh yeah, that means Riz Ahmed is an Oscar winner. Animated short, the winner was a surprise, maybe my third favorite from the bunch. Documentary we got the expected winner in Summer of Soul. Animated movie there were upset possibilities, but Disney's Encanto pulled through. Foreign language feature I am not too happy with Japan's winner either, even if it is not a bad film. Bhutan would have been better though. Or Germany, but we weren't even nominated this time, although the submission was great. Documentary short I cannot say if the winner is deserving, but the statement on female sports felt a bit shallow and also if you don't want to go to jail, then don't get caught with drugs.
As for the female acting winners, DeBose was 100% safe and Chastain managed to confirm her frontrunner spot too. I expected a Kidman upset, but didn't happen and Chastain is okay, even if Stewart would have been better. Male actors, Will Smith was the clear favorite and won and delivered a tear-filled speech, while, as I mentioned earlier, Kotsur thank God managed to win over Smit-McPhee. It was always between those two. Now I must of course also mention Will Smith. He was not too happy about a joke from Chris Rock who presented the Best Documentary category. I mean if you know Smith and especially his wife, they have been dishing out at so many people and called everybody racist all the time and they are letting the world know that it is perfectly okay if Jada has several lovers during her marriage with Smith and they can handle it any way they want for all I care, but it's really questionable if you have to expose private stuff like this in interviews. And if you do, then you should also be able to deal with the echo. These two clearly cannot. I thought Jada was the really negative driving force in this relationship, but after this show it can be said that Will is not any better. Let's not go into detail about his kids who are simply not good actors, but then again their father isn't either. Anyway, my biggest applause and adoration to Chris Rock. I loved him before the show because of his brilliantly politically incorrect humor and because of how he is a comedian with wit and talent and not one who just constantly declares himself a victim because of his color. After tonight, I am an even bigger fan. He should be hosting in fact. He was awesome in 2016. For me, he was the big winner this night and not Will Smith. The latter turned into the biggest loser in the entire room. I mean look at how he comes from comedy and still cannot defend himself with words. He could have gone up there and said something. It still could have been cringe, but what he did was a complete joke that managed to make an already pretty bad awards show turn into something truly horrendous. Diddy had to try to calm people down haha. Entire show was such an unreal mess.