The Ringer - Everything You Need to Know About the 2020 Oscars2020-02-10T02:42:01-05:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/208905352020-02-10T02:42:01-05:002020-02-10T02:42:01-05:00The 2020 Oscars Were Predictable Until They Weren’t
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<p>In a ceremony that both played it safe and made history, the night’s awkward moments often collided in midair with its more heartening ones. Also, Eminem performed. </p> <p id="zlfsty">Sorry, but we need to talk about Eminem immediately. No windup, no preamble, no context: just Eminem. There he (Eminem) stood, halfway through the 2020 Academy Awards, performing, inexplicably, his (2002) hit song “Lose Yourself” to the <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/awards/8550544/2020-oscars-best-reactions-eminem-surprise-performance">visible bafflement</a> of Idina Menzel, Martin Scorsese, and every other human in attendance at L.A.’s Dolby Theatre on Sunday night, not to mention the (<a href="https://deadline.com/2018/03/oscar-ratings-down-all-time-low-viewership-1202310775/">recently dwindling</a>) millions watching the Oscars at home. Eminem. “Lose Yourself.” In 2020. As <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/05/08/182337919/fitzgerald-might-disagree-with-his-no-second-acts-line">F. Scott Fitzgerald</a> once observed, “You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow: This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” Wait, no, that was (2020 Academy Awards performer) Eminem. Anyway, they were both wrong. </p>
<p id="l5jQKr">The Oscars were staid and predictable (Joaquin Phoenix for Best Actor! Renée Zellweger for Best Actress! Extremely rambling and intense speeches from both!) until they ecstatically weren’t. (<em>Parasite</em>! Best Picture! Best Director! Best Original Screenplay! Holy shit!) The increasingly flabbergasted triumph of <em>Parasite </em>director and coscreenwriter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNqkaTIRpow">Bong Joon-ho</a>, who found himself onstage so many times he had cause to recycle the line “I’m ready to drink tonight, until next morning,” is undoubtedly this delirious night’s one true takeaway, a genuine shock and a world-historical delight for an embattled and cloistered award ceremony Bong himself had quite memorably described back in October as <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/bong-joon-ho-parasite.html">“very local.”</a></p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="f2aAka"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"‘Parasite’ Winning Best Picture Is Unprecedented and Undeniably Deserved ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131079/parasite-best-picture-oscars-2020-academy-awards-progress"},{"title":"The Winners and Losers of the 2020 Oscars","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131018/oscars-2020-winners-losers-academy-awards-best-moments"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="j1Ha7o">Verily, for a beloved South Korean filmmaker and his thrilled cohort to stand where the [<em>multiple expletives deleted</em>] <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/2/25/18239415/academy-awards-91-best-picture-green-book"><em>Green Book </em>guys</a> were slouching a year ago is … unbelievable. Unprecedented. Fabulous. But Eminem (Eminem!) was the weird old guy chained to a pipe in the hidden sub-basement of this delirious affair, butting in out of nowhere at the midway point to destabilize everything and everyone. I can’t stop thinking about him; I cannot begin to explain his presence there, though there was much about the 2020 Oscars, for both ill and profound good, that defied rational explanation, or at least defied expert predictions. (The smart money going into Sunday night was on <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2020/2/6/21127463/predicting-the-2020-oscars">a fierce and also pretty boring <em>1917 </em>romp</a>.)</p>
<p id="qFnBdw">The show, once again hostless and forever interminably aimless, was palpably at war with itself all night, grappling with the Academy’s ongoing diversity crisis (<em>Harriet</em>’s Cynthia Erivo, nominated for Best Actress, was the sole black performer up for an acting award, while women were shut out of Best Director entirely) by more or less roasting itself live onstage. “It’s time to come alive!” bellowed Janelle Monáe during the show’s flamboyant opening number, running Mr. Rogers’s bucolic “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” into her own propulsive “Come Alive” flanked by Billy Porter and a backing crew whose costumes (evoking everything from <em>Dolemite Is My Name! </em>to <em>Queen & Slim</em>) reminded us of some of the night’s most egregious snubs. “Because the Oscars is so white!”</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Janelle Monae on stage at the Oscars, surrounded by people dressed as characters from snubbed films: "It's time to come alive because the Oscars is so white!" <a href="https://t.co/bZMrffBcl9">pic.twitter.com/bZMrffBcl9</a></p>— David Mack (@davidmackau) <a href="https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1226673451454418944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2020</a>
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<p id="cG54qq">They say every Oscars ceremony can be summed up by a Dril tweet, and sure enough, this year’s model, in all its self-loathingly apologetic glory, was real <a href="https://twitter.com/dril/status/660644922744262656?lang=en">“Sorry, I’m Sorry, I’m Trying to Remove It”</a> hours. Steve Martin and Chris Rock, both former hosts conscripted to riff together in lieu of a traditional opening monologue, rambled on in an awkward and crotchety and not-unwelcome manner. </p>
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<p id="kdUiM5">ROCK: “So many great directors nominated this year!”</p>
<p id="IvcESD">MARTIN: “I don’t know, Chris, I thought there was something missing from the list this year.” </p>
<p id="xMdB9I">ROCK: “Vaginas?”</p>
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<p id="hSCrdw">And so forth. Rock also joked that Erivo did such a good job playing Harriet Tubman that<em> </em>“the Academy got her to hide all the black nominees”; less topically, he also roasted Jeff Bezos over his divorce and declared that <em>Ford v Ferrari </em>was a mismatch comparable to “Halle Berry versus gum disease.” Both Rock and Martin looked uncomfortable; their job, manifestly, was to make everyone else more uncomfortable. Mission accomplished. The mission never changed.</p>
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<p id="6gN6Y6">The no-hosts approach, a grand new tradition started very much against the Academy’s will last year (shout-out <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/12/7/18130474/kevin-hart-oscars-host-steps-down-academy-awards">Kevin Hart</a>), worked out well enough again on Sunday night, though the Oscars instead leaned heavily on the “presenter introducing a presenter” approach (Beanie Feldstein announcing Mindy Kaling announcing Best Animated Feature, say) that got awfully tedious as the night dragged on a half-hour past its allotted three-hour run time (Kelly Marie Tran described Keanu Reeves as “a man whose Matrix we’d all like to reload”). </p>
<p id="nGV26y">As for the Academy’s notorious and roundly deplored love of montages, there were fewer of the tired History of Cinema flourishes that have stopped past ceremonies dead in their tracks; the most prominent montages this year were, in fact, the lengthy jumble of scenes from all five nominees that preceded the major acting categories and many of the other awards. (Whoever picked the flamethrower scene from <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> to represent the film for Best Sound Editing deserves, yes, an Oscar.) The show was ferocious in its desire to stay present tense, to go light to the point of nonexistent on the Lifetime Achievement Award front, save for Billie Eilish quite movingly singing the Beatles’ “Yesterday” during the In Memoriam segment, which is frankly quite the collection of nouns. </p>
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<p id="5LSkMb">At times, time was of the essence: Three of the five Best Original Song nominees (including Elton John and Randy Newman) weren’t even formally introduced when they performed, so as to save a few precious seconds. At other times, time seemed to stop entirely: Rapper-actor Utkarsh Ambudkar popped up to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/meet-utkarsh-ambudkar-pitch-perfect-star-summarizes-oscars-rap-1278237?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter">freestyle a recap of the show thus far</a> right around halftime and got in his own, less pointed bars regarding the diversity issue. (“Keep an open mind, I’m sure you’ll find / There’s plenty of light for us all to shine.”) Though that was, of course, only the second-most-confounding rap moment of the evening.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Well, you can still sing the word “faggot” a million times and still perform at the Oscars that’s about “diversity.” Mmkay.</p>— billy eichner (@billyeichner) <a href="https://twitter.com/billyeichner/status/1226697459289640961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2020</a>
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<p id="pDpiLf">Billy Eichner has a point about Eminem. (Nouns!) In terms of celebrating broader inclusion and open-mindedness, the night’s awkward moments often collided midair with the more heartening ones. Take Sigourney Weaver, who, flanked by Brie Larson and Gal Gadot, wanly announced, “All women are superheroes!” before introducing Eimear Noone, the first female conductor in Oscar history, who led a medley of the Best Original Score nominees, which led to a victory for <em>Joker</em>’s Hildur Gudnadóttir, the first woman honored in the category <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/awards/hildur-duonadottir-wins-academy-award-oscar-joker-original-score-1203498316/">in 23 years</a>. Matters of representation figured heavily in the victory speeches, from Best Animated Short champ <em>Hair Love </em>to, yes, Phoenix’s Best Actor win for <em>Joker</em>. (His speech also included an animal-rights component so robust it involved the words “artificially inseminate a cow.”) The Academy knows full well it needs to broaden its horizons; if you drank every time the camera cut to Greta Gerwig, very pointedly not a Best Director nominee for <em>Little Women</em>, you’d have passed out before the night was over. On the Show-Not-Tell spectrum, the ceremony itself did a whole hell of a lot of Telling on Sunday night, albeit Telling On Itself. But there was just enough Showing to leave you hopeful. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oscars?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oscars</a> Moment: Bong Joon Ho accepts the Oscar for Best Directing for <a href="https://twitter.com/ParasiteMovie?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ParasiteMovie</a>. <a href="https://t.co/b7t6bYGdzw">pic.twitter.com/b7t6bYGdzw</a></p>— The Academy (@TheAcademy) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheAcademy/status/1226719645849145344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2020</a>
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<p class="c-end-para" id="A1ECvh">Namely, there stood Bong Joon-ho, <a href="https://twitter.com/kvanaren/status/1226684566083076099">gazing lovingly</a> at his Best Original Screenplay statue as <em>Parasite </em>cowriter Han Jin-won spoke; as it turns out, Bong would be back onstage three more times to collect Best International Feature Film (a new and better name for the category, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccDpjdW_O3E">he wryly noted</a>, than the old Best Foreign Language Film designation), and then (!) Best Director, and then (!!!) Best Picture. The 2020 Oscars, in total, were a riotous victory for those who feared a snoozy and entrenched <em>1917 </em>victory narrative. When it counted, the Academy delivered an electrifying and also quite heartwarming surprise. But its identity crisis was the explicit theme of the night, and the ghosts of less enlightened and open-minded Oscars’ past floated freely around the room the whole time, as tangible and powerful as the stench of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yhyp-_hX2s">Mom’s spaghetti</a>. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131089/oscars-recap-eminem-parasite-janelle-monae-oscars-so-whiteRob Harvilla2020-02-10T02:29:05-05:002020-02-10T02:29:05-05:00The 2020 Oscars: Holy S***, ‘Parasite’ Won!
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<figcaption>Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>That, and more from the 92nd Academy Awards</p> <div id="EV69EQ"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/5XBdJhAuPkReBfKWllsjvS" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div>
<p id="RUqidf"><a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-big-picture/episodes/e916cc66-60c8-48fb-94c0-68de4ace2337">In a shocking and exhilarating finale</a> to the 92nd Academy Awards, <em>Parasite</em> and Bong Joon-ho won Best Picture, capping off an amazing Cinderella run to the top. Sean and Amanda gather their emotions to recap a strange and often dull ceremony that was highlighted by some extraordinary bursts of greatness. They break down all the awards and the best presenters, speeches, and moments from the show. They also try to understand why there were so many damn musical performances.</p>
<p id="UPPdlz"><strong>Subscribe:</strong> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-big-picture/id1439252196?mt=2">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-big-picture">Art19</a> / <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ringer/the-big-picture-2">Stitcher</a> / <a href="https://rss.art19.com/the-big-picture">RSS</a></p>
<aside id="DBQNWN"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Winners and Losers of the 2020 Oscars","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131018/oscars-2020-winners-losers-academy-awards-best-moments"},{"title":"‘Parasite’ Winning Best Picture Is Unprecedented and Undeniably Deserved ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131079/parasite-best-picture-oscars-2020-academy-awards-progress"}]}'></div></aside><div id="zotlwV"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UcBXsHX7Yr8?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="encrypted-media; accelerometer; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
https://www.theringer.com/2020/2/10/21131008/the-2020-oscars-holy-s-parasite-wonSean FennesseyAmanda Dobbins2020-02-10T01:54:15-05:002020-02-10T01:54:15-05:00The Oscars 2020: All of the Best Celebrity Moments
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<p>Juliet, Kate, and Liz discuss the best and worst dressed from the evening, the best reaction shots, and more from the 2020 Oscars</p> <div id="rNcHAq"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/4Tmz2gCXtQeBFtvG5jcdKb" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div>
<p id="3klVWd"><a href="https://art19.com/shows/ringer-dish/episodes/e8f40eaa-853d-439f-b238-b3914eda8eab">We break down all of the best celebrity moments from the 2020 Oscars</a>, including the best and worst dressed from the evening (1:30), best reaction shots (20:09), and the highs and lows of the night (25:06).</p>
<p id="b5t7wL"><strong>Subscribe: </strong><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ringer-dish/id1465286477">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://art19.com/shows/ringer-dish">Art19</a></p>
<aside id="e9O36O"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"‘Parasite’ Winning Best Picture Is Unprecedented and Undeniably Deserved ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131079/parasite-best-picture-oscars-2020-academy-awards-progress"},{"title":"The Winners and Losers of the 2020 Oscars","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131018/oscars-2020-winners-losers-academy-awards-best-moments"}]}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/2020/2/10/21131087/the-oscars-2020-all-of-the-best-celebrity-momentsJuliet LitmanKate HalliwellLiz Kelly2020-02-10T00:12:11-05:002020-02-10T00:12:11-05:00The Winners and Losers of the 2020 Oscars
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<p>From #BongHive’s triumph to, um, Eminem’s surprise appearance, there was plenty of good and bad at the 92nd Academy Awards</p> <p id="MoiwoY"><em>On a night that seemed destined to be </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2020/1/21/21075052/parasite-vs-1917-the-best-picture-showdown-is-here"><em>a two-horse race</em></a><em>, the 92nd Academy Awards brought much more than that: a lot of compelling moments, A LOT of music, and a lot of Bong Joon-ho. Below, Andrew Gruttadaro and Alison Herman break down the Oscars’ best, worst, most, and least. (For a full list of the </em>actual <em>winners, </em><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/oscar-winners-2020-updating-live-full-list-1275973"><em>click here</em></a><em>.)</em></p>
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<h3 id="Af2wlG">Winner: Bong Joon-ho and <em>Parasite</em>
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<p id="Ka76p9">It started with a Palme d’Or win last spring, followed by a <a href="https://teebublic.com/products/bong-dor-festival-de-cannes-shirt">clever run of T-shirts</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BongHive&src=typeahead_click">a thriving hashtag</a>. (#BongHive assemble!) It continued with a surprising slew of Oscar nominations, not just for Best International Film—shamefully, South Korea’s first—but everything from Best Editing to Best Picture. And it culminated with a phenomenal night at the Oscars themselves, yielding the Holy Trinity of reaction GIFs. First: </p>
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<p id="jxFHoa">And then:</p>
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<p id="JyrjDv">And last, but not least:</p>
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<p id="B5U8Cs">Bong Joon-ho’s awards season run has been absolutely unparalleled, even before he picked up trophies for Best Original Screenplay, Best International Film, <em>and </em>Best Director. He was everyone’s <a href="https://twitter.com/alyssabereznak/status/1226684222477225985">photo-snapping dad</a>. He was <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/bong-joon-ho-parasite.html">witheringly shady</a> to the “very local” Academy and <a href="https://twitter.com/variety/status/1213999361341804544">insular American moviegoers</a>. Most importantly, he made a damn good movie, which is now the first non-English language film in history to be awarded Best Picture. <em>Parasite</em>’s win is surprising, precedent-setting, and, above all, earned.</p>
<p id="64372o">Enjoy those drinks, Bong. You and your cast deserve them. —<em>Alison Herman</em></p>
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<h3 id="dr3bGD">Loser: <em>1917</em>
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<p id="cO0Szb">Heading into Sunday, <em>1917 </em>was neck and neck with <em>Parasite </em>in the Best Picture race, with perhaps a leg up—our own Oscar experts Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins <a href="https://twitter.com/TheBigPic/status/1225871898937970688">predicted it would win</a>. But it was not <em>1917</em>’s night—the film took home awards for Cinematography (shout-out the god Roger Deakins), Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects, but went home empty-handed in more prominent categories, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and, of course, Best Picture.</p>
<p id="taVhJ4"><em>1917 </em>had no business competing with <em>Parasite</em>—these films are not on the same level, and in the end the Academy did the right thing. But with all of the prognosticators in its corner, it’s hard not to see the end results as supremely disappointing (for the film, I mean; personally, I’m thrilled). —<em>Andrew Gruttadaro</em></p>
<aside id="ysEelj"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The 2020 Oscars Were Predictable Until They Weren’t","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131089/oscars-recap-eminem-parasite-janelle-monae-oscars-so-white"},{"title":"‘Parasite’ Winning Best Picture Is Unprecedented and Undeniably Deserved ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131079/parasite-best-picture-oscars-2020-academy-awards-progress"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="EQBtri">Winner: Brad Pitt (and His Speech Writer)</h3>
<p id="hhQU23">Every year, there’s one guy or gal who wins every award at every awards show and gets to use all those reps to become freaking <em>excellent </em>at giving speeches. (You can call this The McConaughey Effect.) This year, that guy was Brad Pitt, who on Sunday night finally took home the award for Best Supporting Actor for portraying stuntman Cliff Booth in <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSdm15aBPwo">The speech was an all timer</a>, starting off with some stray shots at President Donald Trump’s mangled impeachment trial and moving on to (what Brad probably incorrectly sees as) Booth’s ethos of “expect the worst but look for the best in people.” Then came the really good stuff: Brad telling Leonardo DiCaprio that he’d “ride your coattails any day” (I cried); Brad using the word “gobsmacked;” Brad talking about seeing classic movies as a little tyke; Brad thanking his kids; and Brad sticking his tongue out:</p>
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<p id="cszEkn">Brad had all awards season to prepare for this moment. Practice really does make perfect. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
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<h3 id="IlmueV">Winner: Hosts</h3>
<p id="F4VU1p">Last year, the Oscars went hostless out of necessity. This time, they went hostless by choice—a choice that led to a disjointed Frankenstein of a show that divvied up the role of MC among a slew of contributors instead of reshaping it altogether. Janelle Monáe led a strained opening number (why make the main visual motif <em>Midsommar, </em>a film that wasn’t even nominated?). The song and dance led into a monologue from Steve Martin and Chris Rock, two former hosts brought back to poke fun at their non-replacement. Celebrities like Beanie Feldstein, Anthony Ramos, and Kelly Marie Tran were called upon to present … other presenters. </p>
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<p id="eXCRUi">The no-host shtick worked out last year, and one could argue the host role is an outdated one that asks too much of a single performer. If that’s the case, though, it’s time to start re-envisioning the Oscars’ format, not squeezing a bunch of smaller players into it like a gold-plated <a href="https://bojackhorseman.fandom.com/wiki/Vincent_Adultman">Vincent Adultman</a>. —<em>Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="rnX7Jt">Loser: Wolfgang Puck</h3>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Julia Butters brought a turkey sandwich in her purse because "I don't like some of the food here. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oscars?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oscars</a> <a href="https://t.co/sCDTr4GZYq">pic.twitter.com/sCDTr4GZYq</a></p>— Amy Kaufman (@AmyKinLA) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmyKinLA/status/1226634669912805376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 9, 2020</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Quick help us come up for a punny name for the sandwiches I’m smuggling into the Oscars in my purse <a href="https://t.co/tPcXHZWw7b">pic.twitter.com/tPcXHZWw7b</a></p>— Karina Longworth (@KarinaLongworth) <a href="https://twitter.com/KarinaLongworth/status/1226629247390797824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 9, 2020</a>
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<p id="xyJe0Z">Wolfgang Puck decided <a href="https://www.eonline.com/shows/daily_pop/news/1119920/wolfgang-puck-s-plant-based-menu-for-the-2020-oscars-will-make-you-drool">to go with a mostly plant-based menu</a> for the Oscars this year. He should’ve just served sandwiches instead. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="sw2fkT">Winner: Cows?</h3>
<p id="lgaARC">Aside from the plant-based menu, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87zXvSCmSYk">this also happened</a>:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">there’s no way any of us could’ve guessed that an inseminated cow was gonna get name-dropped at the oscars but if someone would’ve told us that an inseminated cow was gonna her name-dropped at the oscars we all would’ve been like “oh so joaquin’s gonna give a speech then”</p>— Shea Serrano (@SheaSerrano) <a href="https://twitter.com/SheaSerrano/status/1226720371535204353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2020</a>
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<p id="KYRWmg">Sooo, yeah … big night for cows. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="FjQtg4">Winner: Billie Eilish</h3>
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<p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://t.co/Fx5cnSwiW4">pic.twitter.com/Fx5cnSwiW4</a></p>— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) <a href="https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/1226687296340209664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2020</a>
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<p id="hjeCic">The “Yesterday” performance was fine. This “who the hell <em>are </em>these people?” reaction to Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig is eternal. May we all have judgmental teens on hand to keep us humble! —<em>Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="uuF1ca">Loser: Eminem</h3>
<p id="dEgGWY">It started just like any old “Ain’t Movies Great?” Oscars montage: Lin-Manuel Miranda intro’d a clip show about the songs that have shaped the movies we love, giving way to iconic scenes from <em>Risky Business</em>, <em>Purple Rain</em>, <em>Almost Famous</em>, and <em>Ghost</em>. But then came a scene from <em>8 Mile</em>—and immediately it was clear that something was up. Instead of the most famous part of “Lose Yourself,” an instrumental intro played. More scenes from <em>8 Mile </em>followed, and then cameras cut back to the stage, and then I yelled at my television, “OH MY GOD IS EMINEM GOING TO PERFORM?!” And well, my friends, Eminem was going to perform.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">EMINEM AT THE <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OSCARS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OSCARS</a> <a href="https://t.co/enMWCOsWif">pic.twitter.com/enMWCOsWif</a></p>— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) <a href="https://twitter.com/ComplexMusic/status/1226698003991482368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2020</a>
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<p id="rosgUz">Did I imagine that? Why? What year is it? What is up with Eminem’s beard? Who was the guy that was like, “Well obviously Eminem has to do ‘Lose Yourself’ a full 18 years after the song came out”? Why do I feel like I’ve died and gone to some bizarre astral plane? —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="7MXOoS">Winner: Eminem</h3>
<p id="jOyVDN">At the same time, having Eminem randomly perform at the same Oscars that nominated <em>Joker </em>for 11 awards was perhaps the best thing that has ever happened. And it certainly taught us that every celebrity loves Eminem:</p>
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<p id="SIpKu5">Twenty years from now, I’m not going to remember that Laura Dern won Best Supporting Actress for <em>Marriage Story</em>—but I <em>am </em>going to remember this completely inexplicable performance. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="roPYIw">Loser: Netflix</h3>
<p id="t3lLvF">Netflix’s Oscars strategy for 2020 was essentially the inverse of what it was in 2019. Rather than throw its weight behind a lone powerhouse like <em>Roma</em>,<em> </em>the streaming service spread its nominations across a more diverse slate of projects: <em>The Two Popes</em>,<em> The Irishman</em>,<em> Marriage Story</em>,<em> Klaus</em>,<em> American Factory</em>. The wider spread<em> </em>demonstrates that Netflix’s ability to navigate the awards circuit transcends a single movie from a known auteur. But the company still has work to do on its follow-through: Its only two trophies were <em>American Factory</em>’s win for Best Documentary Feature and Laura Dern’s for Best Supporting Actress in <em>Marriage Story. The Irishman</em>,<em> </em>heading into the night with 10 nominations, was shut out entirely. Netflix may have won the cinema vs. streaming wars—which barely registered this cycle after dominating the discourse last year—but the Best Picture statue Ted Sarandos so clearly wants still eludes him. At least time, and millions on millions of campaign funds, is on his side. —<em>Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="yLcgPi">Loser: The People From <em>Cats </em>Making Fun of <em>Cats</em>
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<p id="O7JHLZ">If you star in a movie you are NOT allowed to make fun of it—even if that movie ends up being the most hilariously derided film of 2019. James Corden and Rebel Wilson, you got the paycheck; you don’t <em>also </em>get to have the fun of joining us in destroying <em>Cats</em>. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="MWEFHx">Winner: The Obamas</h3>
<p id="LYvCs6">I’m not sure I ever expected to have to Google this:</p>
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<p id="L2sYyA">Before Sunday night, the answer to this question was “zero,” but now it’s “one,” because <em>American Factory</em>—a documentary about a shuttered GM plant in Moraine, Ohio—was produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground and won Best Documentary Feature. This means a lot of things—for Netflix, for the Obamas’ foray into filmmaking, for Trump’s self-esteem—but most importantly it means this: Barack Obama is now 75 percent of the way to an <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/9/11/17845842/egot-winners-ranking">EGOT</a>. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="qylfW7">Loser: Getting to Bed at a Decent Hour</h3>
<p class="c-end-para" id="SQWbCX">One theme of this Oscars is that self-awareness gets you only so far—which is to say, not very. Janelle Monáe calling out the nonrecognition of female directors doesn’t change their absence; George MacKay cracking, “Time is of the essence, which is why I’m here to introduce myself, to introduce someone else, to in turn introduce someone else” doesn’t turn back the clock to before 11 p.m. ET, which is when the show was supposed to end. Thirty-two minutes isn’t <em>too </em>far over, nor are fleshed-out acting montages and minimal play-offs the <em>worst</em> use of extra time. The absolute lack of playing-off speeches and that tribute to, uh … soundtracks, though? Tomorrow’s extra espresso shot is on the producers. <em> —Herman </em></p>
<p id="ivrdza"><em>An earlier version of this piece misstated how close Barack Obama is to an EGOT.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/10/21131018/oscars-2020-winners-losers-academy-awards-best-momentsAlison HermanAndrew Gruttadaro2020-02-09T23:41:01-05:002020-02-09T23:41:01-05:00Live Oscars Reaction With ‘The Big Picture’
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<p>Sean and Amanda take stock of the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony</p> <p id="xylssm">Join <em>The Big Picture</em>’s Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins as they give their reactions to all the results and big moments from the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/video/2020/2/9/21130997/live-oscars-reaction-with-the-big-pictureSean FennesseyAmanda Dobbins2020-02-07T09:07:24-05:002020-02-07T09:07:24-05:00How the Spirit of Mel Brooks Lives on in ‘Jojo Rabbit’
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<p>Well into his 90s, Melvin Kaminsky has his fingerprints all over this year’s Oscars via ‘Jojo Rabbit’—and all over the comedy world at large, depending on where you look. If Taika Waititi wins big on Sunday, though, expect the scoffing to sound much the same as it did in 1969. </p> <p id="tib0M2">At the Oscars, a comedy about Nazis is up for a few of the night’s biggest awards. The film is a dark horse in most regards, and, especially with such a young, unserious writer/director, it’s mainly a shock that it even got made in the first place—let alone that it’s gotten this far in the awards race. Upon release, critics and audiences were torn: The movie finds a way to make you laugh, sure, but is it responsible? Is it relevant? Is it <em>art</em>?</p>
<p id="vbvS27">It’s not yet known how the Nazi comedy will fare at this year’s awards, but you can see, in all its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcnSXEvzULk">grainy YouTube glory</a>, how it did in 1969: After Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles finish goofing their way through the nominees for Best Original Screenplay, which include John Cassavetes (for <em>Faces</em>) and Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke (for <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em>), the winner is announced as ... Mel Brooks for <em>The Producers</em>. </p>
<p id="MfJDHa">When the broadcast cuts to the previously B-list Brooks, he isn’t seen kissing his A-list wife, Anne Bancroft, because she isn’t there next to him. (It wasn’t believed that Brooks had any chance in hell of winning the award, so she didn’t attend the ceremony.) Nevertheless, Brooks doesn’t miss a beat in trotting spryly to the stage, entering straight into a bit that you would swear was rehearsed by a man who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would stand apart, even in that Hollywood crowd, as deserving enshrinement in movie history. </p>
<p id="KrdOjw">“I didn’t trust myself in case I won, so I wrote a couple of things here,” he says onstage, fumbling around in his jacket for a speech, ultimately coming up empty. “Well, I’ll just say what’s in my heart: ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.” </p>
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<p id="1zcSoo">The image of Mel Brooks at the Oscars, collecting an award for a satiric, theatrical comedy originally titled <em>Springtime for Hitler</em>, is still a bit surreal to see. When it first hit theaters in November 1967, <em>The Producers</em> was released in the relatively recent aftermath of World War II. Nearly everyone in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that Oscar night would have witnessed firsthand the brutal effects of the war. Many of them fought in it.</p>
<p id="3fnuV4">That includes Brooks, who arrived in France in February 1945 as part of a U.S. military unit responsible for clearing out and maintaining supply roads used by the Allied infantry—meaning that part of his job was to defuse landmines. (“The bombs were powerful enough to blow up a tank,” he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/10/mel-brooks-donald-trump-doesnt-scare-me-hes-a-song-and-dance-man">told <em>The Guardian</em> in 2017</a>. “Imagine what they could do to you.”) He didn’t know it at the time, but nearby the Nazis had created camps with the express purpose of exterminating his people, whom he wasn’t all that distantly linked to, being a first-generation Jewish immigrant himself. (His mother, Kitty, was born in present-day Ukraine.)</p>
<p id="xo04KR">As detailed in <em>Funny Man</em>, Patrick McGilligan’s 2019 biography of Brooks, at one point a bomb hit Brooks’s unit, and he had to take refuge from falling debris under a desk, where he thought, “If I get through this, I’ll get through anything.” Brooks was 5-foot-3 and weighed 125 pounds. He was 18 years old. </p>
<p id="TwSEnd">Understanding just how audacious <em>The Producers </em>was is impossible without the consideration of this timeline. In a country packed with recent victims of Hitler’s regime, a large number of them still reasonably scarred and vulnerable, Brooks made his feature-length debut with a story that asks people to laugh at the man responsible for nearly dismantling the Western world. As you can imagine, this initially did not go well.</p>
<p id="lPExQ1">“It was still dangerous to do <em>The Producers</em> when I was filming it in ’65 and ’66,” Brooks told Marc Maron in a <a href="https://youtu.be/_a9iJ5kONpw?t=2839">2013 episode of the <em>WTF</em> podcast</a>. “I’ll never forget: Opening night at <em>The Producers</em>, there was a big guy who was drunk, a big Jew, storming up the aisle during the production [scene] of <em>Springtime for Hitler</em>, saying, ‘This is a disgrace! This is a horror! Jews died!’ And I caught him at the end of the aisle, trying to get rid of him—it was opening night—and he said, ‘I was in World War II! I risked my life!’ And I said, ‘I was in World War II—I didn’t see you.’”</p>
<p id="eOXdUf">This would not be the last time Brooks had people protesting from the aisles. Following <em>The Producers</em>, the man born Melvin Kaminsky created a handful of the most controversial films of the ’70s. Despite becoming a household name in that era, frequently cited alongside his <a href="https://twitter.com/randydeutsch/status/1033765380563632130">former colleague</a> Woody Allen as a definitive voice of American comedy, Brooks never had a movie come out in his whole career that wasn’t met with some form of critical or commercial dismissal—or both. (1991’s <em>Life Stinks</em>, which has a generous 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, eventually ended up in the red by nearly $9 million.) </p>
<p id="Ngr0t7">Even when his movies were extremely popular, as they were in 1974, when he directed not one but two of the top releases of the year (<em>Blazing Saddles</em>, which was no. 1 at the box office, and <em>Young Frankenstein</em>, which was no. 4), he was written off by numerous top-end critics like <em>The New Yorker</em>’s Pauline Kael as being childish and unredeeming. (“Brooks as director destroys his own best ideas,” she said in her <a href="https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1968-03-23/flipbook/140/">original review of <em>The Producers</em></a>. “[His approach is] not screenwriting; it’s gagwriting.”) To this day, Brooks will still cite some of those bad reviews by memory. “You don’t forget these things,” he told <a href="https://ew.com/movies/2017/12/14/mel-brooks-the-producers-50th-anniversary/"><em>Entertainment Weekly</em> in 2017</a>.</p>
<p id="Wap02B">What made him so controversial—and so partially reviled—in that time is also precisely where some of his impact can still be deeply felt. Try to consider a world in which <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP9l4LP0WPI">an entire bridesmaid party would crap themselves</a> without Brooks having already <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPIP9KXdmO0">served beans to a bunch of gunslingers</a> outside of Rock Ridge. (Even the name <em>Blazing Saddles</em> itself was a fart joke.) Or one in which Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg could make ... essentially any of their movies without having grown up watching Gregory Hines light <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfthYLvxVwk">Mighty Joint in <em>History of the World: Part 1</em></a>. </p>
<p id="vXhZb6">This isn’t to say that what made Brooks’s films great was simply that he was willing to cross any and all lines previously established. In fact, a good couple of his movies have aged poorly <em>because</em> of this fact, usually having pushed the line in some wrong direction. (The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib8JSrAlPCU">casual homophobia</a> in his movies stands out, as does his occasional use of women characters as objects just to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WcXPRQZK7E">glare</a> at.) In its time, anyway, the most controversial element of a Brooks movie was <em>Blazing Saddles</em>’ crass handling of race issues—but it is worth noting that Richard Pryor was one of the cowriters of that production, helping to find a tone that humanized the dehumanizing history of black people in the United States in an absurdist way. (“Well, Mel, <em>you</em> can’t say it,” Pryor is <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/mel-brooks-why-blazing-saddles-is-the-funniest-movie-ever-made-252004/">said to have told</a> Brooks,<em> </em>regarding the n-word in the script, “but the bad guys can say it. They <em>would </em>say it!”) </p>
<p id="1Ps8d6">Truthfully, the best movie Brooks ever made—his one unimpeachably perfect film—is the one that might have the least amount of shock value to it at all: <em>Young Frankenstein</em>. And as seen by that movie’s debt to the films of <a href="https://vimeo.com/137516600">James Whale and Ingmar Bergman</a>, or by the many carefully and lovingly choreographed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMK6lzmSk2o">Busby Berkeley</a> <a href="https://youtu.be/LnF1OtP2Svk?t=93">musical</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPXHRX8Q2hs">sequences</a> staged throughout his career, Brooks had sincere aspirations for creating work that could be considered “real art.” This truth became somewhat eroded over time, particularly after people came to know him as the guy who made fart jokes, after which he decided to embrace that fact by giving the people what they wanted—while also expanding into <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGfXiIXTpE0">piss jokes</a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/r-hNkPOxZTg?t=20">puke jokes</a>, for good measure. </p>
<p id="XJSPOi">But when looking back on his work, especially in the early period, it’s clear that Brooks had loftier visions of his image, as seen by films like <em>The Twelve Chairs</em>, which was essentially an art house film about poverty in Soviet Russia (filmed in Yugoslavia), or <em>Silent Movie</em>, which was <em>literally </em>a silent movie, in which Brooks paid tribute to his silent star heroes like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. (Chaplin’s <em>The Great Dictator</em> was, of course, one of the central inspirations for satirizing Hitler in <em>The Producers</em>, as was Ernst Lubitsch’s <em>To Be or Not to Be</em>, which Brooks later paid tribute to by starring in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM7WG9C5HTg">1983 remake alongside Bancroft</a>.) </p>
<p id="Y1JR7B">With the benefit of being able to consider his entire career at a glance, it appears that the pure appeal of the Brooks canon is the combination of his highbrow sensibilities with a lowbrow fearlessness to go places other people wouldn’t. (You can see this combination personified in the 1963 animated short <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PramR5oxn50"><em>The Critic</em></a>, an Oscar-winning Brooks collaboration with Ernest Pintoff that lovingly makes fun of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3YeWgUgPHM">Norman McLaren’s work</a>.) That didn’t necessarily mean he was solely aiming to rile viewers up, but rather that he was unafraid to have fun with it and see what happened, for better or worse. “Write from the gut,” Brooks is said to have told the <em>Blazing Saddles</em> writing team, which also included Andrew Bergman, Norman Steinberg, and Al Uger, in addition to Pryor. “Write from the heart. Write the craziest shit.”</p>
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<p id="VHqykf">Even before <em>Jojo Rabbit</em>, Taika Waititi was in line as a possible heir to Brooks’s throne. For one thing, even though there are plenty of other notable monster-movie parodies that are sure to have played a role in its inception, it’s hard to imagine Waititi’s <em>What We Do in the Shadows </em>getting made in a universe in which the New Zealander isn’t raised in a post–<em>Young Frankenstein </em>world (and, to a lesser degree, one in which he isn’t studying theater in college when Brooks’s career-endingly awful <em>Dracula: Dead and Loving It</em> came out). For another, anyone who steps into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with as much grace and success as Waititi did with <em>Thor: Ragnarok</em> can be expected to share Brooks’s own notorious focus on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN8wxQDqfRk">financial bottom line</a>—not to mention a shared understanding of the value of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRFQJCHcPw">merchandising</a>.</p>
<p id="2ayC4q">But <em>Jojo </em>makes that lineage exceedingly clear, for obvious reasons, and also opens up the conversation as to whether someone like Waititi could possibly turn out to be this generation’s answer to Mel Brooks. Regardless of what you think of <em>Jojo</em>, you can’t deny that it <em>is</em> wild that we’re all sitting around talking about a movie starring Hitler—played by the writer/director himself, no less, in that writer/director’s first movie after being minted by the MCU. </p>
<p id="IYxEdr">From any angle, it was a bonkers move, and, with apologies to those who don’t think “gesundheit” is a funny response to someone saying “a Jew” (it is pretty funny, come on), the movie does serve as a totally above-average comedy. It’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/10/18/20920266/jojo-rabbit-review-taika-waititi">nowhere near perfect</a> (comedies seldom are), but at the very least it’s thought-provoking and charming, and the work of a filmmaker with a distinct voice willing to fully commit to an outlandish vision. An aspiring art film masquerading as slapstick. And at least proverbially speaking, it had people walking up the aisles.</p>
<p id="RQmokN">“The kiss of death for me,” Waititi <a href="https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2019/10/taika-waititi-jojo-rabbit-interview">told <em>Complex</em></a> in a recent interview, “would be someone going, ‘Yeah, I saw the film. Interesting.’ That’s a sort of weird, derogatory way of describing a film. It’s like eating a cake. It’s enjoyable while you’re eating it, and then you don’t really remember it. You got no nutrition. You’re not completely satisfied. Whereas, I feel like if you’re talking about it afterwards, it’s doing its job.”</p>
<p id="hICE29">Getting people to talk by whatever means necessary is a messy formula, which explains why we got a messy film. But in an otherwise bland and forgettable comedic cinematic era—one in which people were seriously talking about <em>Booksmart</em> as being the funniest movie of last year—it was most welcome. </p>
<p id="atPnmx">“I want to say,” Brooks <a href="https://decider.com/2020/01/04/the-producers-director-mel-brooks-praises-jojo-rabbit-at-afi-awards/">said</a>, unprompted, during a recent speech at the AFI Awards, “I just saw <em>Jojo Rabbit</em>, and it’s really a terrific and eloquent and beautiful picture.” Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.</p>
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<p id="TkAAlb">Last December, lost during the chaos of the holiday season, Mel Brooks quietly came out of cinematic retirement. Well, sort of. The occasion was the HBO special <em>Mel Brooks: Unwrapped</em>—a decades-spanning mockumentary project helmed by former BBC creative director Alan Yentob, who filmed several visits with Brooks dating back to 1981, compiling them in semicoherent fashion alongside new footage. </p>
<p id="YH27eM">Toward the end of the special, Brooks starts to joke around about his death. Only thing is, this particular joke is from 40 years ago. </p>
<p id="e4cfcQ">In a vintage scene, presumably pulled from a vault within the deepest recesses of the BBC, a camera pans across the tombstones of Jim Morrison and John Wayne, each with little TVs embedded in the cement above their names, playing clips of the then recently departed. “Helllooooo!” Brooks waves from a TV on his grave as he comes into the shot. “Grave-watchers! Funeral parties!” He whistles the camera over. “I’d love to continue talking to you, but you have to put in a coin.” The marker is engraved with his birth name, spelled slightly off, as it often is: MELVYN KAMINSKY. The epitaph reads “SOME KIND OF A MAN.”</p>
<p id="RxALIG">Back then, the idea of Brooks resting in the pantheon of American icons like Morrison and Wayne was essentially a joke: What comedian would have the audacity to place themselves alongside such larger-than-life icons—alongside figures so carefully sculpted in the cultural psyche that they belonged in Andy Warhol lithographs? But watching the clip now, the juxtaposition almost seems matter of fact. <em>Of course</em> Mel Brooks belongs there. </p>
<p id="G4VIeQ">“What goes on after the body ceases?” Brooks asks us from beyond the grave, after we’ve put our coin in. “Is it the soul? Is it the spirit? That’s what the religiosos would have you believe. Actually, I’ll tell you what lives on: videotape.”</p>
<p id="f6uz1f">At age 93, Mel Brooks is still very much with us, thank the lord, but he’s been thinking about the ending of his story his whole life—and its precarious relationship with his beginning, too. “Being alive works alongside comedy,” he said in a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/07/portrait-of-an-artist-as-an-old-man-mel-brooks-in-his-90s/564683/">2018 <em>Atlantic</em> profile</a>. “Vive! Vivre! The joy of life. ... Comedy is central to it. ... [Comedy] is the realization of being alive.”</p>
<p id="IIoYD5">Every story does have to have some kind of an ending, whether it’s a satisfying one or not. <em>Unwrapped</em> struggles with that—indeed, it seems to have struggled with it for decades—and, eventually, the director, Yentob, playfully decides to just hand the issue off to Brooks for him to solve. Sitting on the trunk of a Honda Accord, Brooks considers the situation, before asking Yentob, “You want me to just say, ‘Th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks’?”</p>
<p id="hPbfkH">Next thing you know Brooks is standing at the top of a fire escape, doing a full-tilt Hitler imitation, finger-mustache applied, right arm raised. He’s yelling off the names of various German cars, an act that crescendos, in a ridiculous Hitler accent, with “<em>America is bullshit!</em>” After that he just completely disintegrates into a Donald Duck voice.</p>
<p id="udYni4">“Yes, but Mel,” says Yentob, from the street below. “Is it an ending, really?”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="02AxcE">“It’s a terrific ending,” Brooks replies. “I’m Hitler, and then I go.”</p>
<p id="EQ5R7e"><a href="https://twitter.com/nate_rgrs"><em>Nate Rogers</em></a><em> is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in</em> <em>the </em>Los Angeles Times<em>, </em>Billboard<em>, and elsewhere.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/7/21127623/mel-brooks-taika-waititi-jojo-rabbit-the-producers-directorNate Rogers2020-02-06T09:44:47-05:002020-02-06T09:44:47-05:00Everybody Loves Martin Scorsese—Except Maybe the Oscars
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<p>The movies by one of the greatest living American directors have been nominated for 71 Academy Awards, but they’ve won only 20 times. Then again, Scorsese’s films have never been people pleasers.</p> <p id="6RsCHk">Martin Scorsese’s most recent film, <em>The Irishman</em>, is up for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director—but if the oddsmakers and pundits can be believed, he won’t win a single one on Sunday night. It wouldn’t be the first time Scorsese walked away empty-handed. In a career stretching back to <em>Who’s That Knocking at My Door </em>in 1967, Scorsese’s 25 narrative feature films have earned 71 nominations and 20 wins, an impressive achievement in raw numbers. Yet the number of trophies doesn’t tell the whole story. Many of his wins have been in technical categories; others have been acting awards given to performances in films that left Scorsese himself unrewarded. Nine Scorsese films have received Best Picture nominations; only one has won. He’s also been nominated for Best Director nine times and won only once. That win came for the same film that won Best Picture, <em>The Departed, </em>achievements that were widely regarded as long-overdue, Academy-sanctioned penance for decades of overlooking the director. </p>
<p id="c1VcQF">The Academy has hardly ignored Scorsese, but more often than not, it’s walked up to the edge of bestowing awards and then walked back. That reluctance seems like an odd way to treat one of the greatest living American directors. It’s a peculiar habit, without a single explanation. But it’s also one that makes sense over the course of a career with twin roots in a love of filmmaking and a willingness to use that love to unsettle and surprise.</p>
<p id="ZzrTVs">When Scorsese first accepted an Oscar, it belonged to somebody else. Smiling nervously beneath a bushy beard and a head of long hair, he picked up the Best Actress prize for his <em>Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore</em> star Ellen Burstyn, who was in New York working on a play. Widely regarded as a New York actress, Burstyn wasn’t expected to win. A few days earlier, oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek placed her behind Faye Dunaway, Gena Rowlands, and Valerie Perrine, giving her 8-1 odds and declaring the race “virtually a dead heat” between Dunaway and Rowlands. Visibly nervous, and in a seeming hurry to get off the stage, Scorsese conveyed Burstyn’s thanks to others involved in the film, briefly chuckled after saying “She also asked me to thank myself,” then brushed past Jack Lemmon on his way off the stage.</p>
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<p id="Odixtk">Burstyn’s was one of the film’s three nominations. The others went to Diane Ladd for Best Supporting Actress and Robert Getchell for Best Original Screenplay, with no nomination for Scorsese’s direction. This can’t have been entirely unexpected. Just four features into his career, Scorsese had picked up a reputation as a young director of note after the critically acclaimed <em>Mean Streets</em>, but he was still a relative newcomer. In many ways, he’d been a director for hire on <em>Alice. </em>He’d chosen it carefully from the many studio offers that came his way after <em>Mean Streets</em>, but the film began as Burstyn’s project. Its success, however, opened up new possibilities, among them a Paul Schrader script about a sleepless Vietnam veteran who takes a job driving the streets of New York.</p>
<p id="CUacMy"><em>Taxi Driver</em> attracted acclaim and controversy in near-equal measure. Columbia had little trouble filling full-page ads with glowing blurbs from critics as temperamentally dissimilar as Pauline Kael (“horrifyingly funny and then just horrifying”) and Gene Shalit (“Adults who want to see a well-made film with a brilliant performance by Robert De Niro… will hail <em>Taxi Driver</em>”). But the film, and its ambiguous morality, made even admirers uneasy, while many others found little to admire. In the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, writer Thomas Thompson penned the editorial “Worse Yet, the Audience Cheered. An Outburst of Gratuitous Movie Gore,” recounting an attempt to see <em>Taxi Driver </em>that resulted in him fleeing during the climactic massacre but not before growing disturbed by the audience’s applause and cheers. To Thompson, such reaction negated any sort of “moralistic explanation” Scorsese could produce for showing such outrageous imagery.</p>
<p id="iXwKHY">On March 28, 1977, <em>Taxi Driver</em> walked away from the Oscars empty-handed. The film lost Best Picture to <em>Rocky</em>, <em>Network</em>’s Peter Finch posthumously beat De Niro for the Best Actor prize, and Beatrice Straight took home Best Supporting Actress over Jodie Foster. “Hollywood proved it was not ready for 12-year-old prostitutes,” <em>Philadelphia Inquirer</em> critic Desmond Ryan noted in his follow-up column, even though Foster was “the clearly deserving choice.” <em>Taxi Driver</em> might have been too undeniable an achievement to ignore, but the Academy felt more comfortable awarding scrappy boxers and verbose Paddy Chayefsky monologues. Again, Scorsese’s direction didn’t even receive a nomination. His follow-up, <em>New York, New York</em>,<em> </em>went without nominations as the Academy ignored even the deathless “Theme From <em>New York, New York</em>” in the Best Original Song category. </p>
<p id="IICX8B">Instantly acclaimed upon its 1980 release, <em>Raging Bull</em> picked up eight Oscar nominations. Its two wins went to longtime Scorsese collaborators Robert De Niro (his sole Best Actor trophy to date) and editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Best Picture and Best Director both went to the same film: Robert Redford’s directorial debut, <em>Ordinary People</em>. A good movie often unfairly maligned because it beat out <em>Raging Bull</em>, <em>Ordinary People</em> most likely also benefited from the process by which the Academy chooses nominations and winners. Nominations come from professionals in each field. That means Scorsese’s fellow directors, by experience more inclined to be attuned to his innovations and methods, deemed him worthy of a nomination. The entirety of the Academy, however, selects the awards, and what might sway directors might not appeal to the body as a whole. The Best Director field that year, for instance, also included Richard Rush, Roman Polanski, and David Lynch—the well-liked Redford undoubtedly felt like the most comfortable choice for many voters.</p>
<p id="tUIr6v">It’s probably worth noting that at this point in his career, Scorsese presented a much different public persona than the genial, loquacious Scorsese of today.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aZlDDf2BlQ"> Appearing alongside Brian De Palma on <em>The Dick Cavett Show</em> in 1978</a>, he was content to let his pal do most of the talking, joining in as De Palma ribbed the host for trying to make some vague comparison between watching certain types of films and watching bubbling water. (“I just don’t look at the bubbling water,” Scorsese says. “I’m not a nature person.”) Clad entirely in black, the ex-seminarian looked intimidatingly monkish. Four years later, a similarly uncomfortable Scorsese made an<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmLIqWCVGJ8&t=4s"> awkward appearance on <em>Late Night With David Letterman</em></a>, smiling rarely and talking quickly but with little direction. It wouldn’t be hard to mistake him for the disturbing passenger he played in <em>Taxi Driver</em>.</p>
<p id="NztOPL">Over the next decade, a different sort of Scorsese would emerge: the now-familiar friendly, scholarly auteur who could gracefully<a href="https://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/watch-cokes-super-bowl-ad-starring-jonah-hill-and-martin-scorsese/2232521"> costar in a Coke Energy commercial</a> alongside Jonah Hill. By the time of<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcIzhzfhpfc"> a later<em> Letterman </em>appearance</a> in 1991, he looked perfectly at ease cooking Italian food alongside his mother and Bill Murray as he promoted <em>Cape Fear </em>and shared stories about making <em>Goodfellas</em>. But reputations can be tough to shake, and though Scorsese appeared to soften, his films didn’t. In the decades after <em>Taxi Driver</em>, the director and the Oscars fell into a familiar pattern: He remained noticed but unrewarded.</p>
<p id="MwYIn2">The ’80s found Scorsese producing some of his best work but also experiencing the sort of professional turbulence that rarely leads to Oscars. <em>The King of Comedy </em>and <em>After Hours</em> both went without nominations, and though 1986’s <em>The Color of Money</em> earned Paul Newman a long-overdue Best Actor trophy, it lost out in the three other categories in which it was nominated. (Scorsese once more went without a nomination.) He’d pick one up two years later for <em>The Last Temptation of Christ</em>, despite the<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/10/the-last-temptation-of-christ-scorcese-30th-anniversary"> controversy around that film</a>—or perhaps as a display of solidarity because of it. Again, it’s hard to square the doting family man of the now 77-year-old<a href="https://www.instagram.com/martinscorsese_/?hl=en"> Scorsese’s endearing Instagram account</a> with a time when, for a swathe of Catholics and evangelical Christians, his name became more toxic than Anton LaVey’s. (That this came as a result of Scorsese making a film he considered a sincere act of religious devotion must have compounded his frustration.)</p>
<p id="1w9Vvt">Released in 1990, <em>Goodfellas</em>’<em> </em>awards experience played like a rerun of <em>Raging Bull </em>a decade before. It picked up six nominations but only one Oscar, a Best Supporting Actor award for Joe Pesci (who’d been nominated in the same category for <em>Raging Bull</em>). It lost out in every other category, including Best Supporting Actress (with Lorraine Bracco falling short, as <em>Raging Bull</em>’s Catherine Moriarty had before her), Best Director, and Best Picture. The winner in those latter two categories was Kevin Costner’s <em>Dances with Wolves</em>. With <em>Wolves</em> widely predicted to win, this didn’t come as a shock. The day before the awards, the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>’ Jack Matthews was already treating multiple <em>Dances with Wolves</em> wins as a done deal, predicting that the film would win in six of the 12 categories in which it was nominated. He was wrong—it won in seven.</p>
<p id="8mTJwH">As one did after <em>Raging Bull</em>’s near misses, a lean time followed <em>Goodfellas</em>’ lowly night. <em>Cape Fear </em>picked up two nominations, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress for, respectively, De Niro and Juliette Lewis. (De Niro and Lewis also picked up an icky joint MTV Movie Award nomination for “Best Kiss” for the same film but lost to <em>My Girl</em>’s Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky<em>.</em>) 1993’s <em>The Age of Innocence </em>won Best Costume Design but lost in three other categories; Sharon Stone’s Best Actress nod served as <em>Casino’s </em>sole nomination; <em>Kundun</em> received four nominations; <em>Bringing Out the Dead</em> received none.</p>
<p id="HniDcL">Scorsese’s first 21st-century film, the sweeping <em>Gangs of New York, </em>released in 2002, started to reverse that pattern with 10 nominations, including in the Best Picture and Best Director categories. It was shut out, but his 2004 follow-up, <em>The Aviator</em>, won five of its 11 nominations, most notably a Best Supporting Actress prize for Cate Blanchett’s turn as Katharine Hepburn. Scorsese’s Best Director nomination and the film’s Best Picture nomination, however, came to nothing; both lost to the work of another actor turned director, albeit one with a few more reps behind the camera by then than Redford or Costner: Clint Eastwood’s <em>Million Dollar Baby</em>.</p>
<p id="TyK4OK">By then, Scorsese’s perennial also-ran status had become an Oscars story line, and such story lines have a way of taking on a life of their own. “On this nomination and Scorsese’s last one, for 2002’s <em>Gangs of New York</em>, there had been a sense in Hollywood that he might win as a sort of career-achievement honor,” the Associated Press’s David Germain wrote at the time, noting that Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, King Vidor, and Clarence Brown had also been nominated five times without winning. Altman, Scorsese’s elder in years but contemporary in helping to reshape Hollywood in the 1970s, would have to wait for an honorary Oscar in 2006. For Scorsese, the sixth time would prove the charm. Yet whatever role momentum might have played, the film that broke Scorsese’s losing streak hardly looks like a gold-watch movie, the sort of nice-but-underachieving film that finally earns a director an award near the end of a long career. </p>
<p id="3ph7gQ">A two-and-half-hour plunge into violence, paranoia, and twisted loyalties, <em>The Departed</em> is as edgy and unwelcoming a film as Scorsese ever made. Any comforting familiarity within it comes from recognizable Scorsese motifs, like a Rolling Stones song used to disquieting effect. Its violence, though generous, may not be as shocking as <em>Taxi Driver</em>’s bloodbath, but it does feature Jack Nicholson whipping out a dildo, so call it a draw. Either way, when Scorsese won the Best Director Oscar in 2007, it still felt like a fait accompli, a feeling driven home by the three directors handing out the award: Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, all old friends. Scorsese accepted the award to a standing ovation and, after asking the presenters to double-check the envelope, jovially thanked everyone he needed to thank, including all the strangers who’d said they’d hoped he’d win over the years, and left the stage. And that was it. Scorsese looked on from the side of the stage as producer Graham King accepted the Best Picture prize at the end of the night. The director hasn’t won an Oscar since.</p>
<p id="a4YFps">Not that he hasn’t had more chances. <em>Hugo </em>picked up 11 nominations—including Best Picture and Best Director—and won five, all for technical categories. <em>The Wolf of Wall Street</em> earned five nominations, all in major categories, including Best Picture and Best Director, but once again, Scorsese walked away without an award. Scorsese had become an institution, and a now (relatively) younger Academy membership was less easily shocked by his work, but it remained disinclined to reward films that forced viewers that deep into the minds of destructive characters, even if they wreaked havoc with junk bonds rather than handguns. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="8EBuAs">Unless it prevails against all predictions, <em>The Irishman</em> will continue Scorsese’s second Oscars losing streak. Maybe <em>The Departed</em>’s win wasn’t Scorsese finally winning after a series of should’ve-been near misses. Perhaps the win—not the losses—is the aberration. Scorsese has become the face of artistically ambitious American filmmaking, but he’s also never really embraced the establishment. From one perspective, this past fall’s dust-up with Marvel fans looked like a member of the old guard unable to adjust to changes in the movie industry. From another, it looked like another example of Scorsese lashing out at a profitable status quo he saw as artistically barren and demanding more. And maybe it’s that sort of attitude that ensures that an Oscar win, however well deserved and long in the making, happens only once in a lifetime.</p>
<p id="is65mL"><em>Keith Phipps is a writer and editor specializing in film and TV. Formerly: </em>Uproxx<em>,</em> The Dissolve<em>, and </em>The A.V. Club.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/6/21126150/martin-scorsese-oscars-history-lossesKeith Phipps2020-02-06T06:30:00-05:002020-02-06T06:30:00-05:00Why Has the Best Picture Race Become So Unpredictable?
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<p>‘1917’ is the clear front-runner headed into Sunday’s ceremony. If the last four years are any indication, that’s a recipe for coming up empty-handed.</p> <p id="6r4TgW">“This is not a joke, <em>Moonlight</em> has won Best Picture.” </p>
<p id="SaIRW0">In 2017, when the Academy famously mixed up the envelopes for its biggest prize, <em>La La Land</em> producer Jordan Horowitz had to repeatedly reassure everyone—probably even himself—that yes, <a href="https://youtu.be/GCQn_FkFElI?t=259">this was really happening</a>. It was not a joke; <em>Moonlight</em> had won Best Picture. </p>
<p id="KSVCcR">This was an unbelievable development—but not just because of the card snafu. <em>Moonlight</em> was already a long shot; for it to win at all was shocking. <em>La La Land</em> came into the 2017 Academy Awards as a juggernaut, having won most of the big guild awards in the run-up to the ceremony. With minus-450 betting odds to win the Best Picture trophy, it had an implied win probability north of 80 percent, making it a massive favorite. <em>Moonlight</em>, meanwhile, carried plus-430 odds, for a win probability under 20 percent. </p>
<p id="86dIxg">The <em>Moonlight</em> win was astounding for other reasons: It was the first Best Picture winner to feature an LGBTQ main character. It was the first winner with an all-black cast. It was the first winner to <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2017/02/moonlights-best-picture-win-is-nothing-short-of-historic.html">prominently feature black people but <em>not</em> be about racism</a>. And it was <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/oscars-2017-moonlight-smallest-budget-best-picture-winner-time/">one of the lowest-grossing winners ever</a>. All together, <em>Moonlight</em>’s win is arguably the biggest upset in Oscars history.</p>
<p id="zDKmeM">The next year, in 2018, another upset happened: <em>The Shape of Water </em>won as a narrow underdog to <em>Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri</em>. And the next year, again: <em>Green Book</em> beat <em>Roma</em>, the presumptive winner. And the year before <em>Moonlight</em> there was another upset, when <em>Spotlight</em> shocked <em>The Revenant</em>, a strong favorite. </p>
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<p id="XLzW7u">The above table shows the past 10 Best Picture favorites and winners. In the six years prior to 2016, the Best Picture favorite took home the trophy (per the odds from <a href="https://www.sportsoddshistory.com/other/academy-awards-odds/">Sports Odds Checker</a>). Then, chaos: four straight upsets. After years of chalk, the Academy’s Best Picture award is as predictable as Iowa’s caucuses. What is happening that is making the film world’s most prestigious honor so difficult to predict?</p>
<p id="uYlEsU">One explanation could be the move to an expanded field of Best Picture nominees and a preferential ballot before the Oscars in 2010 (for the 2009 year in movies). Instead of nominating five films and picking the one with the most votes, the Academy nominates up to 10 films for Best Picture. They then use a form of instant-runoff voting where the film with the fewest votes is eliminated, and those votes get redistributed to whichever film its voters ranked second. Repeat the process until one film crosses the 50-percent threshold, and the Academy has its newest Best Picture. </p>
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<p id="qtA00N">Many say this process rewards the “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-oscars-preferential-ballots-20180301-story.html">least disliked</a>” or “<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/how-oscar-s-preferential-ballot-works-could-produce-a-best-picture-shocker-1189677">most liked</a>” film—one with broad consensus, but not necessarily a ton of big fans. That may be why the Best Picture and Best Director trophies have diverged so frequently in recent years. In 2013, <em>Argo</em> won Best Picture without director Ben Affleck having even been <em>nominated</em> for the Director award, and the two had different winners for 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019. Those two awards have split only 26 times in 91 years, yet five of those splits have come in the past <em>seven</em> contests.</p>
<p id="78kERj">But can the preferential ballot explain the upsets? The new voting system was established for the 2010 awards, and the Best Picture award didn’t go off the rails until 2016. If that change in voting procedure had a significant impact on the results, it didn’t become clear until six contests had gone by.</p>
<p id="leYUna">Maybe the voters themselves, not the voting method, are having the biggest impact. Following the #OscarsSoWhite narrative at the 2016 ceremony, when all 20 acting nominations went to white actors, the Academy worked to remake its membership. Since then, Academy membership has grown by 35 percent, with a focus on people of color and women. It would be no surprise if that leap in membership had a big impact on voting—something <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/how-new-oscar-voters-are-changing-the-way-the-academy-thinks.html">many thought when <em>Moonlight</em> won</a>.</p>
<p id="zpNpwh">However, despite its efforts, the Academy is still 84 percent white and 68 percent male and has an average age in the late 50s or early 60s, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/is-oscars-inclusion-push-working-surprising-academy-numbers-1275305">according to a <em>Hollywood Reporter</em> analysis</a>. As April Reign, the diversity advocate who created the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, told <em>THR</em>: “This still boils down to a popularity contest among older white men in the film industry.”</p>
<p id="bA88Ye">The answer may involve a combination of factors—but we’ll never know for sure, since the Academy doesn’t release any voting data. One thing is for certain, though: After four straight upsets, no Best Picture front-runner should feel safe.</p>
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<p id="i03c3a">This year, <em>1917</em> is the favorite. It has mopped up some of the most illustrious hardware this awards season, winning Best Picture (or the rough equivalent) with the Producers Guild, the Directors Guild, the BAFTA, and the Golden Globes—and the film is poised to sweep most of the Academy’s technical categories. As a result, it comes into Sunday with minus-275 odds (per <a href="https://www.oddsshark.com/entertainment/academy-awards-oscars-betting-odds">Bovada</a>), which implies a win probability north of 70 percent.</p>
<p id="nhJfgy">But it hasn’t won everything. <em>Parasite</em> is in second in betting odds (plus-300, for a win probability of 25 percent), with wins at the Writers Guild Award (for Original Screenplay) and the Screen Actors Guild (for Ensemble) boosting its candidacy. It’s a critical darling that was generating <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/15/20915299/parasite-is-the-movie-of-the-year-will-the-oscars-agree">plenty of Best Picture hype earlier in the year</a>.</p>
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<p id="rivw0C">And <em>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</em> (plus-800, 11 percent) can’t be counted out. It won the Critics’ Choice Award and the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy. <em>Hollywood</em> has 10 total nominations, tied with <em>1917</em> and <em>The Irishman</em> for second most (<em>Joker</em> has 11). Brad Pitt is a heavy favorite for Best Supporting Actor, and Leonardo DiCaprio is nominated for Best Actor. It also could battle <em>Parasite</em> in the Original Screenplay category—<em>Hollywood</em> wasn’t nominated for the WGA award because Quentin Tarantino is not a guild member (thanks to a <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2019/12/writers-guild-awards-nominate-quentin-tarantino-1202196655/">decades-old feud over his writing credit for 1994’s <em>Natural Born Killers</em></a>). If <em>Hollywood</em> had competed at the WGAs it may have won, which would have made the film a strong contender for Best Picture. </p>
<p id="iMh6Jf">Having trouble following all that? Here’s your cheat sheet for how the major awards all played out this year:</p>
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<p id="xdpsUu">But which of these awards matter most when it comes to predicting Best Picture? They certainly aren’t created equal—here’s how the various major awards have done in correlating with Best Picture in the preferential balloting era, with the Oscar-winning films in green:</p>
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</figure>
<p id="ZAsDGI">In the past 10 contests, the PGA has been the best predictor, picking eight out of 11 (counting that tie in 2013) of the winners—73 percent. This makes sense. The PGA is the only major award to use a preferential ballot similar to the one the Academy uses, and the guild has around the same number of members as the Academy (roughly 8,000, though only a small fraction overlap in membership). Meanwhile, the DGA award has gone 6-for-10, tied with the Critics’ Choice trophy—but it’s also an award for Best <em>Directing</em>, not Picture, and it’s been great at predicting the Academy’s Director award (9-for-10, with the only miss being <em>Argo</em>, which wasn’t nominated at the Oscars). That <em>1917</em> has both is a good sign, and the BAFTA (5-for-10) is the cherry on top—even if the Brits have been wrong five years in a row.</p>
<p id="OqVJcc"><em>Parasite</em>’s wins, by contrast, are much less impressive. The SAG award has hit only four times, and the WGA is all over the place. But those two together could mean something: The last film that won both was <em>Spotlight</em>, and it won Best Picture. SAG has also correctly predicted some historical upsets, including <em>Crash</em> in 2006 and <em>Shakespeare in Love</em> in 1999. Actors make up the <a href="https://www.goldderby.com/article/2018/2018-oscars-winners-academy-awards-voters/">largest branch of the Academy by far</a>, and writers are another sizable chunk. If <em>Parasite</em> has overwhelming support from those two constituencies, it could take the trophy. But that’s a big <em>if</em>—<em>Parasite</em> has no individual acting nominations, and a foreign-language film has never won Best Picture.</p>
<p id="MLEe7C">Meanwhile, <em>Hollywood</em>’s Golden Globe triumph means little—only two of the past 10 Musical or Comedy winners have claimed the top Oscar—but its Critics’ Choice award puts it in the running. That award has gone to the Best Picture six times out of 10, tying it for second with the DGA. How it would have done at the WGAs is the big mystery there.</p>
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<p id="pSJNSz">And still, there are other factors to consider. The first is <em>1917</em>’s lack of a nomination for film editing. In the past 40 years, 39 Best Picture winners have had a nomination in that category. However, this flaw may be the least worrisome of <em>1917</em>’s concerns, as the one movie that won without an editing nomination was <em>Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)</em>, which shares a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/5/21124081/1917-one-shot-tracking-shot-gimmick-best-picture-sam-mendes">one-shot visual style</a> with <em>1917</em>. Sam Mendes’s technical masterpiece was never positioned to receive an editing nomination in the first place.</p>
<p id="Fax8dI"><em>1917</em> is also not nominated for any acting categories. It wasn’t nominated at the SAG awards, either. If it were to win Best Picture, it would be the first film to do so without an acting nomination since <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em> in 2009. And since actors make up the largest chunk of the Academy, that’s a massive hurdle to overcome.</p>
<p id="0LsxXd">Additionally, <em>1917</em> was late to the scene. It would become the first Christmas release to win Best Picture since <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em>, and this year the Oscars were moved up in the calendar from their usual late-February date. But which way does that cut? Does the reduced runway mean voters will not coalesce around <em>1917</em>, or that they haven’t had enough time to get sick of it? <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/830095/will-la-la-land-fatigue-keep-the-musical-from-dominating-at-the-oscars">Fatigue seemed to be a factor in <em>La La Land</em>’s loss</a> three years ago.</p>
<p id="AUNjvy"><em>Parasite</em> also won Cannes’s Palme d’Or award. While that accolade isn’t typically very predictive of Best Picture, it does highlight another flaw in <em>1917</em>’s Best Picture candidacy: It did not premiere at a major film festival. Since <em>The Departed</em> won in 2007, every single Best Picture winner has premiered at one of four film festivals: Cannes, the Venice Film Festival, the Telluride Film Festival, or the Toronto International Film Festival. <em>Parasite</em> premiered at Cannes, as did <em>Hollywood</em>. But <em>1917</em> premiered at the Royal Command Film Performance, a charity event attended by the British royal family. The last Best Picture winner to be shown there was 1997’s <em>Titanic</em>. This festival trend feels like it could be a coincidence, but it certainly is weird. </p>
<p id="YgguKD">There is no secret sauce that will allow you to beat Vegas or get an edge in your office’s Oscars pool. Cut through all the noise, and it’s clear that every contender has its flaws. So which film will win? Will <em>1917</em> win despite little attention from the acting and writing wings of the Academy? Can <em>Parasite</em> become the first foreign language film to win just a year after <em>Roma</em> failed to do so? Should <em>Hollywood</em> be counted out after it failed to break through in the pre-Oscars awards season? Or will another of the nine nominated films shock us all?</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="SzFA17">With recent history in mind, all I’m sure of is that I’m not sure of anything. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/2/6/21125749/best-picture-race-unpredictable-favorite-1917-parasiteRiley McAtee