Age of The Nerd
This is my first year being a part of the yearly Age of the Nerd Oscar Battle. In this Oscar Battle, all of our staff members put in our picks on who we will think will win in each category. Whoever wins gets bragging rights and whoever loses gets to do the Oscars recap. Well who do you think the loser was? Yes, me. Lucky guess! Without further adieu, here’s the recap of the 88th Academy Awards.
The Diversity Issue
Let’s start out by addressing the elephant in the room just like Oscar host, Chris Rock did. The theme of the Oscars this year was diversity and it was obvious. Chris Rock’s first jokes were addressing the fact that it was an “all white” Oscars, and how people kept telling him to quit this year’s hosting gig because of the fact that there weren’t enough black actors nominated this year. This is something that the rest of the Oscar presenters followed, as they too made jokes out of the issue. There were even skits in this year’s Oscars that were directed towards the issue. These skits would replace a white actor with a black actor in an Oscar nominated film. For instance, funny man Tracy Morgan took over the role of Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl and as you can imagine, it was hilarious. These skits were actually all hilarious. So if you were wondering if the issue would be discussed, the answer is a big yes!
The Big Winners
Now the second biggest topic of this year’s Oscars was actually the Oscar winners. The big winners this year were Mad Max: Fury Road with a total of 6 awards including: Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Production Design, Costume Design and Hair and Makeup; The Revenant won a total of 3 including: Cinematography, Directing (Alejandro González Iñárritu) and Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio); and Spotlight took home 2 awards with one being the Best Picture.
Leonardo DiCaprio finally winning his first Oscar (much overdue) was a great moment. After he gave his thank yous, DiCaprio made a great speech, which received a standing ovation. DiCaprio spoke about climate change, backing leaders that will speak up for humanity and the need to start protecting the Earth for our future.
Awkward Moments
Though a lot of people can debate on the diversity jokes being awkward, there was one really bad joke that made for an awkward moment when the crowd’s only reaction to the joke was silence. Former actress turned Fox news contributor, Stacey Dash, made some remarks about a month prior to the Oscars about the lack of black actors being nominated. Well Chris rock was a part of the Stacey Dash joke gone wrong and this is how it went down…
“The Academy has taken steps to fix this problem and that is why, it’s my honor to introduce the new director of our minority outreach program,” Oscar host Chris Rock introduced. “Please welcome, Miss Stacey Dash!”
This is where Stacey Dash made a very unexpected appearance and as she came out, Dash said, “I cannot wait to help my people out. Happy Black History Month!”
The whole room went silent with a few people golf-clapping out of awkwardness.
Performances
Performing at the Oscars were Sam Smith, who performed his Oscar-winning song “Writing’s On The Wall” and The Weekend performed his Oscar-nominated hit song, “Earned It”. But Lady Gaga moved the audience with her performance of her Oscar-nominated song “Til it Happens You’, which is a song about sexual assault. During the performance, a curtain arose and standing was a group of men and woman, all victims of sexual assault, holding hands on stage with the words like “survivor”, “you are love” and “Not your fault”, on their arms. It was a powerful message and performance that brought many in the audience to tears.
Foo Fighter frontman, Dave Grohl, performed “Blackbird” by The Beatles, for the “In Memoriam” part of the Oscars. Not only is “Blackbird” a very uplifting song, it was written by Paul McCartney, who wrote the song for The Beatles’ “White Album”. The song was written in response of racial tension in America at the time. It’s interesting that this song was chosen for the “In Memoriam” section of the awards, considering the diversity issue of this year’s Oscars.
and finally…Best Dressed
Just kidding, we don’t do that kind of thing around here.
Here are the highlights from this year’s list of Oscar winners:
Best picture – Spotlight
Best actress – Brie Larson – Room
Best actor – Leonardo DiCaprio – The Revenant
Best supporting actress – Alicia Vikander – The Danish Girl
Best supporting actor – Mark Rylance – Bridge of Spies
Best director – Alejandro G. Iñárritu – The Revenant
Best animated feature movie – Inside Out
Best documentary – Amy
Best foreign language film – Son of Saul
Best original screenplay – Spotlight – Josh Singer, Tom McCarthy
Best adapted screenplay – The Big Short – Charles Randolph, Adam McKay
Best cinematography – Emmanuel Lubezki – The Revenant
