Team Experience Oscar Reax Pt 2: Good Times, Speech Writers, and Noticeable Absences

As is our practice we polled the team and a few friends shortly after the Oscars to get their takes. You already saw part one on joyful and horny moments so here's part two. We hope you'll answer the same questions in the comments. 

1. Who was having the very best time in the theater?
2. Who most needed a speechwriter?
3. Without a host who was the MVP guiding you through the night?
4. Whose absence did you most feel during the broadcast?

Our answers are after the jump...

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The 2019 Cannes President is... Iñárritu

Iñarritu winning Best Director at Cannes in 2006.Now that Oscar season is winding down, tuxes/jewels returned, post-mortems wrapping up, we must start looking forward. The first big post Oscar event of the film year, that's not a film opening that is, is of course the Cannes Film Festival (May 14th-25th). They've now announced this year's jury president. It's none other than four-time Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, Babel, The Revenant, Amores Perros) continuing Oscar's obsessive “¡Viva México!”  theme, with five of the last six directing Oscars going to Mexican filmmakers.

Iñárritu succeeds Cate Blanchett, 2018's Jury President. Though its common for film directors to preside, he's the first Mexican ever chosen for the honors. He previously won Best Director at Cannes for Babel (2006)...

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Should Acceptance Speeches Reflect the Achievements They're Honored For?

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

How an Oscar winner accepts their award often becomes just as imprinted in the minds of movie fans as the performance or project itself. Roberto Benigni memorably leapt over chairs to gleefully accept his Oscar for Life is Beautiful, a questionable move given the fact that he was being honored for a Holocaust movie (even if it was a lighter one than virtually all over films of its genre). James Cameron shouted “I’m the king of the world!” when claiming his Best Director prize for Titanic, which was famously just a quote from his own film but which likely sounded considerably cockier than he meant to.

Now, there's no rule that says that an Oscar winner needs to match the tone of what their prize is meant to reward. Many winners – even actors accustomed to public performance – don’t deliver particularly put-together speeches, and the shock factor can affect composure and coherence. Nevertheless, here’s a look at this year’s telecast speeches in terms of how well they reflected the achievement they were being honored for...

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Why Green Book's win made me cringe. (It's not what you think.)

By Lynn Lee

I heaved a heavy sigh the moment Green Book won best picture.  But not for the reasons many of the rest of you probably did.

No, my heart sank because, dear readers, I like Green Book.  Liked it when I saw it, still like it now after all the controversies that failed to derail its path to Oscar.  Liked it enough to cringe at the thought of how exponentially the animus it’s already generated would grow following its victory, and how quickly it would be added to lists of the Academy’s Worst Decisions Ever...

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Soundtracking: The 2018 Oscar Performances

by Chris Feil

Thank you Lady Gaga, all of the nominated Original Song performances were given a shot to perform on the Oscars! That "Shallow" leverage reportedly kept the ceremony as much of a musical night as possible. Sadly logistics kept us from getting a Kendrick Lamar and SZA performance of Black Panther's "All the Stars", but I found it frustrating that the producers didn't find some way to work the song into the telecast somehow. A montage needle drop, underscoring for the pre-commercial announcements, something?!

Even without Lamar (who also missed the Grammys), the night was a mostly solid salvage of Oscar musical tradition. It certainly fared better than some recent years, and also helped set variety and a pace for the night that otherwise felt a tad too amorphously rushed. A Star is Born's "Shallow" triumphed for the win as expected all season long, but what of the performances themselves? Time for a ranking!...

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