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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In praise of Melissa McCarthy, puppet master

by Tim Brayton

The Academy Awards are meant to reward great acting, not provide examples of it, but for a couple minutes during Sunday's ceremony, I'm convinced I saw the best comic performance I'll see for the rest of 2019. When Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry arrived to present Best Costume Design in polyglot outfits designed to evoke all five of the nominees, the visual gag is already enough. In a different year or with a lazier duo it might have been all we got. But it's when McCarthy and Henry start to introduce the category that it went from silly to downright inspired.

I am obsessed with every bit of what McCarthy is up to in that clip – and it doesn't even include the best joke of the bit, when she has the bunny attack Henry's hand as he tries help her open the envelope. Part of it, of course, is that she's playing things so completely straight...

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Best Dressed Best Actress? (...and a look at the whole decade, too)

Mandatory Red Carpet Lineup Poll!

polls

P.S. In case you've forgotten about our Oscar doll fantasy (You haven't, right?) the whole collection is embedded after the jump. Just think - there's only one more Oscar season to go to complete the decade in film !!! Then we can do all sorts of silly stuff with statistics...

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13 Times I 'Jennifer Hudsoned' on Oscar Night

by Ginny O'Keefe

Jennifer Hudson [jen-nee-fer hud-son] 
Verb 
Definiton: to nod emphatically in agreement to something while simultaneously mouthing the word “yes”. 

Here are 13 Times I Jennifer Hudsoned on Oscar Night...

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Will the Oscar Success of "If Beale Street" Spur More Adaptations of James Baldwin's Work?

by Murtada Elfadl

 

Black authors have not been adapted the same way as their white peers because financiers don’t put their money behind black authors.
-Barry Jenkins accepting Best Director at the Spirit Awards 

Regina King understood what she was representing at the Oscars. Not just her film, If Beale Street Could Talk, and all the people who worked on it but also the legacy of James Baldwin. She mentioned him on the red carpet on her way to the ceremony. Fittingly, she also started her speech with him...

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