Soundtracking: The Oscar Performances

by Chris Feil

Isn’t it lovely that full performances of the Original Song nominees are here to stay? Well, hopefully here to stay. We’re not far enough removed from the Oscar telecast cruelly jettisoning less known tracks from the evening’s performances to breathe easy when we get to delight in each of the nominees. Off years or no, past omissions have been a decidedly bad look.

And the performances largely kept their spectacle simple and straightforward, providing some nice grand emotion in an otherwise mostly even keel evening. In one of the few upset's of the night Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez got their second Oscar for Coco's "Remember Me" (my favorite of the nominees). Coco’s triumph was so richly deserved particularly for how inextricable it is from the film’s narrative, criteria that the songwriting branch has famously demanded of late. But the telecast allowed for some reassessment of the nominated lineup...

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The Oscars were gay and Latino, just like I am

by Jorge Molina

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece for this site about feeling seen, in a way I hadn't before, onscreen. Coco and Call Me by Your Name perfectly captured two different parts of my identity. Fast forward to Sunday’s 90th Academy Awards. Both of those movies deservedly won statues. More surprisingly a never ending parade of queer and Latino moments made me feel, yet again, that someone like myself has a place in the biggest stage in the world...

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Red Carpet: Best Actresses Hug It Out

by Nathaniel R

Tonya, Mildred, Lady Bird, Eliza, and Katherine

Beauty! This season's five most celebrated leading actresses have 32 Oscar nominations and 5 statues between them. (Of course Meryl accounts for more than half of both totals but what can you do?). But readers hearts were elsewhere this year...

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The Furniture: *Not* Another Art Deco Oscars!

Daniel Walber's weekly series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

“Hey, how about these sets? Are these sets great? They’re just like the Orgasmatron in Barbarella.”
-Jane Fonda

Oh, would that they were, Jane Fonda. Maybe someday we’ll have a Space Oscars, with gravity-defying holographic moons and an ever-shifting alien landscape. Presenters would enter through a pair of giant airlock doors at the back of the stage. The statuettes would float. The 50th anniversaries of both Barbarella and 2001: A Space Odyssey are coming up -- maybe they’ll do it next year?

Of course, the 90th Academy Awards didn’t escape earth’s atmosphere. But were they able to at least escape the endless parade of Art Deco, the nearly uniform tradition of the past few decades of Oscar telecasts...? 

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Best Oscar Tweets

Live awards shows prompt sure-fire tweetstorms and usually well into the following day to. There were a lot of Oscar themed tweets to choose from Sunday night and on hangover day. We've curated several great ones for you but we should warn you that none will probably match Jordan Peele's twofer.

I just won an Oscar. WTF?!?

— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) March 5, 2018

This is exactly what it looked like watching my wife give birth. pic.twitter.com/qDNm3jzZwh

— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) March 5, 2018

 We've curated several great ones for you but we should warn you that none will probably match Jordan Peele's twofer above. Get Out will be hard to top but we'll love to see him try since he's brilliant.

After the jump some Dunkirk ribbing, Sally Kirkland's ballsy proclamation, Post Oscar crashing, and other random funny, thought-provoking or celebrity-laden tweets. So give it a look... 

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