If you're black or involved in a black movie ("Black Panther" etc.)...WHAT A NIGHT!
If you're a Latino, hell, you've got a LOCK on "Best Foreign Film"....Un NOCHE Grande!!!
But all seriousness aside, as Steve Allen used to say, let's praise ONE thing about the Oscar show this year: NO HOST.
That's right. No smirky, prickly idiot standing up and "giving it" to the over-fed, over-paid, over-dressed assholes in the audience. We all know it's "just in fun" which makes it just plain annoying. The insults are never really too sharp, unless it's a political joke aimed at an easy target.
The show (which I did not watch, except by accident during a few channel flips) ended without too many yawns because there was no idiotic host slowing things down with a monologue, a production number, and tedious segues.
How can I review a show I didn't watch? It's better that way. MUCH better.
First off, I missed the awful "red carpet" foreplay, where preening fools ask "WHO are you wearing" and "Isn't this exciting?"
This was just about the only time you saw white people, and they were fair game for "WORST COSTUME." That's what these things are. Costumes. Even by the effete and tasteless standards of "fashion," nobody would go to a party wearing this shit unless it was Halloween.
For the record, the brickbats bashed Sarah Paulsen and Rachel Weisz:
The whites wearing red made everyone blue.
PS, if a black actress wears a tasteless gown, ignore it.
And if a black ACTOR wears a tasteless gown, praise it:
That's a "tuxedo ballgown."
Speaking of garish, Spike Lee turned up in something purple from the Dr. Seuss collection. With matching glasses. Nobody dared say a word.
I feel badly for Spike. He actually looked happy. This may have broken his face.
It may be difficult, now that he is an OSCAR winner, to walk around sullen and glowering and waiting for Colin Kaepernick to take a knee for him or something.
This year's big winners were black movies mostly, although the very gay "Bohemian Rhapsody" did well, as did Lady Gaga's "A Star is Born," which made sure to have a drag queen scene (for some reason, she played a female who is, exception to the rule, allowed to sing, and not even lip sync at a drag bar). Oh what a lovely coincidence that Lady Gaga, who half-named herself after a crappy campy Freddie Mercury song, was up against the story of Freddie himself in "Bohemian Rhapsody," the title of that one referring to an overlong God-awful bit of campy opera that latent homosexual males can't stop singing (see: "Wayne's World" or, better yet, DON'T.)
This year's Academy Award for BEST ACTOR went to a set of dentures.
The teeth were made by FANGS FX, a company specializing in freakish teeth for horror movies. True.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the three films I actually bothered to see (via torrent bootlegs, which as we all know, don't harm the sales figures of wildly popular bad movies that embellish the truth to the point where it's all a lie.)
I also saw "A Star is Born." The most remarkable thing about these two movies, is that they featured Andrew "Dice" Clay and Mike Myers, and I didn't recognize either of them until the end credits. That's when I thought, "they were in the movie? Playing WHO?"
This wasn't my favorite Lady Gaga film. That would be "Perform this Way," in which Gaga was played by Weird Al Yankovic.
As for today's most fabulous gay icon this side of the Brawny paper towel guy and the guy in the Burger King mask, Lady Gaga proved once again that fashion is for ugly people to feel better about themselves.
Gays may be enthusiastic about that horrible meringue-head, and they do like drag queen-ish women with huge noses (hmmm, who was the last woman to star in "A Star is Born"...) but some viewers in this world do miss attractive women and the days of Bardot, Dunaway, Fonda and Roberts.
Speaking of repulsive women, the Oscar events did make sure to cover all the pointless parties thrown by people even more affluent and obnoxious than Meghan Markle. At the Vanity Fair party, it was important to honor that feminist icon...
...Monica Lewinsky.
What? She's NOT a movie star. She's still a STAR, darling, because she courageously lifted herself up from a scandal caused by the mean slut-shaming press, and is now recognized for...
...being a home-wrecker? For flashing her thong at the President with a lascivious look on her pudgy face? For making herself available as a cigar holder? For plotting with her extremely homely pal to keep her cocksucking dress as evidence so that she could impeach just about the last President to preside over a nation where the interest rate on a CD was actually in two digits and not 1%?
Monica looks so surprised to be wearing a gown without semen stains on it.
The important thing for women is that, even if they don't know anything about politics, they can coyly grin and pretend that they do. Cue the "smart and intelligent" dames from SNL.
That's Maya Rudolph in the botanical outfit borrowed from "Little Shop of Horrors." Next to the perpetually smirking Tina Fey is her pal Amy Poehler, who was always so hilarious when she'd hop around playing an amputee. It's really a tie between Amy's amputee routines and Wiig's tasteful performances as the birth-defect victim with tiny hands.
They were around to let us know that Trump's an asshole. Bill Maher's been saying that for years, but hey, Bill Maher is a straight white guy.
No no, this is a broadcast, so, borrowing a Roger Grimsby line, we must watch as broadcasting becomes two words.
Trump had to be seething over that clever dig from the Latino who introduced "Best Foreign Picture." Ha ha, he spoke in SPANISH. (Some of the nominees were not Latino, but fuck 'em.)
We all know, it's absolutely RACIST to suggest that immigrants learn the language and speak English. America is rapidly becoming bi-lingual. With the SAP channel on TV, and various Spanish language newspapers and TV networks, and every government booklet printed in Spanish, it's no longer essential to learn English.
Senator Hayakawa of California (this goes back a few decades) actually introduced a bill suggesting English be the "OFFICIAL" language of America. Silly fellow. Just because he spoke English, and Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Russians and Hebrews and Greeks all not only learned English but did so despite having to also master a completely different-looking set of characters, that didn't mean that Latinos should have to. Likewise, just because every immigrant group from the Germans to the Italians to the Poles all managed to learn English without difficulty, it's an OUTRAGE to suggest that Latinos be inconvenienced. It's not that they CAN'T learn the language, because everyone's equal, it's just...well...it's just...uh...que lastima, there MUST be a reason besides laziness...
If you've spent time in Montreal, you know the headache of having to hear every goddam announcement in both French and English. But let's have that happen in America. Because Latinos should not have to learn English the way every other ethnic group does.
There's logic to this. Un poco, eh?
It's an irony that all over the world, English is a second language. Get off a plane in Nigeria, in Seoul, in Israel, in France, in just about any place other than Scotland, and you will find people able to talk to you in very understandable ENGLISH. People all over the world love the English language and its culture. In America, among immigrants from Latino countries? Not so much. People can be in America five years, ten years, even longer, and they still can't speak the language. Yet boxers from Ukraine, Russia, the Philippines, can speak it and answer questions after a fight and after being hit in the head for ten rounds. What's the problem here?
But I digress. Lo siento.
But let's not dwell on the Latinos when there's Blacks to praise, and it was so nice that both the "Best Supporting Actor" and "Best Supporting Actress" winners were black. Then again, was it? What's this "supporting" term? You relegate BLACKS to "SUPPORTING actor and SUPPORTING actress?" Something wrong there, know wuttum sayin'?
Next year, elevate those words to just "ALSO BEST ACTOR" and "ALSO BEST ACTRESS" or something. "SUPPORTING" is so DEMEANING. It's INSULTING.
But let's praise the Academy for seeing through Richard E. Grant, the STRAIGHT OLDER WHITE MALE who had the NERVE to play a gay guy. How did he even get nominated? How did he even get HIRED? Don't you have to BE gay to play a gay now? Didn't he take money away from some deserving gay who was only begging for a chance to blow Harvey Weinstein to get ahead?
Let's ALSO praise the Academy for NOT being sentimental when it comes to aging white people, and for not only kicking Richard E. Grant into the "it's an honor just to be nominated" level, but also disappointing Glenn Close. The woman really should retire and be replaced by a young black woman. Hell, if a black woman could play Joan of Arc on Broadway this season, that same woman can play any old white woman role that some fool might want to give to Glenn Close.
A few final points. First, for purists, the Academy Awards once again offered the opportunity for millions upon millions of people to be bored by preening, giggling, self-absorbed non-entities who won in obscure categories for short subjects NOBODY has ever seen.
Rich self-righteous assholes got to clutch a gold figurine of a naked guy, wave it like a club, and declare their fierce belief that MOVIES MATTER.
Second, QUEEN got a chance to perform, and opened the ceremonies. Adam Lambert gave powerful evidence for why people miss Freddie Mercury.
And lastly, the "In Memorium" sequence was, as always, the best part of the show. In this case, "In Memorium" refers to white heterosexuals. It's just about the only place on the Oscar telecasts you see 'em anymore.
The heterosexual white woman who won for "Best Actress" for a film nobody's seen? That was a fluke. A little more DIVERSITY next time, please!
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