I’m not even going to try to do a full or extensive recap of the 2022 Chaos Oscars. The Oscars were split into two parts – before the smack and after the smack. Before Will Smith smacked Chris Rock live on stage, the energy was one of half-annoyance. Most of the jokes were bad, DJ Khaled was ridiculous, Amy Schumer did a joke about Leonardo DiCaprio’s young girlfriends. I was grateful that the three hostesses – Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes – were rarely on stage together, and that they all got to do separate skits or whatever. Generally speaking, there were still too many filler montages for no reason, and people genuinely missed the eight categories which were cut from the broadcast. Did we need tributes to White Men Can’t Jump, the James Bond franchise AND The Godfather? Really?
The best two jokes/gags were Amy Schumer going off about Being the Ricardos and how Aaron Sorkin made Lucille Ball so dreadfully unfunny. Even Nicole Kidman laughed (and Javier Bardem seemed to be having the time of his life). The other part which was pretty funny was Regina Hall’s Covid-patdown of Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa, both of whom were game.
The show opened with Venus and Serena Williams presenting Beyonce’s pretaped performance of her Oscar-nominated song “Be Alive” from King Richard. She performed in Compton, on a tennis court. She became the tennis ball. It was honestly a great performance. Then she lost to Billie Eilish’s whisper-singing for Best Song. Massive eyeroll.
I was pretty happy with most of the winners, especially CODA’s multiple wins. CODA won Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay and Troy Kotsur won Best Supporting Actor. Youn Yuh-jung, last year’s supporting actress winner, signed “I love you” to him before she read out his name. Everyone stood and signed “applause” for him. His speech was so moving:
I also loved Ariana DeBose’s win, I was happy with Jessica Chastain’s win, don’t @ me, she was really great and it was well-deserved. Disney fanatics were mad about the Megan Thee Stallion-infused version of “Don’t Talk About Bruno.” No one was happy about Jane Campion’s Best Director win.
The final moments of the night were of Lady Gaga and Liza Minelli surprising everyone to present Best Picture to CODA. Gaga was a class act for coming even though she’d been snubbed for a nomination, and she was so gentle with Liza. It was so classy. And people were so genuinely happy for CODA. You can see the full list of Oscar winners here.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Backgrid.
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- Los Angeles, CA – The 94th Annual Academy Awards Press Room at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Pictured: Troy Kotsur BACKGRID USA 27 MARCH 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Los Angeles, CA – The 94th Annual Academy Awards Press Room at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Pictured: Troy Kotsur, Yoon Yeo-jeong BACKGRID USA 27 MARCH 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
Ugh award shows LOVE to use a nomination to lure Beyoncé to perform, then fail to honor her with an actual win. At this rate we’re never seeing her perform at an awards show again unless she’s putting it on herself.
Diane Warren has never won and Randy Newman has not won as many as he should have. She’s in good company and didn’t really have the best song of the night, so there’s also that.
Lin Manuel Miranda’s work was critical for the success of Encanto and he didn’t win either. His second nomination, too. I was really rooting for him.
Troy looked so, well, grizzled in CODA that I was surprised at how handsome he looked last night. I’m happy for Chastain, she looked gorgeous. Liked the top of her dress, not the bottom.
Wait, what? Billie Eilish won?! Seriously?!
I know! I’m in shock…
So when does Sean Penn smelt down his Oscars. You know, because a courageous President actively leading his country in a war against a horrible invader didn’t have time to drop by to be a segment between mediocre comedy bits, average to mediocre musical numbers, unflattering bodice dresses, and random assaults on presenters?
The whole show (aside from the actual winners) was so cringey, the folding in of the pre taped segments was appallingly amateur. Even the in memoriam seemed disrespectful, spirit in the sky was such a weirdly upbeat choice and all the people onstage was so distracting.
Spirit in the Sky is such a weird choice (and its lyrics always bugs me with the “never been a sinner, I’ve never sinned, I’ve got a friend in Jesus” lines … like did they completely miss Jesus’s whole point about redeeming people from sin?)
And all the “In Memoriam” songs having such a religious bent seemed kind of presumptuous when you’re celebrating the lives of a dozens of people who may not have had religious ties.
I like it as a song generally, and think it’s funny it was written and sung by someone raised as an Orthodox Jew!
But yeah, it was a terrible choice of song for this.
Also was bizarre how a few people got extra special shoutouts in that segment.
I just don’t have enough words to describe how bad I found the whole production.
To add to the cringe? They bumped a bunch of awards to the pre-show to “streamline” and shorten the show (angering their members)….and it was 30 minutes longer than last year! LMAO! What a DISASTER!
@mia I know and they did a HORRIBLE job of editing in those pretaped segments.
It’s weird, isn’t it? Like they got the “What to do” and “What NOT to do” folders mixed up.
Every year The Oscars find another way to foul up the In Memorium portion of their show. This time they crammed a chorus of people on the stage, which served only to distract from the video. When will they get a clue and have TCM do it instead? Every year TCM does a memorable little film for those we’ve lost.
When I feel asleep last night Twitter was arguing over the timing of Chris Evans’ Disney spot, with some saying it ruined the beautiful Coda moment. When I woke up, no one remembered who Chris Evans is.
I thought the tributes were weird and over the top. If they want to make the Oscars feel more fresh, having a tribute to White Men Can’t Jump isn’t really the way.
Fun Oscar fact that I learned from the Little Gold Men podcast a few years ago: on the Oscar ballot, the best original song Oscar is listed with the name of the song and the movie. The songwriter and performer are not listed even though they get the award. This is likely why songs from James Bond movies always win, even when they’re up against a song written by a megastar like Beyoncé or a really popular Disney movie (most Oscar voters are old and not watching animated movies on repeat with their kids). Poor Diane Warren, who has been nominated FIFTEEN times, is always nominated for songs for terrible movies no one has seen. She needs to write a song for the next James Bond movie.
I don’t think Coda should have won Best Picture. As a remake, it was definitely much better than the (problematic) original and a good film but not a BP.
How was the original problematic? I genuinely remember it as a sweet movie.
The themes from the last three James Bond movies have won for best song (Skyfall, Writings on the Wall from Spectre, and last night’s win). I was pulling for LMM to EGOT, but Billie’s win is hardly surprising.
Amy Schumer’s Leo joke was lifted almost word for word from an old tweet from @/nicoleconlan FYI
A big no to that whole pat down routine. Just not funny. Plus, it made no sense to me that somebody as beautiful as Regina Hall would play the sad, single girl. I mean, come on. She just did not pull that off. The gentlemen were good sports, though. I’m surprised Will Smith did not come for her, too.
Actually Regina Hal seems to be single.
Dos Oruguitas is such a beautiful and touching song, definitely should haev won. I don’t care about LMM’s EGOT, but if you weren’t moved by Sebastian Yatra’s performance then IDK what to do with you