The 90th annual Academy Awards had its moments of laughter, tears, and confusion, with this year’s Oscars being the most racially diverse, and socially outspoken.
Victims of Harvey Weinstein stood towards the crowd to call for more “equality, diversity, inclusion, [and] intersectionality.” These women—Salma Hayek, Ashley Judd, and Annabella Sciorra, who got emotional after spending a few years out of the limelight—all shared a very important message.
“The changes we are witnessing are being driven by the powerful sound of new voices, of different voices, of our voices,” they said, “Joining together in a mighty chorus that is finally saying: time’s up.”
One of the most rousing speeches of the night was that of Frances McDormand when she won Best Actress for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. She called on all the women in the audience to stand for some much-needed appreciation. She even joked with the amazing Meryl Streep, “Meryl, if you do it, everybody else will. C’mon.” She thanked everyone for the award, and for the chance to be in such an important room.
“Trust me, the women in this room tonight are not here for the food. We are here for the work.” Nearly every woman in the audience stood and cheered for McDormand.
Some awkward moments include when the lovely Mary J. Blige forgot the name of Ryan Seacrest’s show, who was recently accused, and found innocent of sexually harassing his stylist for decades. This raised some eyebrows, as well as when Emma Stone called out the candidate pool for the Best Director because the majority were men: “These four men, and Greta Gerwig created their own masterpieces this year.”
After Sunday night, sports household name Kobe Bryant can add another award to his arsenal, next to his 5 NBA Champion, and 18 NBA All-Star awards. He won an Oscar for his short film “Dear Basketball,” and became the first pro basketball player to win the award.
Previous years’ Academy Awards were heavily criticized for being too long, so this year, the team behind the show decided to change things up in order to make the awards show as short as possible. Host Jimmy Kimmel challenged the winners of the awards to make their speeches as short as possible. The winner with the shortest acceptance speech, he said, would win a free Jet Ski. People joked about it on stage, such as when the audience would not stop cheering for Jordan Peele after he became the first black director to win the Original Screenplay trophy with Get Out; “You guys are going to mess up my jet ski.”
The winner of the extra special jet ski ended up being Mark Bridges, who won Costume Design for the movie Phantom Thread, whose speech was 36 seconds long. He threw on his life jacket, and got on the jet ski then and there!
There is talk that this year’s Oscars was the most predictable by far. For instance, The Shape of Water had 13 nominations, meaning winning Best Picture was almost assured. Winning four of its 13 nominations, the drama film seems to have left quite the impact on its viewers.
Speaking of viewers, viewership ratings of this years Oscars fell 19 percent—ratings dropped by 6.5 million—and hit an all-time low with 26.5 millions people tuning in to watch.
Other not-to-mention events were Tiffany Haddish jumping over a barricade to meet Meryl Streep—as one does—and Jimmy Kimmel asking Steven Spielberg for marijuana, making these years Oscars one of the more awkward awards seasons.
