Oscars 2021

The Oscars were this past Sunday. Somehow I don’t think I’ve even blogged about the Oscars here before, but I figured it was worth it for this strange past year. If you read this blog you know I had very different ideas about the best films of 2020, but it’s interesting that Hollywood felt conciliatory to the Americans it’s kind of spent four years despising by handing Nomadland Best Picture and Frances McDormand her third Best Actress for as many similar roles. 

I actually used to be quite devoted to the Oscars. In recent years they seem to have gone out of their way to honor niche films, which is all the funnier because for years the complaint has been that they have abandoned populism (even though, at least in the past twenty years at least, every time they have the popular choice ends up as an “it didn’t deserve it” argument, except inexplicably Return of the King, which was only a return to diminishing rewards for a trilogy that began brilliantly and then just muddled along). I suppose they had no choice but to honor a niche film from 2020, because that’s really all there was.

Personally, if a movie is released exclusively on a streaming platform, it shouldn’t be eligible for an Oscar. It’s a TV movie. TV movies are eligible for Emmys, not Oscars. Or Golden Globes, which cover both. I get that streaming has excellent prospects these days, but it’s temporary money, and hopefully everyone knows it. Even HBO can’t find projects like it used to. Clearly it’s just me, but I’m also tired of these services (not all of them) keeping these projects locked up, even rare things like the completed The Other Side of the Wind, which is just criminal. That’s also the opposite of the theater experience. Eventually we have options. When that’s no longer the case, it creates a warped effect that strangles art. Imagine if we weren’t allowed images of Banksy’s art. His work would be lost forever!

But, anyway, congrats to Nomadland and McDormand.  Maybe this is another step in bringing people back together.