Does Bong Joon Ho not count for Parasite?
Well I won my Oscar pool, getting 18/23 correct. Only real upset was Mikey Madison, Demi seemed like such a lock! But wow congrats to Anora!
Hmm, good question. Seems like, despite headlines like this.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2025/03/02/sean-baker-oscars-record-wins-anora/
Apparently not. Technically, Best International Feature Film is not considered a personal award, even though the names of the primary filmmakers are now engraved on the statuette.
It was always been considered awarded to the country for some reason.
It’s a very awards showish thing now to realize Sean Baker has more Oscars than Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg. Movie awards are silly.
But it is nice to see a guy like Sean Baker get this, because he’s been making interesting, thoughtful, original movies for quite some time, mostly about people struggling at the fringes of society. “The Florida Project” is a movie everyone should see, a masterpiece of transcendent genius. All his movies are worth watching.
He’s been busting his ass for half his life to make MOVIES, instead of “content.” Gotta love that.
Really? I thought he did a great job hosting. But I’m a big Conan fan.
Looks like I’m in the majority opinion on Conan’s hosting success:
Because they’re nominated by the countries - each country can only submit a single picture for the category.
I’m usually a fan too. I thought he seemed nervous and tentative delivering his monologue, which would be odd with all of his experience. YMMV
Yeah, he may have been a bit nervous at first-- he’s mostly been out of the TV spotlight for awhile now-- but I thought he warmed up to the job quickly enough.
Anora follows the ancient trope “woman from the wrong side of the tracks gets mistreated, picks herself up and goes on with her life.”
Basically, every Barbara Stanwyck movie from the 1930s & 40s. She never did win an Oscar.
The Hollywood Reporter says that Adrien Brody’s acceptance speech lasted five minutes and forty seconds. Even if you think, as do I, that 45 seconds is too little, that was far too long. (And it was preceded by him taking the gum from his mouth and throwing it to his partner.)
Something meta about his speech reflecting the length of the movie, even with intermission music.
Also kind of meta was seeing a picture of Sabastian Stan as Trump in the background as Brody carefully spoke about the evils of Trump without actually naming him.
Meta? We want Meta?
Meta is purposely planning to surrender the first THIRTY MINUTES of air time to Conan in All Of His Glory And Bemusement™ !!!
I mean, my god. THEN, the walking talking definition of chutzpah: Playing off anyone who isn’t a celebrity after 45 seconds because “the show is going to run long otherwise” my god my god.
My god. It’s their moment to BASK. It’s WHY you have the fucking awards on air in the first place !!! But, no. We the worldwide viewing public needed thirty minutes of smug mugging at the camera and banal and useless dance numbers. So that we could get on with the awarding of the Class A Statuettes. And we could watch a dozen people get shushed up by an orchestra ( NOT slamming the Conductor- the Director of the show in the truck cues the “getthefuckoffofmystageyouinsiginificantfilmmaker” music.
It’s SO irritating.
Meanwhile, over in Art Direction/ Scenic Design-Land, that set was so luscious to look at I just wanted them to hold on the high-wide shot the entire time. I love Art Deco. This was clearly a nod to “Wicked”'s look but it also looks like it was torn from the same pages as the design of the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building and both elevator banks. (The design and craft of the Chrysler Building is so infamous that you cannot enter the building just to take a ride on them. Used to be able to, I did in the early 1980’s)
So, to my eye the show was near- perfect in terms of design, lighting ( aside from one hot cue that was brought up by mistake. Meh. It’s live t.v. ), and so on.
But fuck fuck fuck the “creatives” who came up with the first 30 minutes.
Worse than an abomination: it was an insult.
What I want to know is what the hell was the motivation behind the James Bond tribute? It’s not any kind of anniversary, and the songs just went on and on by people no one at my party had ever heard of (other than Doja Cat.) What was the audience for that!? They couldn’t get actual famous singers to show up?
I think because the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award was given to Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, children of Albert R. Broccoli and producers of the Bond films for decades.
Lisa is a member of the K-pop group Blackpink. They sell out stadiums in minutes, so she is very well known among a certain section of the population.
It’s very odd. India did not submit RRR for the Oscars the year it was eligible and it was kind of a surprise. It would have had a really good shot at it, but wasn’t even considered.
There was a big deal here a few years back when Israel submitted a film (The Band’s Visit), and then someone checked the script and found that it actually had more English dialog than non-English, making it ineligible for the Oscar. The Israeli Film Academy withdrew it and submitted another film, Beaufort, instead, which was nominated for the Oscar but didn’t win.
In a strange twist of fate, the Band’s Visit was later adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical.
I believe Emelia Perez was submitted by France, though it’s in Spanish and The Seed of the Sacred Fig by Germany, though it’s in Persian. I thought that slightly odd.