Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

White supremacy is terrorism.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The words do not have to be perfect.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

You are here: Home / TV & Movies / Movies / Sunday Evening Oscars Open Thread

Sunday Evening Oscars Open Thread

by | 80 Comments

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Just in case anyone’s still interested, here’s some how-to-access journalism from C/Net:

… The 93rd Academy Awards have been a long time coming. The Academy delayed the awards by two months, accommodating films released in 2020 through to February 2021. In addition, movies released straight to digital platforms like HBO Max are also eligible for Oscars. One positive is, thanks to the delay, you can stream almost all of the films right now…

The Oscars are spread over two locations: Los Angeles Union Station and the Dolby Theater. Only nominees, their guest and presenters have been given the green light to attend. Nominees who don’t attend won’t be allowed to Zoom in…

The Oscars will air on ABC in the US. To stream online, there are a couple of options:

– ABC is streaming the live broadcast of the Oscars on the ABC website, but only to specific cities and only after you sign in with a participating pay TV provider — typically a cable company, satellite provider or livestreaming service.
– Another option is Locast, which streams local broadcasters, including ABC, in certain large US cities, for free. And of course, you could always use an antenna to try to pick up the ABC station in your area (DVR optional).
– If you subscribe to a live TV streaming service that carries ABC in your city, you can use it to watch the Oscars too. AT&T TV, Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV all carry ABC in most US cities. All of them offer a seven-day free trial, so you can sign up now and cancel after the ceremony if you want. Note that Sling TV, Fubo TV, AT&T and Philo don’t carry ABC at all…

Is there an Oscars red carpet?
It’ll be a much smaller red carpet event this year, but we might see a few interesting face-mask-and-outfit-coordinated combos if the Grammys are anything to go by (although you won’t see nominees wearing masks during the show). Based on last year’s programming, you’ll be able to watch the red carpet on the ABC site or app from 5:30 p.m. ET, the Academy’s official Twitter from 6:30 p.m. ET, or the E network, available on many live TV streaming services, from 5 p.m. ET…

Who’s presenting the Oscars?
Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Bong Joon-ho, Don Cheadle, Bryan Cranston, Laura Dern, Harrison Ford, Regina King, Marlee Matlin, Rita Moreno, Joaquin Phoenix, Brad Pitt, Reese Witherspoon, Renée Zellweger and Zendaya will be handing out awards.

Reader Interactions

80Comments

  3. 3.

    JMG

    How can they have a celebration of movies in a year where nobody was allowed to go to the movies? In a year where the biggest box office draw of the last decade, the MCU, moved into streaming episodic TV without the slightest hitch? Valuable media die. I oughtta know, I was a print newspaper guy in its heyday of the ’80s and ’90s. I mean, this is the ultimate Bill Murray Oscars. Didn’t see it.

  5. 5.

    JMG

    @Raven: I can get that, but I’ve always been a sports guy and not so much a movie guy and this past year my movie needs were handled by TCM.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    FYI (emphasis added).

    After the broadcast, the Oscars awards ceremony will be available on demand at abc.com or the ABC app to viewers within the U.S. who are signed in with a participating TV provider through May 2, 2021. After that date, no sign-in is required. Source

    Am not a watcher of awards shows (the sole exception being the Tonys) so will read about it later.

    Worst Oscar performance shall eternally be the opening production that included Rob Lowe/Snow White mess (segment starts about 4:30).

  7. 7.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Because theaters are closed, I haven’t heard anything about movies this year. I gather they’re considering things that went straight to cable, which doesn’t surprise me.

  9. 9.

    JPL

    I do love Regina King, and she and the writers are doing the best with a the crazy situation that we find ourselves in.   Part of me wishes she had a wheel to spin before announcing the winners.

  10. 10.

    L85NJGT

    The theater run eligibility requirement has become ridiculous when most academy members watch nominated film “screeners” at home via streaming.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    Ya say ya want more celebrities than you can shake a stick at? Okey dokey.

    While nice to see he was included, the elderly Alfred Hitchcock emits a “Where am I and why am I here?” vibe. Also get the impression William Conrad’s dresser forgot the suspenders.

    ;)

    Still have (someplace) a puzzling promo item from Night of 1000 Stars. A keychain, the permanently attached tag of which is engraved with the name, logo, date and network of the show. Said tag being nearly a foot long, probably 3 or 4 inches wide. And made of solid brass.

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    Arrrghh! Fix.

    Ya say ya want more celebrities than you can shake a stick at? Okey dokey.

    While nice to see he was included, the elderly Alfred Hitchcock emits a “Where am I and why am I here?” vibe. Also get the impression William Conrad’s dresser forgot the suspenders.

    ;)

    Still have (someplace) a puzzling promo item from Night of 1000 Stars. A keychain, the permanently attached tag of which is engraved with the name, logo, date and network of the show. Said tag being nearly a foot long, probably 3 or 4 inches wide. And made of solid brass.

  18. 18.

    debbie

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Thanks, that’s one I’ve never seen. The Union Stations in Philadelphia and Washington DC are beautiful. All that’s left of the one here is the Arch, and judging by that, I’d bet it was a beauty too.

  20. 20.

    JPL

    @raven: Did you watch Regina King in Seven Seconds?  When she spoke about Chauvin trial, I thought about the scene with her and her son in the mini-series

    Since I’ve been helping out with the grand imp,  I have Disney also.

  21. 21.

    Yutsano

    “Me mum met me dad, they had sex. It was amazing!”

    With your mother in the audience watching.

    GG Daniel. GG.

  26. 26.

    Mary G

    Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) just became the first Black women to win the Oscar for makeup and hairstyling.
    Daniel Kaluuya wins best supporting actor. Well deserved IMO.

    I wonder if MAGAts are watching and grinding their teeth, or do they just watch old movies?

  29. 29.

    Mary G

    I like the long, sloppy heartfelt speeches full of power and poignancy WAY more than watching someone trying to remember to thank their drama teacher with a ticking time bomb in front of them.#Oscars— Tom and Lorenzo (@tomandlorenzo) April 26, 2021

    Ditto. The ones I hate come up, pull out a piece of paper and rattle off a long list of names including the dogsitter.

  34. 34.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    I see “the Academy” didn’t nominate John Wayne, again.

     

    They’re so biased against real America.

  37. 37.

    CaseyL

    I am utterly delighted to see one after another person of color win tonight, but I’m also astonished:  did the Academy Old (White) Guard just check out of voting altogether because of Covid?  Did the years-long effort to get a more representative Academy membership finally reach critical mass?

  38. 38.

    Yutsano

    @CaseyL:  I was pretending to not care. But damn if this hasn’t been the most representative Oscars I’ve seen in a while.

  39. 39.

    zhena gogolia

    It sounds good, but I’m too lazy to turn on the TV. Haven’t seen a single movie.

  41. 41.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    so far none of the Oscar winners have thanked Trump for the vaccine – talk about ingratitude

  45. 45.

    Mary G

    An hour into the Oscars, and it's clear the best live pandemic broadcast is still the Democratic National Convention. And it's not even close— Adam Blickstein (@AdamBlickstein) April 26, 2021

  46. 46.

    persistentillusion

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Nice, BiGC.  I traveled from CO to Philly via train. mostly because I wanted to do so. Denver – Union Station, Omaha – Union Station, Chicago – Union Station, Pittsburgh – Union Station, Philly – oddly enough Union Station.

  53. 53.

    hueyplong

    I think Union Station St Louis is where Truman held up the Chicago Tribune front page (Dewey Defeats Truman).

  54. 54.

    citizen dave

    @Baud: I never thought about or knew about copyrights on buildings until a recent youtube video came across my feed about why it’s likely illegal to take/profit from photos of the Eiffel Tower at night but not in the daytime (the lights are circa 1985).   Here’s a non-video explanation (I’m sure Bill knows all about this stuff): https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/paris/articles/why-its-illegal-to-take-pictures-of-the-eiffel-tower-at-night/

     

    Still seems weird to me that things so obviously in the public sphere have copyright protection.

  55. 55.

    dnfree

    Mank is winning some Oscars now.  We hardly ever quit watching a movie (unless I quit because of violence), but we quit watching Mank. Way too inside baseball, so to speak. For that same reason, I figured it would win awards.

  56. 56.

    James E Powell

    @JMG:

    I was a print newspaper guy in its heyday of the ’80s and ’90s.

    Was the really the heydays for newspapers? I thought it was back in the 40s when the big towns all had like three or four newspapers and they had those cameras with the huge flash bulbs and all the men wore hats and smoked. Good times.

  57. 57.

    CaseyL

    @James E Powell: That was possibly the zenith of newspaper importance as a source of relatively in-depth information.  The only competition was radio (immediate and timely, but not very detailed or deep) and newsreels.

  58. 58.

    guachi

    I don’t watch the Oscars but I usually use them as a way to get a list of movies to give a second look to. But I just can’t get into them this year. Too bad as I have a wall of physical discs behind me and it’d be nice to add some 2020 titles to it. :(

  59. 59.

    gwangung

    @guachi: Well, I consider this year a step forward. The number of Asian women who’ve won acting Oscars for playing Asian characters have FINALLY equalled the number of white women who’ve women acting Oscars for playing Asian characters.

  60. 60.

    guachi

    @gwangung: It’s not the content of the movies that has kept me away it’s COVID and movies in general. I just don’t care enough to even look up the nominees.

    I’m vastly more excited that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly comes to 4k tomorrow (as well as Dirty Dancing). And the third Thin Man movie, Another Thin Man, gets a stellar blu-ray release from Warner Bros. Archive.

  62. 62.

    Another Scott

    MANK has more Oscars than CITIZEN KANE

    — Jesse Hawken (@jessehawken) April 26, 2021

    (via nycsouthpaw)

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“Who hasn’t seen any movies recently.”)

  63. 63.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @persistentillusion: There’s a reason for that, cities used to have separate stations for each railroad(Santa Fe, Union Pacific…), cities decided that this wasn’t overly efficient, so they built one train station that served all the railroads, Union Station.

  64. 64.

    citizen dave

    @dnfree: Agree.  I slept through the first hour of it one night.  We watched the second hour the next night, after I had learned it was about citizen kane.  I’ve posted here before about how shady/inaccurate Mank is.  Also so very damned boring.  Incredibly dull.

    Cool with nomadland winning–what was that?  Directing?  (In the other room listening).  Good movie.  But the Oscars should probably be cancelled.

  66. 66.

    Brachiator

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    There’s a reason for that, cities used to have separate stations for each railroad(Santa Fe, Union Pacific…), cities decided that this wasn’t overly efficient, so they built one train station that served all the railroads, Union Station.

    Union Stations also serviced a city’s main post office. I think that some mail was processed in the trains en route to the post office. The post office next to Union Station is also a fairly impressive architectural building. It may have been converted into some other use by now.

    This was the first time in years that I did not see any of the nominated films, or many films at all. Often I was not even in much of a mood to watch any that might have been available on streaming services.

  67. 67.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    What an upset!  Old, very successful white people rallied to snatch Oscar from the jaws of the new and different.

    Frances McDormand now has more Oscars than Meryl Streep.

    Anthony Hopkins now has more Oscars than Paul Newman and Cary Grant, combined.

  69. 69.

    MagdaInBlack

    I used to enjoy the Oscars, but anymore I just don’t care. I did flip through some photos at The Guardian and I have a question: Wtf was Glenn Close wearing??

  73. 73.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    This is not surprising, The Stonecutters rig every Oscar night.

  75. 75.

    hilts

    @citizen dave:

    The Oscars should probably be cancelled.

    I’d be ok with that.

    I’ve got the National Society of Film Critics, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Gotham Independent Film Awards.  They’re good enough for me.

  76. 76.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @hilts: ​
     

    I always look forward to the AVN Awards. There’s no politics, they just focus on the art of film.

  78. 78.

    Shalimar

    @gwangung: The other day I saw a Hawaii 5-0 episode where Ricardo Montalban played a Japanese gangster. He made no effort to change his accent or appear Japanese other than eye makeup to try to change his appearance a little.  He was basically a Mexican guy with weird eyes and a Japanese daughter who was inexplicably being pursued by samurai assassins.

    As bad as Hollywood has been the last 40 years, they used to be far worse.

  80. 80.

    Betty

    @debbie: It’s a great loss that so !and many beautiful train stations were not preserved – even the ones in small towns

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