IIRC, Brian Cox passed on reprising the role of Lecter because he thought it would bomb. And while Cox is arguably the better portrayal, Hopkins scored the Oscar for best dramatic lead, despite only appearing for 15 minutes. Anne Hathaway won Best Actress in 15 minutes of screen time (and half the talent).
Close. Hopkins is only in
Silence of the Lambs for about half an hour total, IIRC, but still went into Best Actor over Supporting. Honestly, I can see both sides, because by one metric he clearly is a supporting role, but by another - what's the most memorable aspect of that film, especially culturally?
Also, Anne Hathaway only won Best Supporting Actress, which is fair. 15 minutes isn't even the least screentime an actor has had to win - both Judi Dench and Beatrice Straight won for roles that were in less than 10 minutes of their movies.
Never forget last year when the Academy gave Parasite an Oscar just so they wouldn't get a lecture from the non-English speaking director.
Parasite was a deserved winner. They wouldn't worry about a lecture from him, though - he's Asian. As #Oscarssowhite demonstrated from a few years back, the real pushback is only when black people get passed over. See the people mad Chadwick Boseman didn't win Best Actor this year. They complain all the time about Best Director, ignoring that in the last decade more than half have been latino and now we have an Asian woman who won.
All of that was a direct quote from Tyler Perry's acceptance speech. He won some humanitarian award.
His was one of the speeches I appreciated,
because his no hatred list included white people and police. It was about sending a positive message to all, rather than only the people currently in vogue to give a shit about. I don't care about a single thing he produces (though he works in
Gone Girl) but he seems like he's genuinely trying to help.
Most of the speeches were too long, though - it really needed that 'the orchestra will drown you out after 90 seconds' thing they usually have. I did enjoy a few - Frances McDormand telling everyone to go back to the cinemas and then keeping her Best Actress speech very short and related to her character was great. The little old Korean lady who won Best Supporting Actress (which, I haven't seen
Minari, but made me think, 'Oh, I'm guessing she dies in the film then') was rambling and fun. And when Thomas Vinterberg said, 'One last thing,' I was over it, but he then talked about his daughter who died just before filming and was meant to be in the movie, and it was moving and the only time a speech that could have been cut short had a reason to go long.
Just wanted to say that Anthony Hopkins gave the perfomance of a lifetime.
Yeah, he's devastating in
The Father. Haven't seen the other performances, but it was by no means an undeserving performance.
Now it's nominating the most woke movie, a speech on the environment, civil rights, etc, and Trump jokes.
I don't think they mentioned Trump once, actually. But it was definitely the Bloscars, because they
really wanted to make a big deal about 'no, we're not stodgy white people, will care about the 13%!' The 'guess the nomination' Best Song segment should have been right up my alley, but it really flopped and flopped hard, and maybe it wasn't the greatest idea to point out in-ceremony the times when you think the Oscars have gotten it wrong. Glenn Close knowing about 'Da Butt' was funny, and though I'm 99% sure she was told the specific details, I'd actually believe she's the sort of person who would know her movie trivia well enough to get that question right.
One of the main reasons they expanded the Best Picture field to more than five is because the Oscars are more popular in years where people have seen the films nominated, so it allows some bigger films that might not fit into the Oscar-bait category get nominations, like
Mad Max: Fury Road and
Black Panther. So I do think the pandemic was a big reason for the lower ratings, because people just weren't talking about movies as much. Not going to the cinema means not seeing all the ads for other films, not talking about the movies you've seen, not having as strong a connection to some films which comes from seeing them in that setting - just in general movies felt like they were only talked about in terms of their absence, rather than people talking about watching them.
The nominated films are likely pretty solid.
Nomadland and
The Father I thought were both very good in very different ways, and they're not about wokeness at all.
Nomadland is about people, mostly middle-aged and older, mostly white, who are very poor, but finding what freedom and community they can.
The Father is pretty clearly based on a play, but is a very hard watch about a man's dementia but in a much more interesting, more internal way than the more maudlin way that it's usually dealt with. The Oscars are, it's true, often obsessed with 'issue' movies - but what makes it worse now is the wokescolds. Partly because it's never enough. But also because they only care about
their issues, and so if that's not catered to, then they get up in arms. Chadwick Boseman didn't win?
Must be because he's black, couldn't at all be because if you've seen
The Father then you can completely see why Anthony Hopkins won.
There's so many things that are causes, but it's being demanded that you care about
this cause that they are pushing, and if you don't, you're a bad person. No, wait, you haven't realised they're mad about
this cause now? Guess you're still a Nazi. And because they're so shallow, it remains only about the surface level. Doesn't matter if another film was better,
this was a film about the black experience so it should have won everything. Oh, wait, we care about Asians this week -
Minari should have won everything. And if you disagree you're the devil.
Tl;dr: The ceremony sucked. Frances McDormand is cool. Wokeness isn't the same as political - so some moments here and there were one without the other. And while you can certainly judge movies without having seen them - the academy seems to do that all the time - if all you do is see the judgement of films through the prism of idpol, then you're a moron whose opinion can be safely discarded.
