Topic: Khushrenada's Annual Oscar Thread. 2017 Edition.

[Plugabugz]

The Annual Scifi Snub continues as normal, i guess.

[Fatty The Hutt]

What a crazy Oscars show. Dat ending. Too bad.
I thought Jimmy Kimmel did pretty well. Made me laugh more than once. And I thought the final Matt Damon snub when he and Affleck were presenting was particularly funny.

[Khushrenada]

It's amazing how much he's been able to get out of that Matt Damon feud joke but it still keeps working. Damon makes for a great foil. I'm not a huge fan of Kimmel but he seems to have made an effort to keep things polite and positive. Almost felt like he was trying to mimic Ellen a bit. That said, I did enjoy a few of his bits and lines. His mocking of We Made A Zoo is wonderful little bit. Even better was when Matt Damon said he actually liked his performance in that one and Ben Affleck looked at him and asked, Really?!

[nickmitch]

I liked Kimmel's hosting.  I laughed quite a bit.  He absolutely nailed one joke about Moonlight that fell completely flat on the audience, with the recovery making the joke even funnier.  I think his fumble recoveries are what impressed me the most, outside of the bit with the tourists.

[nickmitch]

Now, it is my plan to elaborate more on these movies but for now I'm just going to give a quick rundown of how I'd rank the Best Picture nominees.

9 - Fences
8 - Moonlight
7 - Lion
6 - Manchester By The Sea
5 - Arrival
4 - Hacksaw Ridge
3 - Hell or High Water
2 - Hidden Figures
1 - La La Land

So, considering Nickmitch's recently posted opinions on Moonlight and La La Land, I sense there could be some disagreement between us on those films so I do want to elaborate more on my rankings here. However, I do want to make the disclaimer that although La La Land is my number 1 choice, it's kind of a default choice because it is a weak year and the competition is weak.

Might be more than "some" here, LOL.

Like I said in the review thread, I don't think I saw the same La La Land as everyone else.  I'm really glad Moonlight won.  I haven't seen all the nominees, but I doubt it could be topped.

Well, not to make this a racial thing, but I also hear that La La Land is about a white guy who's trying to "save" Jazz. And there's nothing wrong with that, on the surface, but I haven't seen the film to judge it any deeper than the description that was given to me. But it's also a musical and outside of Disney animated movies, I don't really like musicals.

A more specific synopsis is that Ryan Gosling is trying to start a jazz club to preserve the music.  Light spoiler: He then joins John Legend's band, so that he can have steady work.  The band in question does a highly experimental version of jazz that Gosling doesn't like (and it doesn't look like Legend enjoys it too much himself).  There's then a big concert scene where the band performs a fun, pop number.  So, the weird racial thing about it was that the only foil to this plot point was John Legend's character.  I have some problems drawing this conclusion with the major one being that Gosling is really the only white guy you see playing jazz.  Most everyone else that I could remember was black.  Other contention, again, light spoiler: The song from the big concert scene is decidedly not a jazz number.  (Yet another premise abandoned by the film.)  They clearly weren't going to do a big scene with intentionally terrible music, and John Legend performed a song that was more like something he would play IRL, with Gosling doing a very half-hearted solo.

[Khushrenada]

Another funny moment of the night was when Casey Affleck won and praised Denzel Washington and when the camera cut to Denzel, he just looked pissed. I saw this comment on the AV Club that perfectly encapsulated the moment:

Casey: "Denzel taught me how to act!"
Denzel: (thinking) "Motherfucker didn't learn **** from me."

Overall, I still enjoyed my time watching it. I know the show can sometimes be bloated and seems to move along with a lot of filler yet it never felt like it was overly getting rushed near the end and was allowed to just unfold at its own pace. Yeah, there was some protest type speeches but they all felt kind of tired and weren't anything I'd call inspiring. Just the same comments and statements that have been getting made for awhile. But then speeches are usually the worst part of the Oscars.

[BlackNMild2k1]

This bit was great

But what is the beef between Kimmel and Matt Damon. LOL
I know it's nothing super serious, but Jimmy seems so adamant about calling out Matt Damon


this one by Matt Damon was pretty good too.

F'n LMAO