Oscars 2020 Livesnark

Another year, another wasted Sunday night as the Virtual Signalling Olympics for movie stars were a thing and I was on the case via my @DirkBelig Twitter account. Now for your dining and dancing pleasure here's what I had to say:

• So does this Janelle Monae #Oscars opening take care of all the #OscarsSoWhite issues and check the intersectionality boxes?
• Why aren't Steve Martin and Chris Rock just hosting the #Oscars? This opening was probably this good because they would be one and done.
• Brad Pitt finally wins an acting #Oscars and takes a massive dump on the stage to whine about the Democrats' failed sham impeachment. Classless and unnecessary. He's a giant star and producer and doesn't need to virtue signal like this to get work. Weak. Gonna be a long night.
• Toy Story Quatro wins Best Animated Feature at #Oscars to the surprise of no one. The nominations freezing out Frozen II were as much as the Mouse could lose. How did Hair Love win when we were told no black people were nominated? Looks cute.
• So every intro and every acceptance speech at the #Oscars is going to be packed with Leftist politics and wokescolding? Going to be interesting to see how the ratings dive as the Deplorables tune out?
• Why do I know that the Frozen II "Into The Unknown" medley with the global dubbing Elsas was assembled by the #Oscars producers requesting photos of the other 44 and picking the 10 hottest?
• Irony is the Best Original Screenplay being intro'ed with horrible banter for Annie Hall and Neo. Parasite wins. I liked it until the ending which was so bad that it nearly sank the entire film. Snowpiercer also had a bad ending. He's the Bong Joon-Ho is the Korean Alex Garland.
• Kind of a shocker for Taika Waititi to win Best Adapted Screenplay #Oscars for Jojo Rabbit. Figured Greta Gerwig would be an automatic after all the whining over her lack of Best Director nom. (Little Woman was OK, but her choice of randomizing the timeline was a bad choice.)
• Too long a buildup to the point of the Maya Rudolph/Kristen Wiig bit. What production was designed for Once Upon A Time...? They dug out photos of Hollywood in 1969 and recreated it. Parasite created everything from scratch. (The whole slum street was on a soundstage.) #Oscars
• Little Women wins Best Costume Design #Oscars. Period pictures usually have a leg up in this category, but this was merited. What the heck is that deep cut Smashing Pumpkins track doing in the iFone advert?
• Dear gawd. Why is Greta Thumbsucker here? Oh, that's right, it's to show the power of Leftist propaganda & agitprop to bamboozle the ignorant, stupid & fearful under the color of "non-fiction" documentaries when they're usually tissues of lies. #Oscars
• Considering how few white men have won #Oscars so far while plenty of women/minorities have snagged trophies makes the whole #OscarsSoWhite tantrum seem unfounded. There's more than just the top categories, folks.
• No surprise that Laura Dern won Best Supporting Actress; she's won every precursor award. She was good and this is partially a Career Achievement #Oscars Award like Pitt's.
• #Oscars audience seems split between head-bobbing and utter confusion as to why Eminem is performing "Mom's Spaghetti", his Oscar-winning Best Song from 2002. Wait, what? It's been 17 years since it won?!? #TimeFlies 
• Best Sound Editing goes to Ford v Ferrari. Best Sound goes to 1917. For max irony, I muted their acceptance speeches. (Not really) #Oscars 
• YES! Roger Deakins gets his 2nd Best Cinematography #Oscars. 1917 didn't need its one-shot gimmick, but Deakins made it work. The nighttime scene with the flares alone was worth it alone. A legend.
• Ford v Ferrari wins Best Editing at #Oscars. Worthy victory in a tough category this year. Parasite and Jojo Rabbit could've legitimately won. Parasite's cinematography was also excellent. If not for Deakins', it should've won.
• First completely wrong winner at #Oscars as 1917 wins Best Visual Effects over Avengers: Endgame or Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. This is the oldsters pissing on the "kiddie movies" like when Intersuckular won Best VFX. Boooooo!!!! Hilarious intro with the Cats victims.
• And the #Oscars rebound with the correct winner of Best Hair and Makeup for Bombshell. The way they gave John Lithgow the Churchill treatment (same makeup guy did Darkest Hour) and transformed Charlize Theron into Megan Kelly was amazeballs.
• In the Least Surprising #Oscars category victory, Best International Feature (formerly Best Foreign Language) goes to Parasite. This was the no-brainer bet other than pretty much all the acting categories.
• Oh look, it's the bitter angry actress who claimed men were frightened of strong female characters with two well-liked actresses whose beloved characters are badass lust objects of those same men.[thinking emoji] #Oscars
• Hildur Guðnadóttir wins the Best Original Score #Oscars and replaces Matthew McConaughey as Oscar Winner Whose Name You Always Have To Google The Spelling. Elton John wins Best Song, his second, but first for Bernie Taupin. 
• Bong Joon-Ho is surprise winner for Best Director. I figured they may finally recognize Quentin Tarantino while handing Best Picture to the technically brilliant, but emotionally empty 1917. This is going to blow up a lot of #Oscars pools. Parasite sweep ahead?
• Another year, another refusal of the #Oscars to use Jim Carroll's "People Who Died" for their people who died montage. Yeesh, why didn't they select an proper key for Billie Eilish to sing in. Way too low. Figured Kirk Douglas would close, but no Orson Bean or Bob Conrad?
• Wakawaka Phoenix wins Best Actor, again no surprise. Remember when he made I'm Not Here and everyone thought he'd gone insane. (I knew he was putting on.) Now he's "Hold my beering" Brad Pitt to take the most massive dump he can on the stage with a nutso political rant. #Oscars
• In response to Stephen Miller @redsteez: "Jesus, Joaquin is actually going to shoot someone at the end of this isn’t he?"OK, so I'm not the only one who thought this was going to happen. #Oscars
• Appropriate that Rami Malek, who won an #Oscars imitating a famous singer, hands the award to Renée Zellweger for imitating a famous singer. [roll eyes emoji] Why do actors who create fictional characters out of nothing keep rewarded impressions? Jeez, this speech is worse than Joker's.
• What's the bigger #Oscars shocker: That Parasite won Best Picture or that Jane Fonda wasn't the most obnoxious speechifier? I didn't love any of the nominated pictures this year. Many had serious script issues and its ending wrecked the film, but at least it failed the least.
• After letting Joker and Judy ramble endlessly about nonsense, they cut the mic off for the Best Picture winners? So typical #Oscars
• Exit #Oscars Thoughts: * The show was dull with very few surprises beyond the Parasite upsets.
  * The show was overloaded with obvious diversity & inclusion. While Hollyweird's rich white liberal guilt needed it, the ratings will probably show the Normals tuned out. 1/
• So glad The Irishman got skunked on all noms. It was my least fave pic and its noms prevented 11 more deserving folks like Greta Gerwig, who didn't deserve her Lady Bird nom, but did well with Little Women, though the scrambled timeline was a fatal flaw. Still better than Marty
• * Surprised Tarantino didn't win. I thought they might spread the wealth around and would've guessed he'd win for Once while 1917 won Best Pic.
  * After Janelle Monae's snappy opener & Steve Martin/Chris Rock, the show lost steam as wokeness and TDS took over. 3/
  

"I Lost My Body" Review

If you're familiar with The Addams Family - TV show or movie - you'll recall the disembodied hand, Thing, which popped out of a box on the TV show and ran around freely in the movies (with the performer's body digitally erased). Have you ever wondered where Thing came from and what a movie about him trying to cross Paris to reunite with his host body would be like? Me neither, but that could explain the plot of the artsy animated French movie I Lost My Body - winner of an award at Cannes 2019 and up for a Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2020 - as well as anything in the actual movie.

The hand belonged to Naoufel (voiced in the English dub by Dev Patel), an aimless young man whose parents were killed in an auto accident, which he survived, and is currently living in Paris with his distant uncle and mean cousin. He's delivering pizzas, frequently late, to the annoyance of his boss. One night he doesn't meet cute with with Gabrielle (Alia Shawkat) when he's unable to work the security door of her apartment to deliver her pizza, which had been mangled in a delivery mishap. With it raining outside, he hangs in the lobby, eating her pizza while talking with her through the intercom.

Obsessed by her voice, he proceeds to locate her work at a library and follows her to her woodworker uncle's (George Wendt) shop because that's not the least bit stalkerish at all. He begs the uncle to take him on as an apprentice, a gig which comes with a room above the shop, in order to be around when she comes to visit. She doesn't realize who he is, which surely won't backfire somewhere down the line.

Intercut between his shy attempts to impress this snarky girl and flashbacks to his childhood - with plenty of references to flies, an astronaut, and so many compositions featuring the hand which will eventually be disassociated from its host because they don't want you to miss the symbolism, get it? - we follow Thing the hand from one close scrap to another, fighting off animal predators and environmental threats as it tries to make its way back to Naoufel.

While it's a critical smash and clearly better people than this reviewer reveled in its "meaning" (Narrator: "Those people are high.") in online reviews, I Lost My Body left me cold, especially in its inconclusive ending. Maybe it's a French thing, but watching a dork mismanage his love life and then maim himself with improper shop safety skills isn't that edifying. While it has a mesmerizing pace (read: bordering on boring) and intriguing premise, it doesn't add up to much. If it had simply been Thing's Big Adventure it would've been an oddball movie half its length and twice as entertaining.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.