Jacob Borislow takes you through the highlights - and low-lights - of the 93rd Academy Awards.

Article by Jacob Borislow, AKSM News

LOS ANGELES - The Academy Awards were last week and after giving myself suitable time to reflect on the program as a whole I can say with confidence it was an overall great show. To address one of the obvious differences from previous Academy Awards, I actually enjoyed the change of venue from the Dolby Theatre to the Art Deco styled Union Station. While it did lose some of its prestigiousness in the transfer it also felt more like an old school awards show that was reminiscent of dinner entertainment at a night club. Seeing people (safely) not wearing masks also felt like a slight return to normal and gave off the impression that with a high number of safety precautions in place behind the scenes it is possible to put on a relatively normal looking show. Another change which did not seemingly have anything to do with the pandemic was giving the winners of awards the opportunity to give as long a speech as they wanted.

Even though I may be in the minority, I felt that this was actually not a problem especially due to these hardworking individuals deserving their chance to say what they want since some may never have the chance again. The increase in time appeared to be balanced out by not showing clips of many of the movies nominated but I feel that this is a fair trade. While showing an excerpt of the film nominations for music or cinematography does make sense, showing a clip of the nominations for best film or other categories that could not be expressed in a short film clip was a sacrifice that made more than enough sense.

While I do feel that the speakers should have as much time as they wanted (within reason) there was a huge time problem that needs to be addressed and fixed for next year. I’m talking about the “In Memoriam” section which featured names going by so quickly it was honestly more than a little disrespectful to the people. How did we have time to give the winners as much time as they needed to speak but then couldn’t keep the names of the people we lost this year up on the screen for longer than a few seconds?

Moving on from the time aspect to what the awards show is actually about, the winners were generally well deserved. This was by far the most diverse Oscars and the winners thankfully reflected that too. I could talk about all the well deserving winners like Nomadland and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom but everyone already has been talking about those. What I’m particularly excited won was “If Anything Happens I Love you” which is a deeply moving short that is on Netflix and is just as much a reflection of our unfortunate modern reality as the racial reckoning that helped minority led films get the spotlight they deserve. If you have not yet checked it out (and are ok with the trigger warnings of gun violence and also a short that while beautiful is also ultimately depressing) then I highly recommend it.

As for the winner that everyone is least favorably talking about, Anthony Hopkins winning Best Actor for his role in The Father and beating out the posthumous nomination for Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, I feel that this is complicated. Obviously Boseman is not the first person to posthumously be nominated and then not win, James Dean for example lost two posthumous nominations, however Boseman’s case can especially be looked at negatively since the Oscars decided to feature the Best Actor nomination last to in theory highlight Boseman’s win which didn’t come to be. I cannot really fault the Oscars for the decision to feature the award last as obviously they had no way of knowing beforehand and it was a calculated risk that did not pay off. It was also a series of unfortunate events since Anthony Hopkins also happened to be asleep and so the broadcast just...ended after he was announced as the winner.

The ending aside, I still feel that the Oscars were ultimately a success and while there were definite problems that people are all too happy to focus on, it was also an Oscars where almost half the winners were not white men and there weren’t any particular technical glitches or cringeworthy segments. Speaking from personal experience, all of the winners were extremely well deserved as were the majority of the nominations and so I definitely recommend checking out any of the films that sound remotely interesting especially the films currently streaming and included on various streaming services.