Oscar Wrap Up

So, the Oscars happened.

I made no secret of the fact that I was going to hate watch the Oscars this year, because let’s be honest the Academy was a mess. Too much Queen and too much Roma and not to get all Drake or anything but I’m upset. However, I have to admit that I had fun watching with everyone. Chatting with everyone made me realize that watching the Oscars should always be a group activity. If you missed Our watch party, you can hear us talk about it some more in this week’s podcast but for now here are a couple highlights.


Oscar night started off with a performance by Queen that the crowd seemed to really love but being the ignorant millennial that I am, I couldn’t relate. Adam Lambert’s hair was on point as usual for those wondering.

We were given the gift of three not hosts with Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Maya Rudolph who were as funny as could be expected. They got laughs with what some would consider spicy commentary on the state of the academy, female body parts and the requisite Trump joke. They managed to cram a lot into less than three minutes.

Regina king was revealed to be the winner of the supporting actress category for ‘If Beale Street could Talk’ and the room was satisfied. Although she wasn’t my personal favorite for the award it was a well-deserved win. She delivered a lovely speech in tears as she thanked those who supported her over the years.

Blank Panther won for best costume design. This was a welcome surprise as most of us expected the favorite to go home with this award. The award was presented by Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry who were dressed to entertain in costumes inspired by the favorite.

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s performance was by far the most uncomfortable moment of the night. When the onscreen couple reached the climax of their performance (pun intended) we were all collectively leaning back in our seats regretting the moment those two walked on to the stage together.

Spike Lee finally won a competitive Oscar, taking home best adapted screenplay for BlacKkKlansman. He was very excited and delivered a speech we would all be better off reading than hearing.

Best dressed of the night goes to Amandla Stenberg and Billy Porter respectively. Amandla was gorgeous in a nude fringe covered dress serving us 1920 vibes, while Billy stunned in his Tuxedo velvet dress.

Olivia Colman won Best Actress and gave one of the most genuine speeches of the night. She was adorable as she called out to Glenn Close in the audience. Well, we thought she was adorable Glenn probably could have done without the attention at that particular moment.

Roma won big leaving with 3 of its 7 nominations for director, cinematography and foreign language film. I won’t lie I don’t think he deserved Cinematography, but I will learn to accept that this world is flawed.

Green Book won Best Picture and it didn’t deserve it. We waited with bated breath for someone to announce that a mistake had been made, but resigned ourselves to the sorry state of cinema while a large group of White writers described how they couldn’t have done justice to this Black story without their White lead. The film was subpar at best and a lackluster effort at adding diversity to the Academy. We can do better. We have done better. Octavia Spencer and Mahershala Ali deserve better.


 Khadijah Brown is an English Major at FIU  pursing a Certificate in Film studies.