Hey Sickos,
The Oscars were on Sunday and if you were following the discourse leading up to the ceremony you weren’t surprised by too much. PTA (Best Director, Best Picture), Amy Madigan (Best Supporting Actress), Ryan Coogler (Best Original Screenplay) & Jessie Buckley (Best Actress) all won the awards it had been looking like they were going to win for weeks. I like to imagine that, unlike the Golden Globes, The Academy Awards told Sean Penn he couldn’t smoke inside so he stayed home, but he won his (deserving) Oscar anyway.
Michael B. Jordan winning Best Actor was the only happy minor surprise as front runner Timothée Chalamet’s stock started falling a few months ago. MBJ was great in Sinners and he’s been beloved (by me) since his role as Wallace in The Wire, so it was nice to see him recognized.
I was hoping to have more to write about but the ceremony was pretty uneventful. No one even slapped anyone! So I will just say that while the Shorts categories are normally pretty ignorable, but this year a had actually seen one of the two winners when it screened at South By Southwest last year in Austin. If you have 18 minutes I highly recommend you watch The Singers which is currently available to stream on Netflix.
It is a small story of a singing competition in a bar, shot beautifully on film and wholly improvised using non actors the filmmakers found on social media. It’ll make you feel good, which we all need right now.