Oscars 2023: A Quick Recap
Another year of movies is behind us. Another Academy Awards gala is done, and the winners are announced. Now we have a little over a month of chill until Cannes starts the next award season.
This year’s winners weren’t surprising. And that’s actually good. If you followed the previous awards, the expectations were already set. If you read any piece of predictions (like mine), you knew there were only a few choices. To be honest, my picks were only 50% accurate but the wrong ones got the second expected result. The surprise I got was in live-action shorts (An Irish Goodbye) and in the original score (All Quiet on the Western Front). Choosing the winner in music was tricky because all the nominees had a good pitch but none was a 100% candidate to win for me.
The most important gold was put in the hands that already scored most of the awards before. Everybody knew what film will win the best picture or actors categories. There was a little bit of uncertainty but no biggie. It’s always a mystery which ones will be chosen as “political” categories.
Because yes, of course, this is full of politics and political correctness. Just get over it. We live in a world where we need to make rules to force “old white men” to hire people who don’t always fit this description. I believe it’ll change eventually, but this takes time.
This is why I am absolutely fine with the Original Screenplay winner – Sarah Polley. She absolutely deserved it even though I didn’t exactly like the film itself. It was a good one but it lacked a bit. Most of the personality in “this film “Women Talking” was achieved because of the high-quality actors and not the story. But it was still an important one about a minority group and most importantly – about women.
The best consolation award was Visual Effects for Avatar and Costumes for Black Panther. Both films won simply to acknowledge them. Neither of them is actually worth watching. Both are pretty pictures with no plot so they just got the “pretty” awards.
The same goes for the Best Sound for “Maverick”. This is a classic example of people who don’t understand the category voting on it. And to be frank, I don’t have the expertise here to compare it. But in my experience, this category usually goes to music films (or something that has noticeable sounds) because it’s just easy to assume. (I’ll never forgive that First Man didn’t get them.)
I don’t really like to point out “snobs” or “big losers”. We have five contenders in each category (except Best Picture) and I feel like being in the final five is a huge win. Especially because the nominees are selected by people who work in the same field. Yet the winners are voted by the whole Academy. Not getting an Oscar doesn’t make a film a loser. They are still amazing films and they also deserved to win. But not all can. I truly recommend Tar and The Fabelmans. These are incredible. Having an Oscar is a privilege but it doesn’t mean the rest didn’t matter.
And about the gala… It was boring. It had all the things it had to have and nothing more. And I’m actually happy about it. There was no Will Smith kind of drama (though I believe a lot of people watched it hoping for it) nor any extras that fill the time. And I am grateful since it is not what I come for. I loved the emotional speeches, especially Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser’s. I didn’t love Kimmel’s hosting but he was better than Chris Rock. Still, I don’t get why there had to be these distasteful jokes. It could’ve been better, yes. But it was good enough.
