Sunday Best: Oscar Results 2018

image by Rayukk

First of all, thank you to everyone who played this year's Oscar game!

In second place with a total of 11.2 is someone I will call Fiona E. Von Trapp (real name withheld by request).

And with a score of 15.4 it is a tie for first place between:
Angeline W. and me.

Congratulations Angeline!  And I guess congratulations to me as well?  Either I am getting better at predicting the Oscars or I have rigged this game sufficiently now in my favor.

Anyway, back to the Oscars themselves and my assorted musings.

1. LOWEST RATED OSCARS

I predicted last week that this would be the lowest rated Oscars in recent memory.  It was actually worse: this was the lowest rated Oscars ever!

Many political pundits posit that the left-leaning tone of the show turns off viewers.  And to some extent I believe that is true.  But in truth it comes down to the fact that most people don't care about the movies that were nominated.

The winner of Best Picture, The Shape of Water, has a domestic box office of around $60 million.  That means that in a nation of around 300 million people, around 6 million or 2% of the country have seen this movie.  Contrast that with Black Panther which to date is around $530 million, which is closer to 18% of the population or 9x as many people as have seen The Shape of Water.  If Black Panther gets nominated next year you are going to see a huge bump in the ratings.

I always make clear on this blog that pure populism is not a guarantee of quality.  But in terms of show ratings, there is not enough interest in the movies.  In recent years I have seen fewer and fewer of the movies nominated because they are less and less interesting.

2.  BORING

Mark Twain once remarked, "Everyone always talks about the weather, but no on ever does anything about it!"  I feel the same way about the length of the Oscar telecast.  Host Jimmy Kimmel made light of this with his gag about the jet ski, but that did not help at all.

Things to cut:
-Best Documentary Short
-Best Animated Short
-Best Live Action Short
-Best Foreign Language Featuere
-Every single montage except for the "In Memoriam"
-The "Best Song" nominees should be combined into one mashup number.

3.  Gary Oldman Rules!

The world's greatest living actor finally won an Oscar and he gave easily the best speech of the night.  It wasn't a lecture, but a heartfelt thank you to the people in his life, to America, and to his art.  And the way he ended it by speaking to his mom was touching.  I was glad to have watched through that entire telecast to see that moment.

4.  The Other Results.
- I can't comment on the acting awards because I didn't see any of their performances
-I'm glad Dunkirk won the much-deserved technical Oscars
-"This is Me" is a better song than "Remember Me" and should have won.
-Coco deserved it's Oscar.
-We can now say: "NBA World Champion and Academy Award Winner Kobe Bryant" (who is Catholic, by the way)


Thoughts?