A morning almost without an Oscar show

I think I just broke my Oscar habit. By force. And nothing happened to me. For the first time in, I do not know anymore the number of years, I did not get to watch the Academy Awards on television. That means not live via satellite on cable and not on delayed telecast later in the evening. Nothing, too, on free TV. Would you believe, they even imposed a copyright claim on YouTube and blocked tweets on Twitter?

It seemed like whoever was producing the Oscar show decided to make more money by selling the rights to air for an astronomical sum. So nobody from out here picked up the show. I do not know it if was the same thing in other Asian countries since the usual award airers like HBO or Fox Life or Blue Ant operate regionally. But I am sure no Academy Awards show was shown on local TV.

I find this most unfair. Events like the Oscars should be made available worldwide to everybody for free by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or even by the movie industry itself as an annual thank-you gesture to the public for its continued patronage of the movies.

The Pinoy though is ever ingenious and somebody sent me a link to a free Oscars airing and I got to watch some portions of the show.

Rock makes a great opening number more so if it is music by Queen like We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions. That was enough to get the evening going so who needs a host with a lame monologue. Forget the host. Unless they can get Billy Crystal on that stage again.

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga perform onstage during the 91st Annual Academy Awards.

Is there something going on between Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in real life? The erotic tension during their Shallow duet was so thick, I thought it covered the Dolby Theater.

I liked it that Lady Gaga looked happy and grateful winning the Best Original Song award for Shallow from A Star Is Born. That is despite knowing she will surely lose as Best Actress. No matter. She looked fantastic in that black ball gown and a necklace with the famous 128.54 carat yellow diamond from Tiffany worth $30M and last worn by Audrey Hepburn.

Best Actress nominee for The Wife, Glenn Close looked like a queen in that gold caped gown with four million beads. Too bad she lost to Olivia Colman who portrayed a real queen in The Favourite. Close won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards. Colman got the BAFTA. 

Got the feeling that the members of the Academy do not like Close that much. She is now the most nominated actress in history, seven times in all, and she has never won an award.

That was sweet. Getting Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey to introduce Best Picture nominee Bohemian Rhapsody. The two comedians sang along with Queen’s recording of the song in the movie Wayne’s World. That scene brought Bohemian Rhapsody back to the hit charts.

The other star-powered introductions to the Best Picture nominees were: Rocker Tom Morelo of Rage Against the Machine for Vice; tennis star Serena Williams for A Star is Born; Queen Latifah for The Favourite; Trevor Noah who voiced Griot in the movie for Black Panther; Mexican chef Jose Andres and Diego Luna for Roma; Barbra Streisand for The BlackkKlansman; Amanda Sternberg and Congressman John Lewis for Green Book.

The Academy chickened out of making history with the year’s Best Picture winner. No to Black Panther that could have been the first superhero movie to win an Oscar. No to the controversial Netflix-produced Roma. So the voters took the middle ground and chose Green Book, which tackled race relations.

The most awarded film of the year is Bohemian Rhapsody with four. Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing and Best Actor for Rami Malek, in the culmination of the grand sweep he made in all the other award-giving bodies.

It was also a sweep for Regina King as Best Supporting Actress in If Beale Street Could Talk and for Mahershala Ali as Best Supporting Actor in Green Book.

The Academy also backed out of its earlier decision to give out four awards during commercial breaks. I like very much what the actor, director and producer Tyler Perry said about this: “Each person, each craft, each discipline is essential to the process.”

And now we rest from the Oscars over the next 12 months. And that is when we will find out if the Academy Awards show will be back on Philippine TV and the Internet, too.