Watching the Oscars embarrass themselves is becoming an annual tradition as jubilant as putting up a Christmas tree. Fun for the whole family!
Whether the inevitable blunder is an accident (like when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty said “La La Land” beat “Moonlight” for Best Picture or Joaquin Phoenix gave a speech about the barbarism of cow’s milk) or self-inflicted (like Anne Hathaway and James Franco’s terrible hosting, and #OscarsSoWhite), we’re guaranteed at least one whoopsie during Hollywood’s biggest night of ineptitude.
The latest fiasco falls into the latter category. The Academy of Motion Picture Oafs and Doofuses has added a “fan favorite” award to the 2022 ceremony on March 27. It’s like the MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss, only more of a joke because the Oscars is as serious as sitting shiva.
Users can vote on the Oscars website or on Twitter (oh, great) up to 20 times a day with the hashtag #OscarsFanFavorite. Perhaps some of the dead Chicagoans who checked the box for John F. Kennedy can get in on the action!
Currently in the lead, according to Deadline: the heinous “Cinderella” movie starring Camila Cabello.
That’s the Amazon atrocity (43% on RottenTomatoes) in which Cinders’ evil stepmother is named Vivian and used to play the violin, and the title orphan dreams of being some sort of Renaissance fashion designer. James Corden plays a mouse and Billy Porter’s fairy godmother character is named Fab G. That’s a “Thelma and Louise”-sized drop from the musicals that have taken home the Best Picture Oscar, such as “My Fair Lady,” “The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story” and “Chicago.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Academy surely assumed that “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the biggest movie of the year and more successful domestically than “Avatar,” would swing away with the prize. It’s not an Oscars film, as we’ve come to understand them, but its popularity has been vital to the recovery of movie theaters worldwide.
But, no, streaming-only “Cinderella” appears to have the most votes so far based on the number of tweets (more than 50,000). And Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” on Netflix — another movie that has no right to be at the Oscars — is also a hot contender (more than 40,000). One “Dead” fan on Twitter described this head-to-head as “a war.”
Au contraire, Man With Too Much Time On His Hands. What it is is another dunderheaded grab by the Oscars for ratings and relevancy. They’ve tried everything: younger hosts with the awful Hathaway and Franco, expanding the Best Picture field to 10 movies in hopes some more fans would tune in (they never do) and letting Steven Soderbergh cinematically film the 2021 telecast like he was gunning for a Razzie.
Only 9.23 million people watched.
Remember last year when the group obviously thought that the late Chadwick Boseman would win Best Actor and made that category the last of the night? He didn’t! Plenty of people who stuck it out to the end for that moment were enraged when the absent (and asleep) Anthony Hopkins won and didn’t give a speech.
Look, I love the Oscars. If working for a newspaper hadn’t turned the experience of watching award shows into a Prometheus-like eternal torture sentence, I’d devour them at home with my friends and a bottle of Champagne every single year. The trouble is, the few remaining Oscars buffs like me have a lot in common with people who travel long distances by train or know what Steak Diane is — we are disappearing.
So, instead of hopelessly attempting to innovate and handing an Oscar to Camila Cabello’s Amazon Craptacular or, God forbid, Zach Snyder, how about the Oscars cater to actual fans of film and award shows. Give us classical music lovers stuck aboard the Titanic a nice concert as we sink, faster and faster, into the ocean.