I actually watched the Oscars last night
Don’t exactly know why I watched it; first time in years. I suppose I did it out of curiosity, mainly to see if the abominable One Battle After Another would really win tons of awards. Which it did – although apparently its competition wasn’t much better.
I say I watched the show, but most of the time I was also reading and I would look up periodically when something interested me. So my attention was admittedly spotty. Nevertheless, I saw enough to take in the self-satisfied self-congratulatory virtue-signaling, the almost entirely unfunny jokes and bits, the “we women are soooo strong!” message, the occasional hackneyed leftist political remark, and of course the dresses.
Most of the political stuff was very well-covered in this post, if you care to read about it.
A guy named Javier Bardem caught my attention with “No to war – Free Palestine!” Quite the oxymoron. This mental and moral giant has been accusing Israel of genocide since at least 2014, according to his Wiki entry. He’s Spanish, by the way, and here’s another of his brilliant quotes from this year’s Oscar festivities:
“I’m wearing a pin that I used in 2003 with the Iraq war, which was an illegal war,” Bardem told reporters on the red carpet, “and we are here, 23 years after, with another illegal war, created by Trump and Netanyahu with another lie.”
The only film I’ve seen this year – other than a half-hour of the execrable aforementioned One Battle After Another – is the animated musical movie K-Pop Demon Hunters, which I saw twice because my grandchildren love it. It’s kind of cute and that made it tolerable, by the way, but maybe I’m biased because of them. They know all the songs by heart and periodically sing them, especially the one that was nominated for the Oscar, which it won. After a big production number, a group of people – most or all of whom were Korean, because the song is K-pop genre – came onstage for their thank-yous. The occasion was apparently “historic” because this is the very first K-pop song to win.
So what did the “diversity is our strength – and our requirement” Oscars do? Cut them off prematurely, after having let others drone on and on, and after some seemingly endless “comedy” bits such as a tribute to the 15-year anniversary of the movie Bridesmaids. They had time for all of that, but cut off the Korean guy who stepped up with a little piece of paper after the comely female singer-songwriter had said her not-so-very-long acceptance speech. The group was left standing there, confused, while the orchestral bye-bye music played and the mic power dimmed.
I guess Koreans don’t stand very high in the intersectional hierarchy.
As for fashion, I’ll just comment on Demi Moore’s get-up, shown here:
I am puzzled by the fact that many people are saying this was a peacock dress. Are they at all familiar with peacocks? Different color, different feather type as well. No, this was a rooster dress:
And lest you think I’m picking on Demi Moore, I’m not. I suppose over the years I may have seen a few of her movies, but the only one I remember is Ghost. It’s one of my favorite films, and although Moore’s role was less attention-getting than that or Swayze or of Whoopi – she was basically the grieving woman who lost her man and was being stalked by a killer – Moore did a remarkable job. Dewy-eyed and vulnerable, she was impressive in scenes like this one. If you haven’t seen the movie, it may look over-the-top, but in context it’s extremely moving, and a goodly part of that emotional wallop is due to Demi:
I have a perverse fondness for Demi Moore as the first female Navy Seal in Ridley Scott’s “GI Jane.”
She was great in A Few Good Men, and incredibly beautiful.
Y’know, ABBA had a reason for wearing what they did when they were in the public eye: Sweden’s tax laws were such that they could not take as a business expense anything they wore on stage, unless what they wore on stage was something that would never be worn in work-a-day social intercourse. Therefore, they (specifically Agnetha and Anni-frid) dressed in very unusual garb when performing on stage.
As for Demi Moore and all those others of the Hollywood female persuasion who wear peacock-style and analogous gowns, well, the less said/written the better, as least as far as I’m concerned. It’s something of a first cousin to left-political virtue-signalling (which, I’m given to understand, is never in short supply at these extravaganzas). The women are often attractive, but their outfits, like their other brand of preening, is mockworthy.
Your rooster observation was perfect.
I was going to post a snide remark about Demi looking old and almost decided not to after watching the final part of Ghost, but she does and time does march on.
I have loved her in everything she was in.
I’m a great fan of K dramas/romcoms. I agree with Neo that Demon Hunters was a decent kids movie. Why the snub of Koreans? That’s easy: they generally work hard, value education, try to assimilate where they are, and dont play the victim.
My nephew’s wife is first gen Korean. Did a stint in the US Army, got her PhD in bio stats. My very last student, who is Korean from Seoul before I retired, is defending her PhD physics thesis this month. I just found out she is also a classical pianist which has opened a door to a possible job at Bose.
Not hard to see why the left not enamored with them. Never seen a news story of a Korean causing a ruckus on a Carnival cruise, or a Spirit or Frontier flight.
You poor dear, watching…”The Oscars”! Give yourself combat pay for that little excursion into enemy territory and bringing back the recon. By the way, did you catch the performance of the actess known as Charitha Chandran, who seems to be under the impression that there is a war going on in Gaza which requires a cease fire. So very well informed! Perhaps the rest of us missed the announcement of a cease fire in Gaza arbout six months ago. And speaking of Hollywood cuckolds, did you happen to catch Jerry O’Connell on Maher? He admitted that his wife and daughters became physical with him when he dared to utter a slightly critical remark about the Harris campaign’s ineptitude. What a man! He’s destined to soon replace Randy Savage in the “Macho Man Hall of Fame.”
I feel bad for anyone who was watching the Oscar’s because one of the best baseball games I’ve ever watched was going on at the same time.
I know two women studying Korean because they love the culture. One is very serious about the language.
The F1/CapsLock joke was quality.
Mike Plaiss: Hold on there. The best baseball game of all time was the Cubs winning the final game of the World Series.
I believe the Supreme Court will back me on this.
P.S. I’m a Chicago Northsider . . .
What kind of face work has Demi had?
I have no idea what these “Oscars” you are talking about.
Do you mean this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakajima_Ki-43_Hayabusa
F1 is the only film nominated for anything that I actually saw. It was perfectly acceptable. A few others looked interesting from the trailers but were savaged by so many whose opinions I value I never bothered.
Steve; SHIREHOME:
Moore is 63 years old. She’s had a lot of work done. She’s also obsessively thin. I think a gain of a few pounds would make her look better. But 63 is not exactly a spring chicken.
Great commentary neo.
About roosters: I’ve been spending some time with a friend who has converted a sizeable portion of her larger residential property into an animal farm. Goats, chickens, quail, ducks, guinea hens, and rabbits. As well as dogs and a cat.
Initially, she hatched a bunch of fertilized chicken eggs and unfortunately ended up with way too many roosters. Into the deep freezer for several of those unfortunate birds! But a few were really exceptionally beautiful. Almost as pretty as this one:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/55/09/ac550965bc81d183c286cff303ae159f.jpg
About Demi Moore: After having climbed to the near pinnacle of Hollywood, I had heard that she had earned the nickname Gimme Moore, as she was rather aggressive in her salary demands and in terms of her needs while shooting films. It is hard for us outsiders to judge those things though, as there often is lots of push/pull on both sides of the film set.
I’ve liked most of her films, especially when she was younger and had a bit more innocence or naivete. No Small Affair, St. Elmo’s Fire (a member of the brat pack), About Last Night, Ghost, A Few Good Men (left wingers CAN make good or even great films), Striptease (honorable mention mainly because of the sharp satire), G.I. Jane (I love Ridley, Demi was OK), and Half Light.
I saw only fashion photos; I could not care less about movies these days. Some of the dresses were lovely, and fewer were extreme as in previous years. Some of the women look like they’ve taken too many weight-loss shots. On the other hand, there was a photo of (I think) Kylie Jenner looking like Jessica Rabbit. Bizarre.
The best baseball game of all time was the Cubs winning the final game of the World Series.
I go to Wrigley maybe 12 times a year – I’m a displaced Reds fan. I’m there in maybe 2014 and meet a guy in pretty bad shape – very old and on oxygen, battling lung cancer. He’s with his daughter who’s roughly my age. We get to chatting and he’s like a human version of the MLB app. I’ve never met anyone who knew more baseball, and get this – he was at the 1947 all-star game at Wrigley Field. Diehard Cubs fan for all of those horrible years. I go to guess how many of the players on that team I can name. He says, “if you get more than two I’ll be impressed.” I came up with six and we became fast friends. He died right in the middle of the 2016 season. His daughter and I are still baseball friends and get together at Wrigley from time to time.
So yes, that game holds a place dear in my heart as well. After the final out it was tough to keep my emotions in check thinking about him. Baseball is cosmic.
Demi Moore was the hottest, sexiest, dark haired beauty of her time, 80s-90s. As I write I’m reminded of Liz Taylor.
About Last Night, exploring promiscuity & relationships & love lost, seems underrated to me, so hugely overshadowed by Ghost, correctly highly rated.
But, like the Queen in Snow White, personal beauty fades with age and every year we all get older. Aging with grace, who is doing it well? Those giving up being sex symbols, not Demi.
Of course I didn’t watch it.
— neo
This sort of thing isn’t new (the details change with time), for whatever reasons of hubris, ego, and positive feedback, big-time actors and actresses have always had weird politics. Today they obsess over Palestine, in the old days they loved the USSR.
What has changed since the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ is that in the days of the old studio system, the big entertainment outfits had ‘minders’ who kept their stars from doing and saying Stupid in public, and various kinds of ‘fixers’ for the occasions when the minders couldn’t hit the brakes in time.
So, most people were unaware of how fundamentally weird and off-putting the big time movie stars often were back then. Today, the filters are mostly off, to the detriment of the formerly filtered. Today, either a big-name celeb restrains himself, or it all goes out.
Tom Cruise is an interesting case. He’s often called the last of the ‘old style movie stars’. He arguably deserves the title.
But here’s the interesting thing: a decade ago, or a little more, Tom Cruise was unfiltered. All kinds of weirdness was going out, just like the other celebs. His Scientology, his divorce from Kidman and marriage to Katie Holmes, that weird Oprah interview, etc.
And then, very suddenly, about 10 years or so ago, give or take…silence. It all stopped.
Cruise still does public appearances galore, of course. He publicizes his movies. He shows up on red carpets and so forth. He’s out there to be seen and heard, but what he says is very controlled and restrained. A reporter tried to draw him out on the subject of Trump in 2024, and Cruise refused to take the bait, saying he was there to talk about his movie.
So, either Somebody got to him and got through to him years ago, or he realized on his own that his antics were damaging his career prospects, but since then he’s shown a rare message discipline.
And he’s arguably now the biggest star Hollywood has left.
But his politics? His social views? His religious beliefs? Zilch.
Not sure why any of that is terribly interesting—he’s an actor for heaven’s sake—but if it is…just follow the Scientology…
Demi Moore did a great job in the movie, Flawless. I recommend it. Michael Caine is in it too. I don’t watch a lot of movies.
— Barry Meislin
It’s interesting because it’s a case of a modern actor doing apparently voluntarily what the old studio handlers used to do, engaging in self-restraint for the sake of his career. An actor doing that is interesting because, whether we like it or not, the entertainment industry as a whole does matter. Politics is downstream from culture, in the (accurate) cliche.
— M J R
Agnetha and Anni-frid had a few other reasons to wear those outfits, too. And it worked like a charm.