Live Coverage of the 2016 Academy Awards

10:18 PM
Katharine SchwabLink

Bear Story Wins Best Animated Short

Best Animated Short goes to Bear Story, a sad but beautiful film about a lonely bear who makes an animatronic diorama in order to remember his family after he was taken by the circus. After accepting the award, the first for their home country of Chile, the director Gabriel Osorio and the producer Pato Escala honored Osorio's grandfather, who inspired the film, and "all the people like him who have suffered in exile."

10:07 PM
Spencer KornhaberLink

The Ongoing Trolling of Will Smith

Predictably, Hollywood has been the target of lots of #OscarsSoWhite jokes tonight. Less predictably, so have been Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, who are boycotting the ceremony. In his opening monologue, Chris Rock said Jada refusing the Oscars would be like Rock refusing Rihanna’s panties: There was no invitation in the first place. He also said that while it might be unfair that Will didn’t get nominated for Concussion, it also wasn’t fair how much money he made from Wild Wild West. Later, in a video purporting to pay tribute to Black History Month, Angela Bassett shouted out works like Enemy of the State and mentioned a “fresh” talent… and then revealed that she’d been honoring Jack Black. The gag, of course, was about Hollywood’s tendency to pass over black actors for white ones. But it was also about trolling Will Smith.

Here's tonight's Black History Month Minute.https://t.co/rPBKac5fdl

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 29, 2016

10:04 PM Lenika CruzLink

Ex Machina Wins Best Visual Effects

I’m not one to seriously partake in the year Oscars prognostication, but ... I didn’t see that one coming! Sure, it didn't have the spectacle of Star Wars or The Martian, but it's nice to see a film as special—and frankly underappreciated—as Ex Machina score such a win. (Who could forget all the horrifying android-skin peeling scenes?)

10:00 PM Megan GarberLink

About That 'Let's Make the Acceptance Speeches More Substantial' Experiment...

You know that whole experiment they’re doing at this year’s Oscars, the one in which the show’s producers asked nominees to submit lists of the people they wanted to thank before the show? The idea was that, if the names of the thankees could scroll on the screen while the winner delivers his or her speech, that would free up the winner to give a more substantial speech. Think Viola Davis at the Emmys.  

Well … old habits die hard. This evening's speeches thus far have been extremely conventional. They have been chock-full of the same thing they have been in years past: thank-yous delivered to the winners’ family and friends and fellow nominees and “teams.”

In her acceptance of her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Alicia Vikander spent her speech thanking “Working Title and Focus.” And “my dream team.” She sought out “Tom—where are you?—my director” in the audience. She sought out Eddie Redmayne, her co-star, to thank him and tell him that "you raised my game.” She thanked her “mom and dad” for giving me the belief that anything can happen.”

Conventional stuff, right? The list of Vikander’s thankees scrolled so quickly as to be almost illegible … but it didn’t seem to change Vikander’s speech. People want to express gratitude. And even when they try to use their time on the Oscars stage to make larger points—as Mad Max’s costume designer, Jenny Beavan, did—they are reminded of how limited that time actually is. “It could happen to us, Mad Max, if we’re not kinder to each other and we don’t stop polluting our atmosphere.”

Beavan’s speech was interrupted by another time-honored Oscar tradition: the play-off. The music, in this case, was a particularly passive-aggressive selection on the part of an Oscars aiming for efficiency: “Flight of the Valkyries.”

09:58 PM David SimsLink

Mad Max: Fury Road Wins Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing

George Miller’s action epic continues to sweep the technical categories—it now has six awards, making it pretty much mathematically certain that it will be the biggest winner of the night. Its mostly Australian crew are making for some energetic winners, too—one of the Sound Editing honorees got bleeped out for a foul-mouthed cheer as he took the trophy, and another was wearing a skull and crossbones necklace with his black tie. Mad Max’s technical sweep could presage a surprise Best Director or Picture win, but more likely it was just the voters’ visual favorite. The Revenant was expected to take a few of these, though, and the fact that it hasn’t won outside of cinematography may signal a lack of enthusiasm for the film among the many voting branches.

09:46 PM KathArine schwabLink

Mad Max: Fury Road Wins Best Film Editing

Margaret Sixel wins Mad Max: Fury Road's fourth Oscar of the night for Film Editing. It's not only her first Oscar but her first nomination. Sixel praised the “creative courage and guts” it took to get the movie made.

09:43 PM Lenika CruzLink

The Revenant Wins Best Cinematography

Good job, Chivo. Emmanuel Lubezki won his third consecutive Oscar, after winning for Birdman and Gravity the last two years (it was his eighth Oscar nomination, and he’s now one of only seven people ever to have kept up an Oscar streak for three years). For all the focus on the lack of diversity at the Oscars, it’s at least heartening to see a Latino cinematographer, working on a film by Latino director, be honored for his impeccable work.

09:33 PM Katharine SchwabLink

Mad Max: Fury Road Wins Best Makeup

Mad Max: Fury Road wins its third straight award, this time for Makeup and Hairstyling (the movie is up for 10 Oscars overall). Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, and Damian Martin thanked the film’s director, George Miller, who’s also nominated for Best Director.

09:31 PM lenika cruzLink

Mad Max: Fury Road Wins Best Production Design

Mad Max: Fury Road just won its second Oscar of the night—this time for best production design. In accepting the award alongside Lisa Wilson, the production designer Colin Gibson joked that the award could be considered the first award for diversity, after quipping that the film was about “a man with mental health issues, an Amazon amputee, and five runaway sex slaves.”

09:27 PM Megan GarberLink

The Victory of #AskHerMore

“You’re not allowed to ask women what they’re wearing anymore,” Chris Rock said at the end of his Oscars monologue. And, indeed: On the red carpet this evening, the perennial question—not what, but “who are you wearing?”—was relatively rare. Instead of asking women on the red carpet to describe their outfits, journalists instead made do with other kinds of banter. (Mostly: “I’ve been doing this for like 72 hours,” Mindy Kaling joked to E! of her Oscars-primping routine.)

That amounted to a success for the #AskHerMore campaign, started in February 2014 by the Representation Project and objecting to the fact that women on the red carpet are so often asked about fashion while men are asked about … basically anything else. Rock offered an explanation for that maybe-changing fact in his monologue: “They ask the men more,” Rock said, "because the men are all wearing the exact same outfits.”

09:22 PM lenika cruzLink

Alicia Vikander Wins Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl

No surprise in the Best Supporting Actress category—Alicia Vikander picked up her first Oscar (on her first nomination) for her role in The Danish Girl, beating out Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rooney Mara, Rachel McAdams, and Kate Winslet. Still, many critics have wondered whether she better deserved to win for her work in a different 2015 film—her performance as the mysterious A.I. Ava in Ex Machina.

09:19 PM Spencer KornhaberLink

James Bond: ‘Not a Grower or a Shower’

Associated Press

When it was released, I wrote that Sam Smith’s “Writing’s on the Wall” made for an unusually vulnerable, morose James Bond theme, and that some people would see it as complicating—or betraying—the 007 franchise’s traditional macho mystique. Now, we get Sarah Silverman introducing the song by delivering an acidic anti-Bond routine where she said she hadn’t seen Spectre and reported that Bond has an inadequate manhood. Smith wobbled a bit, both in pitch and in posture, as he sang.

09:15 PM David SimsLink

Chris Rock Addresses #OscarsSoWhite

Associated Press

Chris Rock walked onto the Oscar stage a man with a mission, and he largely delivered, with an incisive monologue that focused on the Academy’s all-white slate of actors this year and pulled no punches. One of his first bits focused on how vocal the protests were in 2016 compared to decades prior, despite Hollywood’s long legacy of systemic racism. “We had real things to protest at the time,” Rock joked. “When your grandma's swinging from a tree, it's really hard to care about Best Foreign Documentary Short.”

It was an intense joke, and one of many that seemed to land harder for viewers at home than the audience at the Dolby Theater. The camera cut, repeatedly and painfully, to (mostly white) actors and directors in the audience, often smiling thinly and clapping at jokes about the structural racism of their industry. “It’s not burning cross racist … Hollywood is sorority racist,” Rock said. “It's like, ‘We like you, Wanda, but you're not a Kappa.’” At one point, he noted how easy it was for actors like Leonardo DiCaprio to get varied roles compared to A-list black actors like Jamie Foxx; the camera switched right to DiCaprio, grinning and bearing it.

Not all of Rock’s jokes landed, and he made some strange digressions—at one point, he mocked Jada Pinkett Smith for boycotting the ceremony, saying she wasn’t invited. To close his speech out, he made fun of the growing trend to ask actresses on the red carpet about more than the dresses they’re wearing, a slightly thudding topic to wrap such a hard-hitting monologue. But in general, the opening was just what the ceremony needed.

09:09 PM Katharine SchwabLink

The Big Short Wins Best Adapted Screenplay

Charles Randolph and Adam McKay won Best Adapted Screenplay for their work on The Big Short, based on Michael Lewis's book about the 2008 financial crisis. McKay, who commented on the pervasive influence of big money in government in his acceptance speech, is also nominated for Best Director.

09:04 PM Lenika CruzLink

Spotlight Wins Best Original Screenplay

The first Oscar of the night goes to Spotlight for best original screenplay. In their acceptance speech, the screenwriters Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer dedicated the film to “all the journalists who hold the powerful accountable.”

08:42 PM Spencer KornhaberLink


Lady Gaga and the Other Issue of the Night

The ceremony has been defined by questions about racial inclusion, but there’s another social-issue sub-theme: sexual assault. Joe Biden will introduce a performance from Lady Gaga, whose nominated song “Till It Happens to You” was recorded for ​The Hunting Ground​, a documentary about rape on college campuses. Speaking on the red carpet, Gaga mentioned her own sexual assault as well as the statistics saying that one in five women will be raped in college. A number of other nominated films, like ​Spotlight​ and ​Room​, also revolve around sexual predation.

Link


Whoopi Goldberg Is Not Oprah

Oh, no. This tweet—since deleted—is really not a good way to begin the Oscars ceremony. It is, however, a really good reminder of the ways #OscarsSoWhite extends beyond the Oscars themselves.—Megan Garber

Anticipating the 2016 Academy Awards

Prior to the start of the 2016 Academy Awards, there’s currently more speculation about what will be in Chris Rock’s opening routine than who the actual winners will be. Predictions for most of the major categories are settled—solid favorites include Leonardo DiCaprio, Brie Larson, and Sylvester Stallone—but in the year of #OscarsSoWhite and Academy rule changes, Rock’s monologue should be the main event. The word is that he’s been working through the material in small L.A. comedy clubs, and the primary question is just how hard-hitting he’ll be in a year when there have been more headlines about the all-white acting nominees than the movies themselves.

One of the few major awards that’s still anyone’s guess is Best Picture—though The Revenant came on strong late in the season, collecting the Golden Globe and the crucial Directors Guild Award, only its star DiCaprio seems guaranteed for success. Will Oscar voters pick that movie’s epic scale over the hard-hitting true story of Spotlight or the anarchic Wall Street satire of The Big Short? The Revenant has to overcome the fact that its director, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, won Best Picture and Best Director last year for Birdman, and that kind of a back-to-back repeat is historically rare. But in a divided year, it’s currently in pole position.—David Sims