Hollywood Week: Oscar Wrap Round-Up, Jimmy Kimmel, Lily Gladstone, The Zone of Interest
- Details
- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Saturday, 16 March 2024 10:19
- Written by Janet Walker
The 2024 Academy Awards have wrapped, but the controversary and dissection of awards voters, has continued throughout the week and here is one last examination of three of the more surprising moments of the 2024 Oscars.
Jimmy Kimmel Surprises
Writer's 0, Kimmel Survives. So, Jimmy Kimmel, wow. The immediate reaction to watching Jimmy Kimmel's performance as the 96th Academy Awards host was like watching how not to be invited back for a fifth hosting gig. It seemed, from the Academy Awards Press Winner's room, that his writing team didn't get the memo that the Oscars were beginning an hour earlier.
Hollywood Week: Glam, Glitz, Glitter - It’s the Oscars
The start time of 7:00pm on the east coast, is still the Wonderful World of Disney bridge programming hour before prime-time kicks in, and to begin the roasting of nominees with penis jokes and attempting to exhume one's past seemed more vindictive than good natured razzing, a tradition during the Academy Awards opening.
As the roasting monologue is essentially for the world of viewers, not the audience in the Dolby Theater, and the 20 million viewers that tuned in wanted to see celebration not skewering, the traditional monologue filled with rapier wit and biting sarcasm, ending sounding more like an emotionally based evisceration.
As the night wore on, Kimmel, who had one ending and memorable line, "Isn't it past your jail time?" This in response to an X, formally twitter, statement from Donald Trump the former and presumptive 2024 GOP presidential candidate, of which Kimmel was told not to read and presumably not to respond. It ended up becoming the most memorable statement, resonating the world over.
With the 2024 Oscars a wrap, and the next one arriving after the 2024 presidential election, the 2025 Academy Awards may need the dark humor provided by this year's team if the election ends badly.
The Academy Awards - Updates from the Winners Room
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon, Shut Out
Going into Sunday's Oscar ceremony, Killers of the Flower Moon had earned ten nominations, with the possibility, after the awards season solidified, of going home with two trophies. The shocking loss of Best Actress nominee Lily Gladstone was compared to the 1997 upset of Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall, who received a Supporting Actress nomination for her role in The Mirror has Two Faces.
While entertainment pundits walked through Ms. Gladstone's awards history few paused at her Golden Globes acceptance speech. After receiving a two-minute standing ovation for her role as Mollie Kyle, an Osage Indian woman who survived the Osage murders, she takes to the stage and instead of sharing the moment with the foreign press voters, the academy awards voting community, and the televised audience, she shuts the entire world out.
The voting community likes to be included in the initial reaction's moments, and when, her first words were spoken in the Native American Blackfeet language, which pushed the entire voting community aside and kept the initial, the first reaction, to herself and only her fellow countrymen who could understand.
This action, keeping this moment to herself and shutting out the Oscar voting community, may not have been the intended slight the statement projected, and yet the interpretation, which is subjective, speaks loudly otherwise. This moment seemed to end the brilliant awards streak for the first-time nominee and award winner.
Janet Walker, Award-Winning Screenwriter, Director, Producer, and Publisher, Unveils Slate at EFM
The Zone of Interest Speech
Jonathan Glazer's Acceptance speech after winning the Oscar for the Best International Film, The Zone of Interest, which presents two storylines, the simple life of a housewife, who is married to the Commander of Auschwitz, and her family, and the horrors of Auschwitz, which is brought alive through a soundtrack that runs parallel to the perfect German housewife.
Glazer's speech, below, in part, has been the subject of controversary as he brings in the current Israeli-Gaza Conflict.
"Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It's shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October -- whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist? Alexandria, the girl who glows in the film as she did in life, chose to. I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance. Thank you."
The speech, which has generated global condemnation over what appears to be a statement of support to end the Gaza occupation and end the indiscriminate killing of innocent lives in Gaza. It appears, by the words, that he is expressing a solidarity with "all the victims" the Israeli's who were murdered on October 7, 2023, those being held as hostages, and now with the Gazans, who are systematically dying through a continued occupation of the Gaza Strip.
The Holocaust, and all its horrors, cannot be adequately described in the time frame allotted for acceptance speeches and if the surreal moment of winning an Academy Award overwhelmed him and he strayed from his prepared remarks; it is the first reaction moments that cause the world to cringe, celebrate or in this case criticize.
The interpretation of Glazer's statement, "the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people," which has yet to be clarified, may be interpreted, in certain communities, as the horrors of the Holocaust are becoming diminished over the continued Israeli-Gaza war.
Hollywood Week: Academy Awards Luncheon, Alexei Navalny, Berlin/EFM, John Mellencamp
Academy Award Winners
Congratulations to everyone who made the 2024 Academy Awards a moment to remember.
