On March 4th, stars, directors and other film-hands gathered to celebrate the best achievements in film for the year 2017 at the 90th Academy Awards. Two years after #OscarsSoWhite and amidst the Time’s Up movement, this year’s nominees and presenters sported the most diverse line up to date.
The evening even facilitated some historical wins: Jordan Peele became the first black writer to win the award of Best Original Screenplay; James Ivory became the oldest person to win an Oscar award at the age of 89 for his adapted screenplay Call Me By Your Name; the feature-length foreign film A Fantastic Woman became the first award-winning film to feature a transgender lead; Robert Lopez became the first and only person to covet not one, but two EGOTs (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).
As wonderful as all the accepted successes of the night were, viewers also found a few disappointments. The biggest disappointment is arguably the fact that Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird won no awards (it was nominated for five), despite being the best reviewed film of the year. Nevertheless, Greta still found reason to smile when Guillermo accepted the award for Best Picture:
Another one of the night’s victories was the timeliness of the speeches this year. Only a few ran over and the credits even rolled at an average pace! Perhaps this was the work of Jimmy Kimmel’s hosting? While it is unlikely that Jimmy’s promise of a jet ski to the winner with the shortest speech actually sped up the winners’ speeches, he did an excellent job of hosting—and yes, Mark Bridges (costume designer for Phantom Thread) did go home with a jet ski!
The Academy Awards mark the bittersweet end of award season, so until next March, just sit back, relax, and enjoy this upcoming year’s films.