Hair Love wins Best Animated Short

Well, I admit that this post is two days late. Oscar night was fairly busy for me. Heck the entire past weekend was busy, what with me attending a pony convention north of Dallas, spending time traveling to Houston to meet Randy Johnson, and then returning to DFW to hang out with friends before the end of the weekend. In fact, I was having supper when the Best Animated Short category was announced. But if you haven't already noticed the winner for this year was Hair Love.



I personally have no issues with Hair Love winning, It's a fairly light fare, yet also explores the idea of family love in an African American family, which director Matthew A. Cherry readily states in his acceptance speech is a highly under-represented population. I don't care if this is still a reaction to the Oscars So White controversy from earlier in the decade, Hair Love is a darned fine winner. Of course, this is the year where every nominee is so good in different ways that I wussed out and didn't rank them by quality in this year's review.

Anyways, I'm not going to transcribe the acceptance speeches of director Matthew A. Cherry and producer Karen Rupert Toliver. You can enjoy it on YouTube. It's worth noting that Karen Rupert Toliver is the first African American female to win in this category. She may very well be the first black female to be nominated in this category, but I can't verify the ethnicity of some of the other nominees. Matthew A. Cherry is the second African American male and also the second former professional athlete to win in this category, naturally following Dear Basketball and the late Kobe Bryant on both accounts. Congratulations to the both of them!

As far as the rest of the night goes, it's a combination of the predictable and the unexpected. None of the acting categories were really surprising, with Joaquin Phoenix (Joker), Renee Zellweger (Judy), Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood), and Laura Dern (Marriage Story) winning Oscars that they saw coming a mile a way. Many of the craft categories also went to predictable front-runners: Little Women winning Best Costume Design, Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood taking Best Production Design, Bombshell capturing Best Hair & Makeup, Ford v Ferrari winning Best Editing and Best Sound Editing. 1917 was the top winner of the night in these craft categories. Most people saw them winning Best Cinematography and Best Sound Mixing. Best Visual Effects was a bit more of a surprise win considering their competition that included The Lion King, The Irishman, Star Wars Episode IX, and Avengers Endgame. However, the prestige of 1917 won out. Of course, many people had predicted that it would go on to win more, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The documentary, short animation categories are usually hard to predict, but there were some exceptions. Few people thought that Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) would fail to take home Best Documentary Short it did win. Most people weren't sure of what to do with Best Live Action Short, even if the nominees are more accessible from the showings, but The Neighbor's Window ended up the victor. Best Documentary Feature also had a surprising finish as the Netflix documentary American Factory took home the Oscar over Honeyland, which was a rare documentary to be nominated for Best International Film. And then there's the shock of Toy Story 4, which shouldn't have been surprising considering how much Pixar dominates this category, but many were hoping for an upset by Klaus or Missing Link instead.

Elton John made history for winning his first Academy Award alongside his longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin for Rocketman's "I'm Gonna Love Me Again," since his win for The Lion King's "Can You Share the Love Tonight" was shared with Tim Rice. Best Original Score was a little bit more of a surprise. Most people thought Thomas Newman can end his long losing streak with his score for 1917, but it went instead to Joker's Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. the first female to win in the era when there was only one Original Score category.

And then there were the big categories, which were full of surprises. One thing that many prognosticators look to predict future success are the guild awards, especially since many of those are guild members are Oscar voters. And lo and behold the WGA winners Jojo Rabbit and Parasite were the winners for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay respectively. Parasite was the critical darling of the year and an audience favorite, but being a Korean film most people thought that the screenplay award and then Best International Film would be the only awards the film would win. This was especially true when considering 1917 swept both the DGA and the PGA. However, when Spike Lee (wearing a Lakers #24 tuxedo in honor of Bryant) called out Bong Joon-Ho, it was a shock for many Oscar watchers. It was the first time an Asian director won the award for an Asian film (since Ang Lee won his two Best Director Oscars for American productions Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi.)

Nevertheless the possibility of a Picture/Director split remained active, especially since it had happened five times in the 2010s (Argo/Life of Pi, 12 Years a Slave/Gravity, Spotlight/The Revenant, Moonlight/La La Land, and Green Book/Roma.) So there was some suspense when Jane Fonda came up to present Best Picture.

And then she read the name Parasite.

It was a historical win, becoming the first international, foreign-language film to capture the industry's top award. As is customary, the entire cast (including the so-damned-attractive Park So-Dam) came up to collect the Oscar. Bong had already given three speeches, so he let his fellow producer Kwak Sin-Ae speak. After Kwak finished speaking, the film's executive producer Lee Miky came up to say a few words, but the Oscar producers were ready for the night to end and lowered the mic. In an unprecedented move, the stars at the gala clamored for the mic to be raised once again for Lee to speak, and she gave a warm speech in English thanking director Boon and the moviegoing population. It was a warm moment to end what is a historical night with hopes that future ceremonies would be just as daring and memorable.