Okay, so the only Oscars hashtag worth sharing is #OscarsSoBoring. Sunday night’s Academy Awards show proved to be a long, dull affair, with just about everything happening as expected (you can stop worrying about Leonardo DiCaprio now). As expected, Mad Max: Fury Road took home a slew of Oscars, including awards for Costumes, Editing, and Production Design. But George Miller lost Best Director to The Revenant‘s Alejandro G. Innaritu, who becomes only the third director in history to win back-to-back Oscars (the others are John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz). There were a few surprises, however. Sentimental favorite Sylvester Stallone didn’t win Best Supporting Actor. Lady Gaga and Diane Warren didn’t win Best Original Song. And Spotlight won Best Picture, confounding the pundits who had expected the big prize to go to The Revenant or The Big Short.
Host Chris Rock (pointedly wearing a white tuxedo) addressed the#OscarsSoWhite controversy in a blistering, brutally funny opening monologue and throughout the evening, and if there was an Oscar for Making the Audience Uncomfortable, then Rock (and Stacey Dash) would win. He tackled racism in Hollywood but also took a few shots against those calling for a boycott, singling out actress Jada Pinkett-Smith. “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited.” Rock didn’t hold back, though. “It’s the 88th Academy Awards, which means this whole no black nominees thing has happened at least 71 times,” he said. “Black people did not protest. Why? Because we had real things to protest at the time. We were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won Best Cinematographer. When your grandma is swinging from a tree, it’s really hard to care about Best Documentary Foreign Short.”
