The 89th Annual Academy Awards

The 2017 Academy Awards started out well enough with Timberlake, but wound up being a rather weaker edition of the annual ceremony. There were no major surprises (except for the final faux pas), memorable thank-you speeches or jokes that truly cut to the quick. Kimmel was able to respond swiftly to the ongoing events ("Fake tans we love, but fake news..." after the bronze Alicia Vikander exited the stage; “Linus, we're so sorry about what happened in Sweden last week” after thanking the Swedish cameraman), but he should have saved the obligatory trolling of Matt Damon for his talk show. Conversely, he could have done more to skewer Trump, against whom few of the award winners failed to define themselves. Since the leitmotif of the evening was anti-Trump-inspired breaking down of walls and uniting people of different races, genders and classes, that was also present in the thank-you speeches of the so-called social justice warriors, who wanted to show that they were on the right side. Most of the jokes were more or less successful variations on moments from previous editions (the food served to the attendees, interactions with seated celebrities), and the “unexpected” tourist excursion was nice, but it could have been shorter. As could the whole ceremony. (27.02.2017)

Since the disillusionment with Chris Rock last year, who told off every white face on the planet, we have gotten to the new year only to see that the academics are skilled at brown-nosing. And in order to satisfy everybody, they stuffed 2016 with so many black faces that there simply had to be somebody who would turn tehir performance into an Oscar. And if this was the only thing that this year was about, the ceremony would be quite OK. But let’s take it step by step. Nominating Fences is exactly the kind of brown-nosing to Denzel that I am talking about. Nevertheless, I do admit that Viola was the only black actress to actually deserve an Oscar. What I don’t understand is the movie Moonlight, which won Best Movie and Best Supporting Actor. I personally think that it’s the worse movie the Oscars had to offer this year. And I don’t mean one of the worst, but actually the worst movie that received any nomination. And that’s pretty strange. On the other hand, the favorite La La Land also collected a number of nominations, where Best Music, Best Director and the nomination for Emma Stone literally hit the spot. Too bad for Ryan, who in my opinion deserved to win much more than Casey Affleck. However, I sneakily told myself that some of the members of the Academy could surprise everybody and give the award to someone else than the clear favorite. For instance, Jeff Bridges or Michael Shannon would definitely have deserved an award for their performances. But well, what can you do. These are the choices the Academy made this year and apart from the awards for La La Land, there wasn’t a single winner who would make me really happy, so Jimmy Kimmer had to come in to save the day at least in part, as he had a couple of really good ideas and he nailed it with the tour bus and with the balloons. These Oscars were pretty humorous, I must admit. The faux pas at the end put the cherry on top of the pie, but well, things like that simply happen. I must also say that the Czech commentary on the second channel of Czech TV was great this year. To the point and that’s how it should be. Thanks. (27.02.2017)

The best Oscars I've ever seen, right until the very end. The presenting duo was perfectly paired, the awkward moments were completely gone, and the host was on fire. All of Jimmy Kimmel's trademarks (from Guillermo del Toro to the feud with Matt Damon to Mean Tweets) worked perfectly, the acceptance speeches were just the right balance of emotion and appropriateness, and the deserving winners received their well-earned statuettes. But then came the moment when the creators of one of the best films in recent years are literally robbed of the final award and it was given instead to the weakest nominee. Not only do I never want to see that again, but it soured the entire ultra-positive impression of the entire evening. (28.02.2017)

Creo que esto probablemente nunca lo volveremos a experimentar. Por razones prácticas, el Oscar a la mejor película debería ser presentado por personas que aún no necesitan gafas para leer :-) De los nueve nominados a mejor película, solo tres se lo merecen, así que realmente me da igual si Beatty lo leyó bien o mal. Al menos, Affleck ganó. (27.02.2017)

This year was definitely my last broadcast from the American Academy Awards. Last year, I witnessed an unbelievable farce when there was almost an uprising of black actors because they felt unjustly rewarded, so it ended up looking like performance didn't matter, only skin color. I made fun of it and told people that they could solve it again with the much-loved quotas, but this year, my humor ran out. Public opinion once again triumphed over lies and hatred, as well as common sense, and Will Smith can enjoy his coffee knowing he accomplished his mission. Last year's racist Oscar has quickly transformed into the black Oscar this year, but it's a shame that the academicians didn't have time to adjust the statue's color accordingly. In the broadcast, they missed a huge opportunity for Hispanic actors who didn't make themselves sufficiently invisible with their protest, so we probably can't expect a Latino Oscar next year. I think any TV Barrandov show can fully replace these Oscar shenanigans for me. (27.02.2017)

I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the whole show. Besides having different favorites, which doesn't matter that much, I simply felt like it was playing it too safe, and didn't surprise me at all that evening. Kimmel was funny, although his confrontations with Matt Damon are getting pretty stale. But still above average. (27.02.2017)

The best ceremony in recent years. It was kicked off by Justin Timberlake to make the opening less conservative and get the audience excited, and the following opening monologue by Kimmel was balanced in terms of jokes and sarcasm (but of course no one can match the savagery of Ricky Gervais’ monologues at the Golden Globes). Fortunately, my expectations of an incredibly left-wing and anti-Trump propaganda were not fulfilled. These issues were only lightly and humorously brought up but did not become unnecessarily repetitive to the point of cringiness. Unfortunately, the current Hollywood politics showed itself at the end, when the winner wasn’t the best movie, but the best-sold one. The fact that the academy’s giving out awards for politics instead of talent is bound to backfire (it just doesn't make sense that the most prestigious award for Best Picture is won by a movie which, based on the box office earnings, practically nobody has seen and absolutely nobody will remember in a year). I appreciated Kimmel's other jokes, too, whether they concerned his favorite target, Matt Damon, or Hollywood’s favorite target, Mel Gibson, tweets to Trump, a special edition of Mean Tweets, or wisecracks about the riots in Sweden. It was also nice to see some legendary actors on stage who inspired their younger colleagues, and especially the presence of Michael J. Fox was very emotional for me personally. I consider him to be the most likable actor in Hollywood. And I will remember the end of the ceremony for a long time, because I have never seen anything like this happen live and I really felt sorry for the creators of La La Land, because to reach for the award only to have it taken from you a minute later when you are already in the middle of an acceptance speech is something so unreal that this moment beats all the rest of this year’s lackluster acceptance speeches and most of the acceptance speeches in the entire history of the ceremony. I gotta hand it to Jimmy Kimmel for the way he managed to handle the situation. (27.02.2017)