Film

Hot Dog Guns And Other Nonsense: Everything That Happened At #Oscars2018

Finally Hollywood is representing romances between thicc fish-men and the women who love them.

by Patrick Lenton  5 March 2018
2018 Oscars

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Hooray, it’s Oscars day! The 90th Academy Awards happened today in LA, full of glitz and glamour and Armie Hammer.

This year we had big fancy films pitted in a desperate deathmatch against each other — films like the maritime erotica of The Shape of Water against Winston Churchill’s inspiring jowls in Darkest Hour. Cute indies like Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird battling again blockbusters like Dunkirk. 

Unlike last year, the Oscars ceremony was a fairly stolid, predictable affair, hosted by the nutritional yeast of the talkshow world Jimmy Kimmel, who managed to guide us through the 7000 hours of ceremony with some sensible chuckles and a complete lack of drama or intrigue.

But, while we were somehow spared the catastrophe of La La Land accidentally winning again, there were a bunch of notable events that you may have missed, so let’s go through them:

Some Notable Winners

The Shape of Water Wins Best Picture

Finally Hollywood is representing the often misunderstood romances between thicc fish-man and the women who love them.

Frances McDormand Won Best Actress In a Leading Role

Frances McDormand was a crowd favourite to win the Oscar for her role as Mildred Hayes, a tough as nails, unapologetic, grieving mother in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and she didn’t disappoint.

During her excellent speech, which she admitted that she was hyperventilating through, she asked all the nominated and winning women (especially Meryl Streep) in the crowd to stand in a statement for diversity requirements to be put into contracts:

“Look around, everyone. We all have stories to tell, and projects we need financed. Invite us into our offices in a couple of days and we’ll tell you all about them.

“I’ll leave you with two words: inclusion rider.”

Gary Oldman Wins the Lead Actor Award

Gary Oldman takes the award from crowd favourite Timothée Chalamet for his depiction of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour — shouldn’t really be surprising that another Oldman wins an Oscar.

Guillermo del Toro Won Best Director Too

Presenter of the award Emma Stone succinctly and cleverly highlighted the gender disparity that still haunts the Academy Awards by introducing the nominees for Best Director as “these four men and Greta Gerwig”.

Jordan Peele Won Best Original Screenplay And People Are Crying

One of the best moments in the entire night was when Jordan Peele won the coveted Original Screenplay Oscar for his racially charged horror Get Out. In his speech he said that he wanted to “dedicate this to all the people who raised my voice and let me make this movie.” People are super happy for him:

Inspirational Moments

There Was A Tribute To Diversity And Different Voices

As part of the recorded proceedings, some of Hollywood’s diverse voices did a short and inspiration video about the importance of representation in Hollywood, including Dee Rees, Greta Gerwig, Ava DuVernay, Gina Davis, Mira Sorvino, Salma Hayek and Barry Jenkins. As Kumail Nanjiani said:

“Don’t do it because it’s better for society, do it because you’ll get rich”.

Sufjan And St Vincent Performed ‘Mystery Of Love’

No gay in the world was okay after that performance, although compared to the rest of the songs performed during the proceedings, it seemed to only go about 30 seconds long?

Best Adapted Screenplay

Delightful old man James Ivory accepted the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name, while wearing Timothée Chalamet’s face, and it was actually adorable.

Funniest Moments

Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph

Haddish and Rudolph came onstage to present the Best Animated and Live Action Short awards, and were very much the funniest part of the night.

“If you’re worried that Oscars are too black, there are so many more white people to come.”

J-Law Is Huge Or Jodie Foster is Tiny: An Investigation

I mean, LOOK AT THE DISCREPANCY BETWEEN THEM?

Kimmel Gathered A Bunch Of Celebrities To Fire Hotdogs At Some Rather Stoned Members Of The General Public

In a cool stunt, Jimmel Kimmel took a hunch of celebrities like Margot Robbie  to interrupt a screening of A Wrinkle In Time and to get them to hand out candy and shoot hotdogs out of a gun at them, including Margot Robbie and Armie Hammer. Kimmel also noted that there was a “strong aroma of marijuana” in the theatre, so a bunch of A-Listers shooting food at them must have been both terrifying and appreciated.

BB-8 Speaks Yiddish

The cast of Star Wars including Oscar Isaac, Mark Hamill and Kelly Marie Tran got up to present the Best Animated Feature Oscar to the film Coco. Also joining them was the famous soccer ball robot BB-8, who was the butt of a bunch of mostly very stilted jokes, but a good moment when Rose asked Oscar how come he was the only one who understood the droid, and the handsome actor answered:

“Are you kidding, I speak yiddish”.

Hansel Eggbort Can Recite Facts

Hansel Eggbort got up to present the award for Sound Editing, and he literally recited facts about what Sound Editing was, and I was proud of the handsome baby boy.

The Oscars Goes For 1000 Years

The fact that the Oscars go forever is such an established fact that Jimmy Kimmel — the blandest jokester in the universe — has joked about it about four times. One thing that people have noticed is that much of that time is not actually taken up with awards or powerful actresses striding across the stage or people singing songs from the films — it’s all taken up by INTERMINABLE film montages.

Also, if the montages weren’t bad enough on their own, one of them also had a wonderful shot of Robert Downey Jr in blackface, from the **classic** film Tropic Thunder. Thanks for reminding us of that.

At the end of the day, it’s best that we remember that having fun is the most important part, and we should all congratulate the millionaire actors and actresses and directors and producers who had a wonderful time working in this business we call show.

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Patrick Lenton is an author and staff writer at Junkee. He Tweets @patricklenton