By Howard M. Riell
Hollywood is many things, including snarky. And there was no shortage of snark at this year’s Oscars.
Among the major snubs, as chronicled by the New York Post (https://nypost.com/2020/02/10/oscars-2020-biggest-snubs-and-surprises/):
* Parasite stole the Best Picture Oscar. Hollywood liberals love to give awards to movies by and about minorities, and this one was Korean. Snubbed were much better movies such as Joker, 1917 and the mysteriously not even nominated Avengers: Endgame.
* 1917 and its director came home with gold from the Golden Globes, Producers Guild and Directors Guild. They also scored lots of money, raking in almost $300 million to date worldwide. But the Oscar voters snubbed it, despite its previous glory. Oh, well.
* The Irishman. The assumed blockbuster starring Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, and Al Pacino was supposed to be an instant classic. Instead, it got nothing from the Academy. Perhaps director Martin Scorsese should have concentrated on making his own effort better rather than slamming uber-popular Marvel movie franchises.
* Netflix took it in the chops. The streaming service had two movies nominated for Best Picture – The Irishman and Marriage Story – as well as various nominations for The Two Popes. It went away empty handed.
* The Farewell and Uncut Gems didn’t even merit nominations, which had some crying foul. “Uncut Gems has become one of the best reviewed and most commercially successful indies of 2019 (the film has managed to break the $40 million mark at the U.S. box office), but the Academy still overlooked it in favor of the season’s more dominant contenders like “The Irishman” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” noted indiewire.com. “Perhaps the film’s Christmas release date came too late, given the shorter awards season with the Oscar date so much earlier in 2020. Regardless, “Uncut Gems” star Adam Sandler should’ve been a Best Actor threat (he won the National Board of Review prize) and the Safdie Brothers should have found themselves in the running for Best Director (which they won from the New York Film Critics Circle) and Best Screenplay (which they won from the National Board of Review).”
Rolling Stone was of the same opinion. “What does Adam Sandler have to do to get a nomination? The man gave what was arguably the best performance of his career in Josh and Benny Safdies’ anxiety-inducing drama about a jeweler unable to see past (or outrun) his own personal flaws. A walking ball of tension, Sandler perfectly riffs on his screen personality of the bumbling buffoon; no other actor could have played this walking, talking, sweating, kvetching antihero in precisely the same way.”
