The Oscars did right by Spike Lee in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. As we’ve established, it did not “do the right thing” in its choice for Best Picture. The most outspoken critic of Green Book’s win was Spike himself, who many outlets are reporting “stormed out” of the Dolby theatre when the…

No matter how many awards shows I’ve watched, I always believe that most of the “shock” reactions from actors and actresses are faked for the cameras. Lady Gaga faked her reactions for every award she won this awards season. Regina Hall didn’t fake it, she thought she would win but she was moved to tears all the same. But let me tell you: Olivia Colman winning Best Actress over Glenn Close was a SHOCK. And Olivia Colman truly didn’t expect it. Neither did Glenn. Neither did the entire audience. When her name was announced, Colman jumped like someone zapped her with some electricity. To her credit, Glenn seemed magnanimous when the camera did cut to her during Olivia’s speech.

Glenn really thought it was going to be her year. She had every right to that belief, and while I loved The Favourite and Olivia Colman, I’m absolutely gutted for Glenn. The Wife was a great movie too. Glenn dressed the part of the Oscar winner too – she wore this 42-pound gold Carolina Herrera gown because she thought she would be photographed holding the Oscar all night. *choking sobs*

Olivia Colman hasn’t had good fashion sense the entire awards season. That usually happens when a British actress suddenly has a big success in America – it takes them a minute to hire a stylist who knows what they’re doing. I remember a time when Helen Mirren was a mess too, in the ‘90s. Then she hired a stylist. That’s all Olivia needs too. Olivia’s gown is Prada and it’s unmemorable. Her speech, on the other hand, was very memorable. Watch Lady Gaga as Olivia’s name was announced – Gaga was SHOOK!

Photos courtesy of WENN.

It’s not like we didn’t know it was coming. Awards season has been preparing us for the inevitable: Green Book as the 2019 Best Picture winner. America, and its almost comically disrespectful Black History Month of bad news, has been preparing us for this too. Since it won the People’s Choice Award …

Some days, I feel like I’m the only person who saw Aeon Flux, the Charlize Theron movie based on the anime series. It’s actually an okay movie, and Charlize is good in it. Charlize really did a LOOK for that movie, and her current look is taking me back. Charlize debuted her new brunette bob at the 2019 Oscars and if her haircut was just slightly more angular, it would be a complete Aeon Flux look. I don’t hate it, I just think she looks so different as a brunette, and… this shade doesn’t do much for her.

Charlize did what she almost always does, which is wear Dior. She’s one of the big faces of Dior perfume, and usually they give her some good looks. The material of this gown didn’t do her any favors, and neither did the color. I saw that a lot of people were like “she’s one of the worst dressed!” I don’t think so – mostly, this was just boring. I absolutely loathe the sleeves/shoulders though. The back is interesting, the necklace is not.

Letitia Wright – from Black Panther – also got to wear Dior. Dior gave her a much better dress! The detailing on this was gorgeous.

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Photos courtesy of Getty, WENN.

On Sunday night, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped out in Rabat for a cocktail-attire reception at the British ambassador’s residence. This is quite common with British royals when they travel on official business to other countries, and it never fails to be slightly strange to me. The aim of many of these overseas trips is soft diplomacy, to use the star-power of the royals to promote trade, charity and British interests abroad. So why the constant receptions at British embassies with guest lists that are almost entirely made up of British people? Royals could attend receptions with mostly British people when they’re at home, you know? I would find it strange if the American president or VP went to Poland and only attended one reception with an almost entirely American guest list too.

Anyway, Meghan continues to bring her star power wherever she goes. Meg wore this Dior gown which definitely has a Moroccan feel. It’s part caftan, part sack dress, but glamorous and conservative. I like the detailing on the high neck and I especially love the accessories – a Dior clutch (which is a repeat, I believe) and gold Dior heels. She also wore her beautiful Birks Snowflake Snowstorm diamond earrings, which she’s worn several times before. My quibble here is that her hair is too severe, especially with the center part. She needed some volume, even if was a neat bun that just wasn’t SO slicked down.

A few more notes – Meghan speaks French, and she was showing off her language skills a bit, although she apologized for not being incredibly fluent. Still, she’s better than Harry, who can’t speak French at all, quelle surprise. Also: Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast had a good write-up on pretty much everything we’ve been saying for weeks now: Meghan DGAF anymore about what the racist pearl-clutchers in the British media have to say about her. She understands that they’ll attack her over anything. Which has freed her to do what she wants and build her image on an international scale.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

This was always going to be a possibility and from the moment the Oscar nominations were announced in January, I wondered if “the Academy’s solution might be to give Alfonso Cuaron and Roma their day in the director category but Best Picture…well…”

Well.

That is exactly what happened. Alfonso…

For all of my predictions of how awful this year’s hostless Oscars would be, I actually didn’t mind it… for the most part. It wasn’t a total catastrophe, the awards had an okay pace in the first few hours, and the biggest miss was how they opened the show, with the Queen tribute. I’ve actually come around to the idea that maybe going hostless is…fine?? Here we are, I never thought I’d admit that. One thing I’ll give this year’s Oscars: they weren’t BORING. The shocks at the end of the night were like a jolt of g–damn adrenaline. Here are some highlights and lowlights, in no particular order:

The Queen Opening. Adam Lambert sang with the original members of Queen. They performed “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions.” I mean, it worked in the room and people seemed to enjoy it live. But holy lord, that was a terrible way to open the OSCARS. Then they followed it up with a dumb montage.

The Weird Presenters. I mean, it was something new. I wasn’t expecting to see Tom Morello present the clip for Vice. I knew Serena Williams was going to present the clips for A Star Is Born, but it still left me wondering how and why that happened, because the connection is not… obvious. Some presenters were more traditional, like Chris Evans & Jennifer Lopez. I was not happy that John Lewis, one of the last living Civil Rights icons, was called in to present the Best Picture clip for Green Book. A harbinger of things to come.

Ruth E. Carter’s historic win. Carter won Best Costume Design for creating an entire world of African royalty through costume in Black Panther. She is the first African-American woman to win in this category in the history of the Oscars. She was prepared, and she gave an excellent shout-out to Spike Lee too.

Jennifer Hudson’s screams into the abyss. Why did she scream-sing that song from RBG? And why did Emilia Clarke present it? I asked this on Twitter: did someone confuse Emilia with Felicity Jones, who played RBG?

Bohemian Rhapsody’s wins. I was completely over it. All of those sound awards could have gone during the commercial breaks as far as I’m concerned. Best Film Editing? Nope. Best Actor? Gross.

Glenn Close lost. My God, that was one of the biggest shocks I’ve ever seen at the Oscars. Olivia Colman looked like she had been jolted out of the blue. People thought Glenn was a sure thing. Glenn thought she was sure thing. I saw The Favourite and loved it, but I didn’t think Olivia had a snowball’s chance. Turns out, she did. And her speech was utterly charming.

The “Shallow” performance. We’ll talk about this more in the Gaga-fashion post, but I thought the performance was one of the best parts of the Oscars. It was thoughtful, artsy, interesting and well-produced. Gaga and Bradley Cooper had more chemistry in that live performance than they had in the entire movie though. I’m not even joking. And hey, now Lady Gaga is an Oscar winner for Best Song!

Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper perform Shallow at the #Oscars pic.twitter.com/smGbGzVKDO

— Lady Gaga Now ? (@LadyGagaNowNet) February 25, 2019

Chris Evans helping Regina King. She won so early, and I don’t think she had situated her dress situation yet, so Chris Evans – who was seated one seat over from Regina – jumped up to help her up the steps. So chivalrous!!

Reminder: We are not worthy of @ChrisEvans. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/G1AQ3sdUzC

— Page Six (@PageSix) February 25, 2019

Keegan Michael Key’s entrance. It was perfect!

Floating into work after a long lunch break like https://t.co/PjIRQbnhxp #Oscars pic.twitter.com/aFV2dzdYyq

— Variety (@Variety) February 25, 2019

A little Wayne’s World for the Gen Xers. They introduced the Bohemian Rhapsody clips.

Wayne and Garth make a cameo on the #oscars stage to introduce #BohemianRhapsody https://t.co/ufMFarwc3p pic.twitter.com/cxCIslR6OB

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 25, 2019

Barbra Streisand was amazing. I loved that she presented the BlacKkKlansman clip.

Lady Gaga is finally an Oscar winner. Okay, so we can stop worrying about that.

Spike Lee won for Best Adapted Screenplay. This is his first Oscar for screenplay!! He previously got an honorary Oscar and one for documentary.

My final thought: I truly didn’t believe Green Book had a chance of winning Best Picture. They refused to nominate Peter Farrelly for director, and I just believed people had actually seen the g–damn movie at this point and realized that it was some terrible, poorly written white savior bullsh-t. They gave it Best Picture. It was like the Academy voters couldn’t help but show their asses once again: Green Book was the out of touch choice for white people. It was the film where a racist clown got to be the hero. They chose that over Spike Lee’s best film in a decade. They chose it over Roma, they chose it over the brilliant weirdness that is The Favourite. I can’t.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

You may think that term has been overused and doesn’t mean much anymore, but how often do you get to use it on the O.G.s anyway?

As Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey pointed out, they were not the Oscars hosts, despite being the first people to actually speak live on air, not counting Quee…

Dear Gossips,

As we usually do, Duana, Kathleen, and I watched the Oscars together and at no point, as we usually do during award shows, did we say to each other… what? We’re only at XYZ category? It’s only been an hour? The Oscars went by quickly and I’m still trying to decide whether or not th…

Alfonso Cuaron has won Best Director for his labor of love set in 1970s Mexico City, Roma. Roma already won Best Foreign Language film and Best Cinematography. Many people love how immersive, quietly compelling and beautiful it was, and it was the favorite to win Best Picture, which went to Green Book (more on that in a moment). It is an important film historically and in this moment in history. Roma was also praised for its portrayal of domestic workers and for helping raise awareness of their work and roles. Yalitza Aparicio gave an excellent lead performance as Marina, a character based on the woman who raised Cuaron.

I believe Cuaron has been nominated for ten Academy Awards (that’s based on this list at IMDB, although his films have been nominated in so many categories) and he’s won twice before, for Best Picture and Best Director for Gravity in 2014.

In his acceptance speech for Best Director, Cuaron thanked so many people including his actors, Netflix, and his coworkers. He said “I want to thank the academy for recognizing a film centered around an indigenous woman, one of 70 million domestic workers, a character that historically has been relegated to the background in cinema. As artists our job is to look where others don’t, this becomes much more important in times when we are being encouraged to look away.” He also thanked everyone and Mexico in Spanish.

Now I wrote all that before I knew that f’ing Green Book, the white savior movie, won Best Picture. WTF. I hope this is the tail end of peak 2018. This film was controversial for its portrayal of a black man’s story from the perspective of a while savior character. The surviving family members of the man portrayed in the movie, Dr. Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali), have criticized the inaccuracies of the film and called it “the depiction of a white man’s version of a Black man’s life.” Lead Viggo Mortensen has also said some really terrible things in his press for the film, but still it got rewarded because people must like this kind of tripe. (Kaiser saw it, I did not and I trust her opinion.)

Director Peter Farrelly wasn’t even nominated in that category. In his acceptance speech for Best Picture he said that Green Book is about “loving each other no matter what our differences.” He then praised Viggo and the other actors as an aside.

This was a weird f’ing night and Julia Roberts sent it off. At least it didn’t run too late?

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photos via Netflix and credit WENN