92nd Academy Awards: The Parasite Takes Over the Host

92nd Academy Awards
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I loved last year’s Academy Awards. With Black Panther and BlacKkKlansman nominated for Best Picture, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse winning Best Animated Feature Film and Regina King and Mahershala Ali respectively winning Best Supporting Actress and Actor Oscars, Spike’s win and the Black Panther wins, it was a great year for black folks at the Oscar. This year, it felt closer to #OscarsSoWhite again. Of the major categories, there was only one black nominee, Cynthia Erivo for Best Actress. To make up for their lack of people of color nominees, they tried to say the other person of color nominee in the acting categories was Antonio Banderas. Only problem, Banderas is a white Spaniard. Along with no women in the Best Director category, it seemed like same old, same old. Fortunately, for the Academy someone crashed the party and helped change the narrative. Bong Joon Ho and his movie Parasite dominated the evening.

Opening the ceremony was Janelle Monáe who presented an exhilarating, exciting and weird opening number.

Steve Martin and Chris Rock gave the opening monologue.

These are two former hosts doing one of the major duties of the host in a host less event, a carryover from last year’s Oscars. Since there wasn’t a host, there were many presenters, with some presenters presenting other presenters. There were probably more presenters than nominees. Some of the presenters were standouts.

All of the Best Song nominees had presentations. The only one I liked was Cynthia Erivo singing “Stand Up” from Harriet. She lost to Elton John, not one of his best songs, but hey, it’s Elton John.

Matthew A. Cherry and Karen Rupert Toliver won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for Hair Love.

Taika Waititi won the Oscar for Adapted Screenplay.

The big winner of the night was Bong Joon Ho, director of Parasite, the big winner of the night. The picture won four Oscars: Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, Achievement in Directing, and Best Motion Picture of the Year. The audience showed their love for him every time he and his translator Sharon Choi took the stage. With the acting Oscars going chalk, his wins gave the night a needed spark.