The 90th Oscars were a vanilla, tedious let down after much talk of revolution

Ashley Judd was front and centre, but her cause wasn't reflected in the Academy's winners.
Ashley Judd was front and centre, but her cause wasn't reflected in the Academy's winners.

OPINION: #OscarsSoWhite #TimesUp #MeToo

There's a nagging feeling that Oscar simply paid lip service to the movements during the rather bland, somewhat vanilla, and at times, tedious Academy Awards.

#OscarsSoToken more like.

Was Sam Rockwell winning Best Supporting Actor a sign of the Status Quo to come?
KEVIN WINTER
Was Sam Rockwell winning Best Supporting Actor a sign of the Status Quo to come?

To be fair, it was never really going to savage Harvey Weinstein, was it?

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Sure, host Jimmy Kimmel dropped a couple of tame lines in his monologue, but the rather muted nature of this year's Academy Awards, coupled with the entirely predictable outcome of the results, shows that Oscar's got a long, long way to go before it returns to relevance.

Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino were each other's dates to the Oscars - it was a token gesture.
JAY L CLENDENIN
Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino were each other's dates to the Oscars - it was a token gesture.

After all, it started with host Jimmy Kimmel remarking on the lack of diversity - let me point out here that this was a man once again preaching to the choir. Not a female presenter or a person of colour, but a white man in a white man's world.

#OscarsSoSafe would be the best way to describe the awards - and the course that Hollywood is taking again.

Sure, the Time's Up movement got a segment introduced by Ashley Judd, but none of the Academy's social channels posted this pre-recorded sequence anywhere after it had aired.

Actors Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra and Salma Hayek spoke up for women, but it seemed like lip service from The Academy.
KEVIN WINTER
Actors Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra and Salma Hayek spoke up for women, but it seemed like lip service from The Academy.

Nowhere.

Guys, if you're serious about instigating change, and it was - let me repeat this - pre-recorded, maybe come through with what you're promising.

It speaks volumes to the fact that Hollywood has once again done what it can to laud its own - and ignore the deafening cries of what lies outside, beating on the doors of the theatre and thumping on the Academy's windows.

Filmmaker and NBA legend Kobe Bryant accepts Best Animated Short Film for Dear Basketball from actor Oscar Isaac.
KEVIN WINTER
Filmmaker and NBA legend Kobe Bryant accepts Best Animated Short Film for Dear Basketball from actor Oscar Isaac.

It lost the black couture on the red carpet, with much of the pre-awards concentrating on the looks of what people were wearing - though some nominees tried to talk projects with maligned host Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet, rather than concentrate on fripperies.

But when it came to delivering actual tangible results in the awards, where was the follow through?

Where was the promise to expunge the ghost of Weinstein with the display of new talent, of diversity and of a desire to bring real change?

Jordan Peele's screen play won, but has Hollywood changed? Really?
Jay L. Clendenin
Jordan Peele's screen play won, but has Hollywood changed? Really?

Sure, Mexico scored bigly thanks to Coco and The Shape of Water, and Jordan Peele got an award for Get Out's screenplay - but the major awards once again eluded those who should have got them, where it mattered most, and where tangible change could have been demonstrated.

Gary Oldman's tedious turn as a shouting stomping Churchill, Frances McDormand's wronged mother in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Alison Janney's scene-chewing turn as Tonya Harding's mother all gained the expected outcome that  season traction had granted them.

It was all so predictable.

Even Emma Stone's comment about "Four men - and Greta Gerwig" when announcing the Best Director nominations was the expected barb.

The ceremony's just finished, and I'm struggling to recall a moment which stood out, it's already faded into the compartment marked "Yet another chance to show change bungled".

If Oscar is truly serious about making these awards count and crucial, just get on and do it.

Your lack of desire to be real about change, to embrace a diversity which has eluded you for the past 90 years, for an industry to embrace a seismic shift will come back to haunt you.

In ten years, you'll hit a hundred, but I hope we don't have to wait ten years for the change to come - otherwise The Oscars themselves will be the stars of their own "In Memoriam" segment.

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