Critics of Oscars show say diversity talk was too narrow

Nah, I suppose the Oscars had way more in store for us aside from King Leonardo DiCaprio (this is your cue to bow down) winning his first Oscar.

“We were really confident about this film and timed the release of the film around the Oscars”. Rest assured that Rock, often cited as one of the greatest living stand-up comedians, left no one unscathed – from the night’s nominees to boycotters like Jada Pinkett Smith, even the Academy itself.

The journalism drama “Spotlight” won the Oscar for best picture Sunday in an unusually serious Academy Awards ceremony that was upended by a public debate over racism in Hollywood.

“I’d like to thank our director, Lenny Abrahamson, who is absolutely incredible, Emma Donoghue, who created this world, Jacob Tremblay, my partner through this in every way possible”, she said in her speech.

“I thought it was jabbing at Hollywood, yet at the same time even-handed, and kind of dealing with a new era of how we discuss diversity”, said Adam McKay, director and co-writer of best picture nominee “The Big Short”.

Rock generally got a lot of laughs – even if some of them were uncomfortable – but a couple of gags just didn’t work for the audience. I just knew his monologue would be all over the internet within a matter of minutes. They were clueless. There’s a high possibility that it could have been scripted, or at least that was the vibe I got while watching.

After DiCaprio was cast, he spent some time with a group of mentally-challenged boys in Texas, according to an Entertainment Weekly article that caught up with the cast 20 years after the film first screened. Wise move, Chris. Wise move.

In a fight for survival, comparable to his fight for the Oscar, his Revenant character Hugh Glass treks through snow-covered forests, gets swept away in a waterfall, sleeps inside the carcass of a disembowelled horse and hungrily eats raw bison liver before making it back to his camp.

In “Grape”, which was based on the novel of the same name by West Des Moines-native Peter Hedges, who also wrote the screenplay, DiCaprio played a mentally-challenged teenager in a poor, but loving, family. Then when his Room co-star Brie Larson won Best Actress, well, night made by his adorable reaction.

Gasps went around the Dolby when Mark Rylance won best supporting actor for Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies” over Sylvester Stallone. As long as this conversation remains confined to people of color, we can’t expect to see real change. Lady Gaga performed her song “Til It Happens To You” joined onstage by dozens of sexual assault survivors.

In case there were any lingering doubts that this year’s 88th annual Academy Awards ceremony was a tad more subversive than its predecessors, those doubts could be shut down by the closing-credits musical train. It felt more like a 3 and a half hour guilt trip.

In an opening monologue peppered with biting commentary about what he described as “sorority”-style discrimination pervading the film industry, Rock set the stage for a night of running gags that repeatedly returned to themes of racial politics”. The music was merely disrespectful; the scroll was idiotic, and not just because it rolled by too quickly and was ignored by the winners (as it should have been) too often.

So there you go, climate change.