Tag Archives: Academy Awards

The Academy Awards 2025 Season Finale

March 3, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Conan doing photo ops on a black stage with a giant Oscar statue behind him. He's grimacing and holding a large jar of cotton balls or something resembling them.

He’s written for comedy shows, starred in talk shows, and hosted other award ceremonies and events. Some of that might’ve prepared him for tonight!

Oscar season is over at last! Tonight the 97th Academy Awards were aired live on ABC and streamed live on Hulu, once again held at ye olde Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and hosted for the very first time by beloved funnyman Conan O’Brien. This year’s soiree clocked in at 229 minutes, twenty minutes longer than last year’s and fifteen longer than The Brutalist with intermission. O’Brien was his usual uproarious self, taking more potshots at himself than at anyone or anything else and (mostly) refraining from hot-button politics. Anyone who needs more political debate can go overdose on any given social app anyway. Most such netizens generally avoid the Oscars anyway, or spend the evening replying to Oscars fans with such scintillating pearls of Oscar Wilde brilliance as “Who cares.”

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Oscar Quest 2025 Final Scorecard: 47/50

March 1, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan sit in character in the back of a limo. Strong glares at Stan, who's on the 1980s car phone.

“Look, Bucky, you’re gonna get me into the MCU right NOW.”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’25 is over! I did my best to catch all the Academy Award nominees I could in every single category before the big ceremony Sunday, whether in theaters or on our household’s available streaming services. Last year I managed a 100% completion achievement, but no one gave me a trophy for my amateur hobbyist efforts. My wife Anne was relieved to know our routines could get back to normal, but that’s about it for prizes. Oh, and it was a great excuse to catch some fantastic films I might otherwise have missed…as well as a few pieces of garbage.

This year I earned no real bragging rights. Of the fifty different works up for honors this year, I’ve seen 47 in all as of Saturday morning, with no chance of getting any farther. Per my completionist tradition, the following are capsule summaries of the other ten nominees I watched over the past six weeks that I hadn’t previously written up. The services that granted me access to each of them are provided as well, though at least one has changed since I watched it.

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My Oscar Quest 2025 Quick-Start Scorecard

January 24, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Robot has baby bird in its palm. Hand emits red and orange light rays into the darkness around them, diffused through its fingers.

The Wild Robot, my favorite film of 2024, nominated for three Academy Awards!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscar Quest! The game is simple but time-consuming: after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announces their latest nominations for the Academy Awards, I make plans to catch the nominees in every category, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. They have the Super Bowl; I have the Oscars.

I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short released between 2021 and 2023 — running the full gamut from the highest-priority Best Picture contenders down to the mediocre flicks with negative Tomatometer scores that show up only for Best Original Song. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Oppenheimer, and every Best Picture nominee from 1984 to the present, many of which were memorable and worth the hunt. I’ve enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets.

Sometimes I have to wait for smaller films to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re available on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes my only option is a streaming rental for a few dollars more. For extreme cases and a bit of savings, I used to turn to Redbox kiosk rentals, but alas, as of last July they are no more. I go wherever the Quest takes me, while my wife Anne waits patiently at home or in another room, like Penelope looking forlornly at her calendar and wondering why that pigheaded Odysseus insists on stopping at every single time-wasting Mediterranean island in his way.

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The Academy Awards 2024 Season Finale

March 11, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Kate McKinnon's Weird Barbie invites Jimmy Kimmel into her Barbieland house and unrolls a large presentation map of "Oscarsland", which looks like a Candyland game board with photos of each of the ten Best Picture nominees scattered along its dotted-line path.

Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie gives a lost Jimmy Kimmel directions to the Oscars, in ABC’s extended trailer.

Oscar season is over at last! Tonight ABC aired the 96th Academy Awards, once again held at ye olde Dolby Theatre and hosted for a fourth time by ABC’s favorite trooper Jimmy Kimmel. This year’s soiree clocked in at 144 minutes, a surprising 14 minutes shorter than last year’s telecast. That’s after starting six minutes late and keeping the stopwatch running till the very end of the end credits, up to the final boilerplate disclaimer read by announcer David Alan Grier. Kimmel and his writing staff made only a single overtime joke in the monologue, then dropped that annual running gag for the rest of the night. It’s refreshing whenever a tired joke is crossed off the setlist.

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Indianapolis Man Watches All 53 Academy Award Nominees, Receives Pat on Head from His Oscar Widow

March 9, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jon Batiste on stage at Carnegie Hall, viewed from behind as he raises his arms toward an impressed audience.

Jon Batiste playing Carnegie Hall between awards ceremonies.

I am so, so tired. It’s been a loooong six weeks.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’24 has dominated my head space and made me neglect numerous other overdue blogging projects. I’m pleased to report I’m at long last finished: I’ve seen all 38 nominated features and all 15 shorts, marking my first-ever 100% achievement of completing my OQ24 scorecard before the big ABC ceremony. I don’t watch sports, so the Oscars are my Super Bowl, which makes me look weird to most folks in my circles. Nevertheless, once again my traditional hobby-journey was spellbinding, enlightening, maddening, exhausting fun.

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I Would’ve Voted for “American Fiction” Three Times If I Could’ve

January 27, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jeffrey Wright as an author sitting at his laptop in a very nice house, thinking hard about his next sentence.

“It was a Black and blackly night…”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as a lifelong lover of satire, I was annoyed at missing American Fiction when it played the Heartland Film Festival months ahead of the current Oscar season, but its one and only showtime and location were lousy for me. The drive would’ve been a nearly-hourlong construction-zone slog to Central Indiana’s most upscale area, arguably a breeding ground for the very crowd that the film’s most withering commentary targets.

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My Oscar Quest 2024 Quick-Start Scorecard

January 24, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in one of the black-and-white flashbacks. He's seated at a table, incredulous during testimony and reaching for his coffee mug.

“Now I am become Oscar, the booster of careers.”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Everything Everywhere All at Once, and every Best Picture nominee from 1987 to the present, many of which were worth the hunt. You take the good, you take the bad, and so on.

Starting in 2020 I upgraded to the Oscars Quest Expanded Challenge, in which I see how many nominees I can watch in all categories before the big ceremony. Thanks to the expansion of streaming services I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short for the years 2021 and 2022, even in minor categories like Best Original Song. I enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets. Sometimes I have to wait for smaller nominees to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes I go for a streaming rental. In extreme cases a Redbox disc rental might be warranted. I go wherever the Quest takes me.

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2023 at the Movies at My House

January 20, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed sit expectantly on the floor in front of a wall-mounted microwave. Two of her fingers are bandaged.

Time once more to gather the family ’round the appliance of your choice!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: : in 2023 I made 24 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. Meanwhile at home, I kept up with select new releases depending on what was conveniently available through our family’s streaming subscriptions, what sounded most watchable, and/or what felt like potential future Oscar nominees that should be gotten over with in advance to ease my annual Oscar Quest time crunch. For value-added fun, as an anniversary gift from my lovely wife Anne we now have Amazon Prime, which expanded our options without expanding my available TV free time. I did what I could within the time slots allotted.

Hence the fourth annual installment of the MCC tradition borne of the pandemic: a ranking of all the brand new films I saw on comfy, convenient home video in their year of release. Sure, they could’ve been 24 separate entries written in real time as I consumed them, but that’s not how I roll. The Academy Award nominations announcement is coming up January 23rd, which I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind as the deadline for this listicle, so that incentive to get these done clearly worked. On with the countdown!

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My 2023 Reading Stacks #3

November 26, 2023 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Covers of the first two books reviewed below.

Two books about movies, some of which are based on books. One book technically works as a sequel to the other.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife Anne or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-five years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

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The Oscars 2023 Season Finale

March 13, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Posters for all this year's 10 Best Picture nominees.

Excerpted from host Jimmy Kimmel’s ABC ad for the event, which also featured Jon Hamm and a very special guest.

Oscar season is over at last! Tonight ABC aired the 95th Academy Awards, once again held at ye olde Dolby Theatre and hosted for a third time by ABC’s favorite trooper Jimmy Kimmel. Coming in at 158 minutes by my clock including end credits, it was nowhere near the longest ceremony ever, but that didn’t stop Kimmel and his writing staff from relying on runtime jokes for half their material. To be fair, runtime jokes are as much an Oscar Night tradition as the lengthy runtime itself. If watching these telecasts is your annual Super Bowl, then you’re used to both of those things.

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