Who can forget the peak awkwardness of 2017’s Academy Awards when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway incorrectly declared the Damien Chazelle-directed movie-musical, La La Land the winner of Best Picture.

The La La Land team were mid-speeches when Jordan Horowitz, one of the movie’s producers, was reportedly shown an envelope by a stagehand that declared Moonlight Best Picture.

Horowitz then faced the cringeworthy task of delivering the news to an international audience.

This year’s film and television awards season has already been hit with a ton of criticism.

When the full list of nominees for this year’s Golden Globes was released, people were pretty upset about the films and television shows that didn’t make the cut.

BAFTA voters came under fire this year for the overwhelmingly white set of nominees.

Needless to say, people are keen to see how the Oscars will play out on Sunday.

But first, let’s join Marlow Stern, senior entertainment editor at The Daily Beast, for a look at some of the biggest issues to rock the Academy Awards this year.

The lack of diversity at the Oscars this year is outrageous. Parasite is up for six Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. Does the Academy think it acted itself? They seem to view Asian actors as nameless, faceless workers versus the movie-shaping stars that they are. That could also explain the lack of consideration toward The Farewell. There have only been two Asian acting nominees in the last 35 years, and only seven all-time. An Asian has never been nominated in Best Actor, and only one Eurasian person (Merle Oberon, for 1935’s The Dark Angel) has ever been nommed in Best Actress.

Lack of diversity seems to be a big issue across the board. The BAFTAs and Grammy Awards were met with the same pushback, not only for the lack of racial diversity, but gender diversity as well.

Then there’s sexual harassment and other scandals attached to the critically acclaimed Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.

I wrote a bit about the problems surrounding Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood—namely, its treatment of women, the inclusion of Emile Hirsch (who brutally attacked a female film exec at a Sundance party), and Quentin Tarantino and Brad Pitt’s complicity in Harvey Weinstein’s reign of terror—but Hollywood loves patting itself on the back and not reckoning with its dark past.

The testimony from Weinstein’s alleged victims, in his ongoing court case, should be enough to take action.

And how about arguably the top film-awards publicist, Peggy Siegal, being blacklisted over her sketchy ties to Jeffrey Epstein (namely, that she had him attend many of her Oscar-season parties even after his pedophilia conviction)?  And comparing her treatment to that of a Holocaust victim? Truly wild stuff.

For more from Stern, read his full interview with fellow journalist Kevin Fallon here.

One thing seems certain – the Oscars won’t be boring.

[source:dailybeast]