Political Drama at This Year’s Oscars? Yes, Very Likely.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

NY Times:

This is my third go at covering the Oscars as The Times’s awards writer, the Carpetbagger, and heading into the season, I wondered what sort of hullabaloo would erupt this time.

 

In 2016, there was #OscarsSoWhite: For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hadn’t nominated a single minority director or actor, prompting public outcry and demands for greater diversity in the movie business.

 

This season it was clear after the Venice, Telluride, and Toronto Film Festivals — all litmus tests for awards-minded pictures — that it wouldn’t be another #OscarsSoWhite year. The films that emerged from the festivals as likely Oscar contenders — “Moonlight,” “Fences,” “Lion,” “Loving,” and “Hidden Figures” (the film did not screen at Toronto , but its cast still showed up to promote it) — all starred minorities. And each of these pictures received major nominations, including a directing nod to Barry Jenkins, the director of “Moonlight,” who is black.

 

Yet for admittedly selfish reasons, I was hoping a new controversy would erupt. I have to produce a Carpetbagger column about the Oscars contest every week, for three months. Absent a fracas, the subject matter can get awfully thin.

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Another reason not to watch.