April 12th
This is yet another two- parter. One about the Oscars 2022 and another about Death on the Nile. Let's talk about Death on the Nile first.
Now obviously I'm not going to spoil it and say who did it, but Death on the Nile is a remake and a sequel to another remake, Murder on the Orient Express. And you know it's based on a work by mystery author, Agatha Christie and it's a Hercule Poirot one.
If you read the book, or saw the original, you know the story. But I'm still going to give a brief summary. Poirot is invited on a ship in Egypt by a bride and groom after their wedding with family and friends. And looking at the title, they're on the Nile, and death happens. But by who? And why? And that's all I'll give you. Like the first one, it's a pretty good movie, not bad in any way. Now on to part two: the Oscars 2022.
Now for the first time in three years, the Oscars had a host, but not just one, not two, but three, three women hosts. The Dolby Theater, where it again was held, had a lot of celebrities (not cutouts or virtual, but real live ones).
Now, Encanto won for best animated film (no surprise there. It's a good film. It deserved it). Dune had six nominations. And the Oscars made history with Coda, the Best Motion Picture because it has actors in the deaf community, and one of the actors won, and he was the second deaf actor in Oscars history to do so. And an actress, who is in the gay community, won. She is a queer Afro- Latina openly gay woman, a first of her kind to win.
Now I can't talk about the Oscars without mentioning the incident. If you watched it or been on social media, you know what I'm getting at and of course, it's the slap.
Chris Rock was on stage and telling jokes like he always does. He joked about Jada, Will Smith's wife. He talked about her because she was bald, and that he couldn't wait to see her in the sequel to G.I. Jane. And due to her not being able to control her hair loss, didn't find it funny. Will did…at first. But when he saw her rolling her eyes, ceased his laughter and turned to anger. Now this is where it really went downhill.
Will got out of his chair, went up to the stage where Chris was still talking, in front of hundreds of celebrities and millions of viewers around the world and slapped him. You read that right, he slapped him across the cheek (I'm not making this up. You may think I am, but I'm not. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.) And it gets worse, when Will sat back down, he shouted at him and dropped two F- bombs. The shouting was muted for US viewers, but other viewers saw the uncensored version.
Both versions are online if you don't believe me, but we just couldn't believe it. A well known adult actor slapped another well known actor just because he couldn't take a joke. Now sure, the joke was in bad taste, but Will didn't have to be a child about it. It was a part of Will we never saw before (well, maybe apart from his role as Hancock on Hancock. But that was a movie. We never expected it in real life over a decade later). And, it gets worse again. His son, Jaden Smith, tweeted 'and that's how we do it', I'm sorry, Jaden, but your father taught you wrong if you tweeted that and thinks that's okay. Violence is and should never be the answer. Will apologized in his speech for winning an award for his role in King Richard later on, but not to Chris. He did apologize to Chris on social media the next day. But he should have taken it like a man, and never should have done it in the first place.
But other than that, the Oscars were fine. Having hosts again might have helped it. It was the same Oscars you would have expected. Different things might have happened, but let's be honest, different things happen every year.
So yeah, that was yet another two- parter. Death on the Nile came out in February, so it might come to DVD soon. And as for the Oscars? They may post the whole thing on YouTune eventually, and you can definitely see clips, especially the Will Smith and Chris Rock fiasco. It kind of became a meme. It was horrible the way Will acted. He's banned from the show for 10 years. It might be a bit long, but oh well. At least he's owning up to his actions and accepts the punishment and future ones down the line. And hopefully that kind of behavior never happens again on a classy award show.