Even the customary Oscar gift bags given to top nominees before Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony indicated that this year’s celebration would be anything but show business as usual.
The assortment of enviable swag included the usual decadent fare — a “conflict-free” diamond necklace, a 14-day Tanzanian excursion, face cream made of crushed unicorn horn (or something equally as rare) — but it was two smaller gifts that spoke directly to the collective mental state of the industry. Inside the collection of carefully curated goodies sent to A-listers like Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand was an 18-minute session of phobia-relief therapy and an elegantly designed tube of pepper spray.
Heal your wounds and live to fight another day, it seemed to say. Even the most vapid of Hollywood traditions can’t avoid being colored by the traumatic events of the last few months kicked off by the allegations of decades of sexual misconduct by the ringmaster of the Oscar circus, Harvey Weinstein.
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Call it the Weinstein Effect. Even in his absence, the disgraced movie mogul still holds sway over the Oscars.
Referred to earlier this year by Golden Globes’ host Seth Meyers as “the elephant not in the room,” the Miramax Films co-founder and former Weinstein Co. head was consistently the show’s most referenced and recognizable non-celebrity next to Oscar himself. There have been other legendary Hollywood studio chiefs — Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner — but Weinstein’s fame was linked not so much to movies but to the Oscars themselves.
“Harvey” was personally thanked or praised by award winners such as Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Renée Zellweger in at least 34 Oscar speeches from 1993 to 2016, and no last name was required. According to one analysis of nearly 1,400 Oscar speeches, the man behind films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The King’s Speech” was thanked more often than God.
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From left to right, David Parfitt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein, Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Zwick and Marc Norman celebrate after receiving the Oscar for best picture for “Shakespeare In Love” during the Academy Awards on March 21, 1999 in Los Angeles.
(Dave Caulkin / AP Photo )
He’d sit up front, the camera seemingly always on him, a burly, unshaven king among his beautiful subjects, beaming at his winners, semi-abashedly shrugging off the accolades.
Even irreverent Oscar hosts name-checked Weinstein in their monologues. referring to the behind-the-scenes businessman as if he was a household name tantamount to George Clooney (who, no doubt, has also thanked Weinstein once or twice).
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The praise kept coming, even as the man known for making and breaking the careers of Hollywood’s brightest stars was paying millions in hush money to women who’d accused him of sexual misconduct. It was an alleged pattern of abuse that’s since been described as “an open secret” in Hollywood.
Now as the Oscar red carpet’s being unfurled atop the grime of Hollywood Boulevard, and the shame of Weinstein is still too fresh to sweep under the proverbial rug, rain is hardly the awards show’s biggest concern. From “Who are you wearing?” red carpet interviews to teary acceptance speeches at the winner’s podium, Hollywood will be openly grappling to find equilibrium between the rage and guilt left in Weinstein’s wake.
What now?
It’s been less than five months since Weinstein was banished from the industry, the academy and, ostensibly, the human race after numerous women — some famous, some not — came forward. Nearly 85 accusers have leveled claims against Weinstein since the New York Times published that first exposé in October, triggering a #MeToo tsunami that’s taken down men once considered too powerful to fall.
2018 Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel will inherent a room very different from the one presided over last year, when President Trump’s name was the one (mostly) not spoken, though POTUS’ impact was implicit in comments about supporting immigrants and resisting systemic racism. But Trump was an outsider, Weinstein was the ultimate insider, which makes dealing with him during the show all the more tricky.
If the recent Globes and SAG Awards were any indication, 2017’s industry-wide focus on diversity and resistance has been recast to include the issues underpinning the Time’s Up campaign and its big sister, the #MeToo movement.
Where that leaves the traditional jocular banter between the Oscars male hosts and their go-to personalities in the audience like James Franco and Kevin Spacey is anyone’s guess. But it’s likely Kimmel won’t turn to Dustin Hoffman for the customary host-ribs-celebrity repartée.
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Chris Rock set a fearless example of how to tackle progressive Hollywood’s embarrassingly non-progressive culture when he hosted the 2016 Oscar awards. He approached the studio system’s lack of diversity straight on, suggesting that the 88th Oscars, in which no people of color were nominated in the acting categories, be called the “White People’s Choice Awards.”
Rock went on to explain why it had taken so long for the #OscarsSoWhite protests to gain steam: “We had real things to protest. We were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer” and continued to make the room laugh, and squirm, with jokes that hit close to the bone. “This year, in the In Memoriam package, it’s just going to be black people that were shot by the cops on their way to the movies.”
Kimmel would likely have a harder time selling a joke about the indignity of being groped by Weinstein, or that as a woman, he’s 75 times less likely to be chosen as a film’s director than his male competition.
Women will set the tone of this year’s Oscars, however, with their acceptance speeches. The few major awards shows that have arrived since Weinstein’s downfall became makeshift platforms for women to herald a new day in Hollywood and address the changes they want to make happen. Much less time was spent rattling off the usual list of people they’d like to thank, of which Harvey was never going to be a part again.
Nicole Kidman and Elisabeth Moss used their stage time at the Golden Globes to point out how Hollywood is waking up and expressed their hopes for a more equitable future.
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Oprah Winfrey brought many in the audience to tears with her Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech, which ended with: “I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘Me too’ again.”
The list of this year’s Oscar nominees, however, speaks to an industry that’s still overwhelmingly male.
“Lady Bird’s” Greta Gerwig is only the fifth female director ever to be nominated. Kathryn Bigelow, who was the last woman to be nominated in the category, was the first and only female to win the award. “Mudbound’s” Rachel Morrison is the first woman to be nominated for cinematography.
The uncomfortable dance between the reality of a business built by powerful men like Weinstein and the glaring realization that things have to change is the new monster in the room at the Oscars. Harvey’s name may be shorthand for the sexism and pervasive culture of misogyny that still permeates most every workplace, but he’s gone and it’s now up to those who are left to push the ball forward.
No pressure, Oscars. All you have to do Sunday is sort your dirty laundry in public, while entertaining those same masses, while staying on the right side of history, while advocating for positive change without sounding too pat or strident. Perhaps that Oscar swag bag should have included a dose of Adderall.
A late-night TV talk show host (Emma Thompson) faces falling ratings, personal crises and a blindingly white-male writers’ room in “Late Night,” co-starring and written by Mindy Kaling.
Elton John (Taron Egerton) lays down a track for his express train to super-stardom in “Rocketman.” The musical biopic co-stars Jamie Bell as lyricist Bernie Taupin.
Genie (Will Smith, right) explains the three-wishes thing to the title character (Mena Massoud) in Disney’s “Aladdin,” director Guy Ritchie’s live-action remake of the 1992 animated feature.
Unburdened by Batman and Superman, the DC Comics realm turns in a not-bad origin story buoyed by Zachary Levi as the superhero version of 15-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel).
Reunited for a family wedding, former lovers played by Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem find themselves embroiled in a kidnapping in “Everybody Knows,” directed by Asghar Farhadi.
A tropical island boat captain (Matthew McConaughey) and his much-abused ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) enter a vortex of rough justice and fancy riddles in “Serenity.”
Capping the trilogy started with “Unbreakable” (2000) and the surprise hit “Split (2017), Shymalan’s treatise on superhero origin stories brings James McAvoy, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson together for a plodding psych-hospital escape.
Washington D.C. power brokers Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and Lynne Cheney have a date with destiny in Adam McKay’s “Vice,” co-starring Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.
Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actor for Christian Bale, Best Supporting Actor for Sam Rockwell, Best Supporting Actress for Amy Adams, Best Director for Adam McKay, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Hair and Makeup,
(Matt Kennedy / AP)
13/20
Queen Anne’s (Olivia Colman) court wrestles with the question of how to finance a war with France. Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), the Duchess of Marlborough, uses her wits, her body and the queen’s bed to coerce Anne into raising taxes on the citizenry in order to keep the off-screen battle going. Then the unexpected arrival of her country cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone), a noblewoman fallen on hard times. A dab hand with medicinal herbs, Abigail quickly rises above servant status to become the queen’s new favorite. Game on!
Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actress for Olivia Colman, Best Supporting Actress for Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, Best Director for Yorgos Lanthimos, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design,
(Atsushi Nishijima / AP)
14/20
This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Olivia Colman in a scene from the film “The Favourite.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Fox Searchlight Films via AP) (Atsushi Nishijima / AP)
15/20
A high-powered ad agency executive (Tika Sumpter, right) takes in her ex-con sister (Tiffany Haddish, center) in “Nobody’s Fool.”
Risk-prone 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic, left) shares some of his angst with one of the local LA skateboarding idols, Ray (Na-Kel Smith), in writer-director Jonah Hill’s “Mid90s.”
An Atlanta teenager (Amandla Stenberg) deals with the death of her friend in “The Hate U Give,” director George Tillman Jr.’s fine adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel.
In “First Man,” Ryan Gosling reteams with “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle to relay the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon.
Dax (Lil Rel Howery) gave up playing basketball after getting a crucial buzzer-beater whapped out of the sky by his nemesis, Mookie (Nick Kroll). Now Dax coaches Harlem street ball and has sunk his life savings into the Rucker Classic tournament. Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving) holds the key to Dax’s redemption.
“Ye” isn’t so much a musical statement as a 23-minute, seven-track therapy session. Read the review
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
2/21
The new album embraces her individuality more explicitly than ever, both more autobiographical and more politically and socially direct than anything she’d recorded previously. It’s a rawer, less elaborate work than its predecessors, yet still hugely ambitious. Read the review
(Jean-Baptiste Lacroix, AFP/Getty Images)
3/21
On her seventh studio album, “Golden Hour” (MCA Nashville), the singer-songwriter doesn’t get hung up on genre. She’s made a style-hopping pop album that infuses her songs with a relaxed spaciousness while muting, but not ignoring, her country roots. Read the review
(John Konstantaras / Chicago Tribune)
4/21
After years of small, carefully articulated recordings and one-man shows, Moses Sumney has finally released his long-gestating debut album, “Aromanticism” (Jagjaguwar), and it’s as resistant to instant categorization as his earlier work. The self-produced album is strikingly, starkly intimate — it sounds like the loneliest place on Earth, wherever that might me (an island, a cave, someplace in the listener’s head). Read the full review.
(Jagjaguwar / handout)
5/21
“American Dream” is a breakup album of sorts but not in the traditional sense. This is about breakups with youth, the past, and the heroes and villains that populated it. It underlines the notion of breaking up as just a step away from letting go — of friends, family, relevance. Read the review.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
6/21
Chuck Berry‘s surprise announcement last October that he would release his final studio album this year was made all the more poignant by his death March 18 at age 90.
“Chuck” (Dualtone/Decca) very much sounds like a career capstone, a thank-you to the people who mattered most to him — from his wife of 68 years, Themetta “Toddy” Suggs to the fan in the second row at one of his concerts.
Sir the Baptist, aka William James Stokes, is the son of a preacher, and his major label debut, “Saint or Sinner” (Atlantic), has one foot on the street and the other in a church. Read the review.
(Alyssa Pointer/Chicago Tribune )
8/21
So is there really something about Harry? The 10 songs edge toward ‘70s revivalism rather than 2017 hip-hop-EDM-urban-contemporary stylishness, a move presaged by One Direction tracks such as “Four” and “Fireproof.” Producer Jeff Bhasker specializes in freshening up retro-leaning sounds with artists such as Kanye West, Jay-Z and Mark Ronson-Bruno Mars (“Uptown Funk”). In addition, Bhasker co-wrote nine of the 10 songs with Styles, along with a small team of hired guns. Read the full review.
(Columbia Records / AP)
9/21
The title song from “Deliverance” is Grade-A late-period Prince, 3-plus-minutes of piano-organ interplay and sanctified backing vocals that impart an anthemic gospel feel. Read the review
(Bertrand Guay, AFP/Getty Images)
10/21
The self-released “Drogas Light,” Lupe Fiasco’s first album since severing ties with Atlantic, brought hope that it might rekindle the spark and freshness of his 2006 debut, “Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor.” Instead, it falters beneath its own cynicism. Read the full review.
(Kevin Winter / Getty Images)
11/21
“Nothing Feels Natural” doesn’t come off like a new band’s first statement. It sounds fully formed and wickedly confident, the work of four people who had to get a few things off their chest. Read the review.
( The Washington Post/Getty Images)
12/21
“Black America Again” (ARTium/Def Jam) arrives as a one of the year’s most potent protest albums. The album sags midway through with a handful of lightweight love songs, but finishes with some of its most emotionally resounding tracks: the “Glory”-like plea for redemption “Rain” with Legend, the celebration of family that is “Little Chicago Boy,” and the staggering “Letter to the Free.” Read the review.
(Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune)
13/21
Warpaint’s unerring feel for gauzy hooks and slinky arrangements germinated over a decade and flourished on the quartet’s excellent 2014 self-titled album. But the band has always nudged its arrangements onto the dance floor — subtly on record, more overtly on stage — and “Heads Up” (Rough Trade) gives the group’s inner disco ball a few extra spins. Read the review.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
14/21
Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he’s really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave’s songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, “Skeleton Tree”, his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. Read the full review.
(Carl Court / Getty-AFP)
15/21
On “Here” (Merge), the band’s first album in six years and 10th overall, the front line of Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley once again trades songs (four each) and lead vocals, over sturdily constructed pop-rock arrangements. But the band has taken some subtle evolutionary turns to where it’s now a faint shadow of its “Bandwagonesque” incarnation. Read the review.
(Ross Gilmore / Redferns via Getty Images)
16/21
Now “Schmilco” (dBpm Records) arrives, a product of the same recording sessions that produced “Star Wars” but a much different album. Though it’s ostensibly quieter and less jarring than its predecessor, it presents its own radical take on the song-based, folk and country-tinged side of the band. Read the full review.
(Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune)
17/21
“Blonde” is a critique of materialism with Frank Ocean employing two distinct voices, like characters in a play, a recurring theme throughout the album and perhaps its finest sonic achievement. A party spirals out of control, the music rich but low key, a melange of organ and hovering synthesizers. Ocean uses distorting devices on his voice to add emotional texture and to enhance and sharpen the characters he briefly embodies. The upshot: They’re all little slices of Ocean’s personality with a role to play and they each sound distinct. Read the full review.
(Jordan Strauss / AP)
18/21
On their new album, “Existentialism,” the Mekons turn their audience and the recording space into accomplices for the band’s high-wire act. Read the full review.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
19/21
“Lemonade” is more than just a play for pop supremacy. It’s the work of an artist who is trying to get to know herself better, for better or worse, and letting the listeners/viewers in on the sometimes brutal self-interrogation. Read the full review.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
20/21
In contrast, “Junk” (Mute”), M83’s seventh studio album, sounds chintzy — a bubble-gum snyth-pop album that indulges Gonzalez’s love of decades-old TV soundtracks, hair-metal guitar solos and kitschy pop songs. Read the full review.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
21/21
Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled, Unmastered” is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one. Read the review.
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Lorraine Ali is news and culture critic of the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she was television critic for The Times covering media, breaking news and the onslaught of content across streaming, cable and network TV. Ali is an award-winning journalist and Los Angeles native who has written in publications ranging from the New York Times to Rolling Stone and GQ. She was formerly senior writer for The Times’ Calendar section where she covered entertainment, culture, and American Arab and Muslim issues. Ali started at The Times in 2011 as music editor after leaving her post as a senior writer and music critic at Newsweek Magazine.
