The best and worst Oscar moments of the night

Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, and Olivia Colman at the 2019 Oscars.

By Alison Foreman and Proma Khosla2019-02-25 05:09:19 UTC

Even without a host, the 2019 Oscars managed to be simultaneously entertaining, infuriating, insipid, and bizarre. For the most part, the good seemed to outweigh the bad, but the bad was divisive and confusing.

We can explain.

BEST: Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler

This powerhouse trio of SNL alumni were the first presenters to take the stage, emphasizing that they were not hosts (and making us wish they were). They delighted in puns about the nominated movies, including such gems as “Hey Chadwick Boseman, Wakanda plans you got later?” Rudolph even took a crack at Lady Gaga’s iconic “Shallow” riff right in front of the star, and may we just say – she nailed it!

BEST: All the Marvel love

From Chris Evans fist pumping for Black Panther‘s Best Production Design win to Michelle Yeoh twirling with glee for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to Captain Marvel‘s Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson happily bantering as they presented their awards, to Black Panther‘s THREE Oscars, it was quite a night for Marvel fans and their beloved films.

WORST: Best Hair & Makeup Acceptance Speech

It’s not Best Makeup and Hairstyle winners Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe and Patricia DeHaney’s’ fault that their speech was so disjointed and slow…except it kind of is? The idea of sharing a speech is fair enough in theory given the Oscars’ history of cutting off groups of winners before one person has even finished speaking. Unfortunately, the trio struggled to execute, leading to awkward pauses and that dreaded playback music they were trying to avoid. This one requires some rehearsal before we try it again.

BEST: That “Shallow” performance

We’re off the deep end.

BEST: Melissa McCarthy as Olivia Colman, covered in rabbits

The breathtaking work of The Favourite and Mary Poppins Returns costume designer Sandy Powell earned her two nominations for Best Costume Design, as well as a delightful nod from category presenter Melissa McCarthy. Dressed in a lavish gown covered in a few dozen toy rabbits, McCarthy gave her own spin on Best Actress winner Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne costume from The Favourite. Ultimately, the category went to Black Panther costume designer Ruth Carter.

WORST: Hearing the same Queen riff over and over

How does music licensing work for the Oscars telecast? Could ABC not afford more than 15 seconds of Queen’s entire discography? They were already there…couldn’t Queen just come out and sing each time??

BEST: Spike Lee climbing Samuel L. Jackson like a koala on a tree

This was Lee’s first year as an Oscar nominee after decades of acclaimed filmmaking, and he received the Best Original Screenplay award from longtime friend and collaborator Jackson. They hugged and cheered on stage, and for a moment all was well.

WORST: Everything about Green Book

Hey, uh, what? Green Book was an objectively well-made movie, but drew scrutiny for sanitizing and sanctifying the relationship between its central characters. The producers were criticized by Doc Shirley’s family for distorting facts. An old tweet from writer and producer Nick Vallelonga revealed troubling anti-Muslim conspiracy rhetoric, and here’s a sexually predatory anecdote about the director.

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Knicks Snap 18-Game Home Losing Streak with Win over Spurs to Avoid NBA History

Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images

Stop the presses, the New York Knicks actually won a game at Madison Square Garden.

New York defeated the San Antonio Spurs 130-118 on Sunday, snapping an 18-game home losing streak that dated back to its overtime victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Dec. 1. Ian Begley of ESPN.com noted the Knicks would have tied the 1993-94 Dallas Mavericks for the longest home losing streak in league history had they lost to the Spurs.

Despite the win, the 12-48 Knicks still have the worst record in the Eastern Conference.

Damyean Dotson spearheaded the scoring with 27 points, while Kevin Knox (19 points and 10 rebounds) and Dennis Smith Jr. (19 points and 13 assists) added double-doubles.

The loss was a damaging one for a Spurs team looking to reach the playoffs for the 22nd consecutive year. San Antonio is tied with the Los Angeles Clippers, one game ahead of the Sacramento Kings and three games ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers in the race for the bottom two seeds in the Western Conference playoff picture.

As for the Knicks, their struggles even made it to the stage at the Academy Awards.

Samuel L. Jackson ribbed Knicks fan Spike Lee while presenting for Best Original Screenplay, telling the BlacKkKlansman director his team finally won. Lee quipped back that the team is tanking to improve its draft stock.

Sports Illustrated @SInow

Samuel L. Jackson delivered some HUGE news to Spike Lee at the Oscars

(via @ABC) https://t.co/BU1CV5yu3m

That is the one silver lining for Knicks fans this season, and Tankathon gives them a 14 percent chance at the No. 1 pick. Landing that pick and potentially using it on Duke’s Zion Williamson will significantly bolster the rebuild, especially if he can be paired with a free agent such as Kevin Durant or Kyrie Irving.

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Surprise? Green Book Wins Best Picture At The 2019 Oscars

Getty Images

After the most wide-open Best Picture race in modern history, the Academy has finally crowned a winner, and if you’ve been paying attention to awards season at all this year, then it might have been a bit of a surprise. Peter Farrelly’s Green Book won the coveted Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday night (February 24), ending awards season and putting Bradley Cooper out of his misery (just kidding… kinda).

“This is like a dream,” producer Jim Burke said. “We made this film with love, and we made it with tenderness, and we made it with respect.”

“The whole story is about love,” Farrelly added. “It’s about loving each other despite our differences.”

Green Book follows Dr. Don Shirley, a famous African-American pianist, who embarks on a concert tour in the segregated Deep South in 1962 along with his driver, Tony Lip, a brash, racist bouncer from Bronx. And through it all, they develop an unlikely friendship and realize that, hey, they’re not so different after all.

The feel-good story charmed audiences and critics alike (well, not all of them), but Green Book‘s road to Oscar has been bumpy to say the least. It weathered several controversies, including the Shirley family denouncing the film as being “full of lies.”

Still, Green Book‘s fate was sealed the moment Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie, and Peter Farrelly won Best Original Screenplay. Awards season buffs know that a screenplay win is a major indicator of a film’s Best Picture chances. Overall, Green Book won three Oscars, including the night’s top prize and an earlier Best Supporting Actor win for Mahershala Ali.

Here’s to next year’s awards season… which has somehow already started. Lucky us!

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Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s intimate Oscars look has spawned some excellent memes

Image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

By Morgan Sung2019-02-25 04:19:05 UTC

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper shared an especially intimate look during their performance of “Shallow” at the Oscars, and all of the hearts on the internet collectively melted.

Bask in all this love — even if it was just a very convincing performance.

Twitter users found the last few seconds of the performance oddly intimate and tender, considering Cooper’s girlfriend was sitting within eyeshot. As soon as the song wrapped up, people began making memes of it.

It’s just too easy to meme this.

You could be in a room of 100 people and 99 won’t look at you but Bradley Cooper sure will.

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Trump tamps down expectations for North Korea summit

Vietnamese policemen stand guard near a billboard. — President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are scheduled to meet for their second summit on Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi, Vietnam. | Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Foreign Policy

“I’m not in a rush, I don’t want to rush anybody,“ the president said.

President Donald Trump on Sunday acknowledged he is “not in a rush” to denuclearize North Korea, and said he would be satisfied with Kim Jong Un simply ceasing tests of his nuclear arsenal.

“What’s going to happen, I can’t tell you,” Trump told attendees of the annual Governors’ Ball in the State Dining Room of the White House — appearing to ratchet down expectations for his second summit with Kim, scheduled to take place on Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Story Continued Below

“I’m not in a rush, I don’t want to rush anybody, I just don’t want testing. As long as there’s no testing, we’re happy,” the president said.

During his remarks to the nation’s governors, Trump exhibited the type of diplomatic uncertainty he has been known to display in the days leading up to high-stakes negotiations with other world leaders, vacillating between aspirations for Kim’s regime and cynicism toward the dictator’s willingness to change course.

“He has a chance to have a country that is so vibrant economically — maybe one of the most in the world,” Trump said.

“I say, you have one of the greatest locations, they have incredible people, hard-working people, smart, energetic. And I think it could be really one of the great financial and economic countries anywhere in the world,” he continued. North Korea is now one of the poorest nations on the planet.

Trump added: “I said you can’t do that if you’re going to keep nuclear. If you do nuclear, that can’t ever happen.”

But the president also said he and Kim “have a chance” to achieve total denuclearization, and teased “a very interesting two and half days in Vietnam.”

Senior Senate Democrats demanded in a letter Sunday that Trump’s upcoming round of talks with Kim “demonstrate tangible, verifiable progress on denuclearization and reducing tensions” with the rogue state, and urged the president to “execute a serious diplomatic plan” in Hanoi.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats’ told Congress last month that North Korea is unlikely to surrender its nuclear weapons — breaking with Trump’s assessment that the U.S. is making progress in its efforts to persuade Kim to yield.

“Chairman Kim realizes, perhaps better than anyone else, that without nuclear weapons, his country could fast become one of the great economic powers anywhere in the World,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “Because of its location and people (and him), it has more potential for rapid growth than any other nation!”

In another message posted Sunday afternoon, the president wrote: “So funny to watch people who have failed for years, they got NOTHING, telling me how to negotiate with North Korea. But thanks anyway!”

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Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper sang ‘Shallow’ at the Oscars and OMG

NOW KISS.

Image: Kevin Winter / Getty Images

By Angie Han2019-02-25 03:20:37 UTC

Look, it’s not like we didn’t know Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper were gonna sing “Shallow” at the Oscars.

But still. We were not prepared for All! The! Feels!

The A Star Is Born co-stars climbed the steps hand-in-hand, arriving at a stripped-down stage that had a grand piano, a couple of mic stands, and not much else.

Cooper got things started, and if he was a tiny bit off musically, he was definitely in the right place emotionally. Gaga joined in with vocals and piano, and the effect was exactly as magical – and exactly as romantic – as you’d expect.

From the intimate camera angle (perched just behind them on the stage) to the fiery looks they were giving each other, these two sold the hell out of their onscreen romance, as they have been all awards season.

And, well…

THE FACT THAT COOPER AND GAGA MADE ME THNK THAT THEY WERE GONNA KISS. WHY YOU GOTTA PLAY ME LIKE THAT??? #Oscars2019

— Mon (@MillMons) February 25, 2019

We’re not saying they should hook up IRL. Really! We know one of them is married. We’re just saying that we’ve never wanted to watch two people kiss so badly in our entire lives.

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Google Assistant saves the day in classic movie-themed Oscars ads

Just as mobile phones would’ve saved a lot of trouble in Seinfeld, Google’s Assistant would’ve been a saviour in so many classic films.

That’s the subject of the tech giant’s new ad for its voice-activated assistant, which aired during the 2019 Oscars on Sunday night.

In the ads, Google Assistant steps in for HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and helps Marion Crane avoid the motel in Psycho. In Scream, Drew Barrymore uses a Nest camera to ward off Ghostface, while Lyft is used to get out of an annoying situation in Lady Bird.

It’s not the first time Google Assistant has inserted itself into the canon of popular films, with its Home Alone crossover going down a particular treat during the holidays.

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Trump-Kim summit: Vietnam aiming to cash in from ‘valuable’ event

Hanoi, Vietnam – As Vietnam’s capital gears up to host the second US-North Korea summit, it’s not just the beefed-up security, sold-out hotels and fluttering flags across Hanoi that are marking the occasion.

Bars are also serving “Peace Negroniations”; stores are selling t-shirts bearing Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s faces; and even hairdressers are offering free cuts to those eager to replicate the hairstyles of the leaders of the United States and North Korea.

With preparations for the February 27-28 talks in full swing, the overall mood on the jam-packed streets of Hanoi appears to be a mix of awe and pride – even if, for some, the furore and attention surrounding the summit is an unwelcome distraction from everyday life.

“I deliver my products door-to-door in the city,” Vu Van Dong, a 28-year-old farmer, told Al Jazeera.

“Since the streets will be blocked off for the summit, it will have a negative impact on my business. But I still support hosting it as it will keep the world a safer place.”

This Vietnamese barber will give you a Kim or Trump haircut for free ahead of the Hanoi summit. pic.twitter.com/0BrsiVE5Gt

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 21, 2019

According to Phuong Hoa Nguyen, a deputy director at Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism, the effects of playing hosts to not only Trump and Kim, but also to the media circus coming to town, would allow the country to showcase its “dynamic development with a model of successful socio-economic innovation, friendly people, rich cultural identity and heroic history”.

“This is a great opportunity to promote Vietnam as an attractive and safe destination for tourism and investment,” Nguyen told Al Jazeera.

“We aim to attract 18 million international tourists in 2019 with a modest budget of $2m for promotional activities.”

Nguyen acknowledged it was “difficult” to gauge how much Vietnam stood to benefit financially from the much-anticipated meeting, held eight months after the landmark summit between Trump and Kim in Singapore last year.

“Singapore invested about 20m Singaporean dollars ($14.8m) towards organising the first Trump-Kim summit and earned nearly 40 times that amount towards its economy,” Nguyen said.

But in addition to monetary benefits, the spotlight and excitement accompanying the high-profile talks was “invaluable” to Vietnam, Nguyen added.

Preparations are in full swing on the streets of Hanoi for the summit [Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters]

In preparation for the upcoming two-day talks, which will be held at a yet-to-be announced location, security at the airport has been raised to the highest level. Additional security officials have also been positioned in public and restricted areas across Hanoi.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc earlier this month chaired a meeting to review the arrangements of the summit, which he described as “an important international event of particular interest to the international community and opinion”.

The summit has also become a major topic of discussion among locals of various ages and interests, drawing a wide range of responses.

“I don’t care much about this event because Vietnam’s role is merely of lending the venue,” Tran Thanh Nga, 29, told Al Jazeera.

But Lieu, a 90-year-old Hanoi resident, is “excited and honoured” his city was chosen as the host.

“I’ve been staying updated on the summit every day through television,” said Lieu. “This event will also draw welcome attention to Vietnam and bring opportunities to boost the national economy.”

‘Your miracle’

Since Vietnam began its economic liberalisation programme in the mid-1980s, its income per person has risen 10-fold to more than $2,300, according to the World Bank, which rates it as “one of the most dynamic emerging countries in East Asia region”.

The economy as a whole grew by 11 percent last year, its fastest expansion in more than a decade.

During a visit to Vietnam last year, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in remarks aimed at Kim, said: “Your country can replicate this path. It’s yours if you’ll seize the moment.”

Keen to show off Vietnam’s successful economic rise, Pompeo added: “It can be your miracle in North Korea as well.”

Huynh The Du, a lecturer in public policy at the School of Public Policy and Management, Fulbright University Vietnam, told Al Jazeera that hosting the summit would “create more trust for the international business and investment community”, as well as potentially boost its tourism industry.

“If Vietnam is able to cement its position to become a favoured venue or trusted partner for sides to meet and negotiate by enhancing its neutrality and friendliness, the benefits will last long,” Du said. “Otherwise, the effects may be extinguished shortly.”

In recent years, Vietnam has played hosts to major international events, including the 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2018.

Howard X, a Kim lookalike, and Russell White, a Trump impersonator, pose for a photo at Hanoi’s Metropole Hotel [Jorge Silva/Reuters]

Back on the streets of Hanoi, locals and tourists alike have – almost – caught a glimpse of Trump and Kim already, as two impersonators cashing in on their resemblance to the two leaders began walking around the city just before the scheduled talks.

Howard X, an Australian, has been using his likeliness to North Korea’s leader, appearing in Singapore for last year’s summit and was also present at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Russell White, the Trump lookalike, posed for photos near the Metropole Hotel with Howard before being shoved away by security officials.

The pair was released by Vietnamese authorities on Saturday after being questioned by authorities.

Additional reporting by Hoai Thu Le

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Chris Evans is doing the most to literally support women at the Oscars

Chris Evans has always been the best Chris [Editor’s note: debatable], but his stellar behavior at the 91st Academy Awards further cements his status as the goodest boy named Christopher in Hollywood.

Evans’ fortuitous seat in the front row of the show and directly next to Best Supporting Actress winner Regina King made it easy for him to physically support her as she ascended the stairs to accept her award.

Moment later, he presented the award for Best Production Design to Hannah Beachler, who won for designing Black Panther. When her name was called, he fist-pumped in true Bostonian fashion to celebrate her win.

Recall at the 2015 People’s Choice Awards, it was Chris Evans who helped Betty White up the stairs when she won the Favorite TV Icons award.

It was perhaps in that moment when he realized his calling, to help women in impossibly high heels make their way up the stairs as the accept their well-deserved accolades.

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Oscars 2019 red carpet fashion: Glitz, glam, and challenging looks

Billy Porter steals the show with his tuxedo gown at the 2019 Oscars.

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By Johnny Lieu2019-02-25 01:43:19 UTC

The 2019 Oscars has a strong field of nominees, but there were some strong looks on the red carpet too.

Of course, this year brought the usual glamour and dazzle, as evidenced by the sleek, metallic minimalism of Emilia Clarke and Brie Larson, or the disco ball-like glitz of Jennifer Lopez.

But we’re all about the gender binary challenging outfit of Billy Porter, who stole the show with a custom tuxedo gown designed by Christian Siriano. Also not playing it safe was Chadwick Boseman, whose all-black tailcoat was a reminder of just who is king. And some, like Jason Momoa with his velvet Fendi scrunchie, blended style with practicality.

Here are some of the best looks from the 2019 Oscars red carpet: