Oscars 2020 Recap: Not Quite Out of Sight
Well, that was… different.
Look, I don’t envy Steven Soderbergh and the other producers tasked with running the 93rd Academy Awards. The ceremony was doomed to fall under the giant shadow cast by the COVID-19 pandemic—not just because it presented an enormous logistical challenge in the era of masks and social distancing, but because the show itself was celebrating a year’s 14 months worth of films that were released during a time when virtually nobody was going to the movies. The result was a telecast that needed to be fluid and innovative in an industry that prizes consistency and tradition.
Soderbergh’s team tried. Even with nominees spread across the globe rather than packed into the Dolby Theatre, they attempted to mount a more intimate-feeling gathering, one reliant on conversation and eye contact as opposed to engineering and bombast. As the capper to an absurdly lengthy awards season, the Oscars are typically meant to feel gigantic, but here they aimed to be small, even cozy. Read More
