Oscars 2016: the winners, losers, and best performances of the 88th Academy Awards – The Verge

Chris Rock forgot that Hollywood’s racism is bigger than black and white

2016-03-01T11:18:40-05:00

One way Chris Rock proved how much Hollywood needs black actors on Oscar night was with an extended clip showing what some of last years best movies could have been like if they employed actors of color. For Joy, Rock had Whoopi Goldberg, in a janitor's jumpsuit, interrupt the scene where Jennifer Lawrence demonstrates Joy Mangano's new Miracle Mop. Later, Leslie Jones mauls Leonardo DiCaprio in a scene from The Revenant, accusing the newly-minted Oscar winner of ignoring her calls. It was devastating commentary that jibed perfectly with Rock's thesis for the night: Black people want opportunities.

Things got muddled with the clip's final s …

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Morgan Freeman went to the Oscars just to nab a handful of Girl Scout cookies

2016-02-29T12:45:15-05:00

After presenting the Academy Award for best picture to the team behind Spotlight, Morgan Freeman took a little time to grab some Girl Scout cookies out of Chris Rock's hand and leave immediately.

Obviously there's a lot to respect about this move, despite the fact that the cookies he grabbed appear to be Shortbreads (the broccoli of Girl Scout cookies) even though Chris Rock had a box of Thin Mints in the very same hand.

WATCH MORGAN FREEMAN LMFAOOOO pic.twitter.com/9fom9ihLbZ
- young metro (@Curvables) February 29, 2016

For one, I respect that Freeman didn't feel like hugging any of the newly minted Academy Award-winners standing around h …

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Sam Smith’s vague, inaccurate Oscars acceptance speech was a missed opportunity

2016-02-29T10:57:38-05:00

If you stayed up extra-late flipping through Twitter after last night's Oscars telecast, your commitment to the social conversation was rewarded with one of the greatest clapbacks in recent Oscar memory. "Hey @SamSmithWorld, if you have no idea who I am, it may be time to stop texting my fiancé. Here's a start:"

The tweeter in question is Dustin Lance Black, the openly gay winner of the 2008 Oscar for best original screenplay for Milk. The fiancé is Tom Daley, the studly British Olympic diver who's dated Black for roughly three years. The recipient is Sam Smith, the young crooner who had a rough night last night despite adding his first Osc …

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s Best Actor win was the most-tweeted Oscars moment ever

2016-02-29T09:01:48-05:00

Last night, Leonardo DiCaprio finally won his first Oscar after being nominated on six separate occasions. While the win was expected, it was still big news, and it became the catalyst for more than 440,000 tweets per minute. This deluge of tweets made Leo's win the most-tweeted minute of an Oscars telecast ever, The Hollywood Reporter reports. It was also the most-talked about moment on Facebook across the US last night.

Other popular Oscars moments on Twitter included Spotlight's best picture win and Mad Max's win for sound mixing, which brought its award count up to six. The last Oscars moment to earn this Twitter distinction was Ellen De …

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Senator Claire McCaskill celebrates the Oscars with Mad Max cosplay

2016-02-29T01:57:16-05:00

Mad Max's multiple Oscar wins drew deserved cheers from the Academy Award audience last night, but support for the movie also came from an unexpected source - democratic senator from Missouri, Claire McCaskill. McCaskill, who was diagnosed with breast cancer this week, tweeted a picture during the Oscars that showed her in full Mad max garb, wearing chains around her neck and Tom Hardy's distinctive face grate contraption over her mouth and nose.

McCaskill's homage was particularly fitting on a night when Mad Max swept the board for production awards, taking the Best Costume Design, Production Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, Film Editing, and …

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Did the thank-you ticker make Oscars speeches any better?

2016-02-29T00:57:27-05:00

The best Oscars speeches feel spontaneous. They're the rare, inspiring moments that actually speak to what a winner is passionate about - think Patricia Arquette's call to fight wage inequality. The Academy seemed to be pushing for more of those this year by adding a "thank-you ticker" to the bottom of the screen, but the end result was just more "thank you"s.

Of course everyone still thanks the Academy

Despite winners getting the chance to thank every single person and corporate entity they could think of ahead of time, the ticker didn't seem to significantly change the way the speeches played out. Winners still took the opportunity to verb …

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Mad Max: Fury Road wins most awards of the night with six Oscars

2016-02-29T00:39:05-05:00

The biggest win of the evening may have gone to Spotlight, but it was another film entirely that really won this year's Oscars. Mad Max: Fury Road took home six awards over the course of the night, far surpassing any other film (its closest competitor was The Revenant, which earned just three). George Miller's post-apocalyptic action film nearly swept all the below-the-line categories, including Best Costume Design, Production Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, Film Editing, and both Sound Mixing and Editing. The only exceptions were Best Cinematography, which The Revenant's Emmanuel Lubezki took home for a record third year in a row, and Visual …

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Oscars 2016: Congratulations, friend!!!

2016-02-29T00:13:37-05:00

Who better to congratulate Leonardo DiCaprio on his first Academy Award than all of the Leonardo DiCaprios who did not win Academy Awards?

After all, who knows you better than all the people you pretended to be one time? They've been with you like a second set of footprints in the sand as you've wandered through 20 years of Oscar-less desert.

Congratulations, dear friend Leo.

Love,

The Leos

Watch Leonardo DiCaprio's speech after winning Best Actor for The Revenant

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Oscars 2016: Spotlight wins Best Picture

2016-02-29T00:02:32-05:00

Leave it to good old-fashioned journalism to throw off The Revenant's big night: Spotlight just won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was a clear upset victory, with The Revenant having earned several awards throughout the evening, most notably the first Academy Award for star Leonardo DiCaprio. Spotlight not only beat out Alejandro Iñárritu's revenge film, but audience favorites like Mad Max: Fury Road and The Martian, as well as critical darlings Room and Brooklyn.

While the Best Picture race seemed to be clearly leaning in The Revenant's favor just a few weeks ago, the picture became muddied when The Big Short took home the top hono …

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Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs calls on Hollywood to be inclusive at the Oscars

2016-02-29T00:00:56-05:00

With this year's Oscars tackling Hollywood's lack of diversity head on, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, took the stage to state how important diversity is in Hollywood. With this year's ceremony as a jumping off point, she called on everyone in the industry to take steps to make way for more inclusive filmmaking going forward.

"Our audiences are global and rich in diversity," she said, "and every facet of our industry should be as well." Boone Isaacs' speech comes as only the latest from the Academy after it faced heavy criticism for the overwhelmingly whitewashed nominee field. After t …

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