Oscars 2019: Bang a gong for worthy winners, says VANESSA FELTZ
THERE must have been something in the champers.
A liberal dose of common sense seems to have seeped into the 2019 Oscars. Instead of the usual, gongs distributed with monotonous predictability to films so chronically unwatchable you wonder if the judges could possibly have endured the same tedious tripe you shelled out for at your local fleapit, the prizes went to the right corkers.
Green Book, based on the true story of an elegant and intellectual black jazz pianist's tour of America's Deep South, chauffeured by a thuggish New York Italian heavy and the relationship which blooms between the two, is a film so sublime it is a veritable balm to the soul.
It is gripping, shocking, tender and heart-stopping.
I know several folk who've seen it twice and loved it even more second time around.
Green Book is frankly the best best film in years.
Oscars 2019: Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper perform 'Shallow'
Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen biopic, was slaughtered by the critics, lambasted for failing to be sufficiently gritty.
"Stuff and nonsense!" yelled members of the public, laughing, crying and discovering Queen's extraordinary music all over again.
Congratulations to the committee in naming Rami Malek best actor for a performance so convincing that the footage of Freddie Mercury at the film's end came as a shock to many now firmly convinced Malek was Mercury.
What's more, the vastly overhyped The Favourite, a revolting movie mystifyingly billed as a comedy, netted the gong it deserved, best actress for the overly self-deprecating Olivia Colman.
It was delightful to watch Lady Gaga and Mark Ronson triumph for their A Star Is Born crowd-pleaser Shallow, and witness Gaga and Bradley Cooper driving the ditty home, vibratos a-throbbing.
Film critic Jason Solomons and I agreed that had we handed in the lyrics "in the shall-alla-la-la-la-lows" as homework at our alma mater The Haberdashers' Aske's School, they'd have been returned with a B(-) at best.
Further Oscar-induced pleasures included a terrestrial first: a chap sporting the evening's most spectacular frock.
Billy Porter, the Tony Award-winning star of TV show Pose, swept up the red carpet in a Christian Siriano black satin gown.
Oozing testosterone, Billy managed to be graceful and glorious at the same time.
Not so Glenn Close who committed the sartorial sin of dressing as an Oscar in gold and then not winning best actress award, or Rachel Weisz who proved you can be a world-class beauty and still look like a 1950s kitchen table.