Joaquin Phoenix has finally taken home an Academy Award, and he has the Clown Prince of Crime to thank.
Phoenix won the Oscar for Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in Joker. This was Phoenix’s fourth Oscar nomination and first win, having previously been nominated for 2001’s Gladiator, 2006’s Walk the Line and 2013’s The Master.
Phoenix has the distinction of being only the second actor to win an Oscar for playing a superhero character. The first? None other than Heath Ledger, who won a posthumous Best Supporting Actor award for his performance as Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight. The Academy clearly love that Joker.
Director Bong Joon-ho’s thriller Parasite won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, at the 92nd Academy Awards and did something no film in history has ever done.
Parasite is the first non-English language movie to win Best Picture. It beat out the other Best Picture nominees, which included JoJo Rabbit, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker, Marriage Story, 1917, Little Women, and Ford v Ferrari.
Parasite also won Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay as part of its four Academy Award wins.
Parasite also won the top honor at the Cannes Films Festival in May, winning the highly coveted Palme d’Or award. It’s the first movie since 1995’s Marty to win the Palme d’Or and Best Picture.
Parasite has made more than $165 million worldwide at the box office. Here at GameSpot, we also named Parasite our No. 1 movie of 2019.
“Parasite is the kind of film that will stick with you for days, and make you want to talk about it,” Chastity Vicencio wrote. “It’s thrilling, stressful, at times hilarious, and haunting. It takes you on an unforgettable ride resulting in an ending that you will never see coming. The class divide at the heart of the film is something that is universally relatable, and will make you question your own biases. Bong Joon-ho is a master filmmaker.”
Following the huge success of Parasite, HBO announced that it was adapting the movie for a new TV series. The limited series will add more depth and detail to the story. “So I had all these key ideas accumulated from when I started writing the script,” the director said. “I just couldn’t include all those ideas in the two-hour running time of the film, so they’re all stored in my iPad and my goal with this limited series is to create a six-hour-long film.”
The 92nd Academy Awards were held Sunday, February 9, 2020, wherein the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will announce their picks for the best films and artists of 2019 during a hostless ceremony broadcast on ABC. Although Joker lead the pack with 11 nominations, it only took home two (for Best Actor and Original Score). No, Oscar night clearly belonged to Parasite, which became the first foreign language film to win Best Picture.
Parasite was also the first South Korean film to win Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, and Best Director (for Bong Joon-ho).
Tonight at the 92nd Academy Awards, Joaquin Phoenix won the coveted Best Actor in a Leading Role award for his performance as The Joker in Todd Phillips’ billion-dollar DC movie, Joker.
Phoenix is the second actor to win the Best Actor award for portraying Joker, following Heath Ledger. He won the award posthumously for his performance in 2008’s The Dark Knight.
Phoenix gave a blistering and haunting performance in Joker as Arthur Fleck in a story that saw his character evolve from a down-on-his-luck professional clown to become a murdering madman. He was widely expected to win the Best Actor award over the other nominees, which included Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory), Leonardo DiCaprio (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Adam Driver (Marriage Story), and Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes).
In addition to Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix, Joker took home the Academy Award for Best Score by Hildur Guðnadóttir. Phoenix gave an impassioned acceptance speech where he spoke about how he would like to see people grow together in unity. You can watch it below.
Joaquin Phoenix: “That’s when we’re at our best—when we support each other. Not when we cancel each other out for past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow, when we educate each other, when we guide each other toward redemption.” https://t.co/8kz7m5vtnF#Oscarspic.twitter.com/z9bymMr5bR
Cats may have have been a critically-panned box office bust that caused Universal to lose a cool $100 million, but that doesn’t mean some of its stars can’t have a sense of humor about it.
At tonight’s Oscars ceremony, James Corden and Rebel Wilson presented an award together, walking out on stage dressed like their Cats characters Bustopher Jones and Jennyanydots, respectively.
“As cast members of the motion picture Cats,” Wilson opened, to hearty laughs from the crowd.
“Nobody more than us knows the importance of good visual effects,” Corden said.
That’s right, the two of them were there to present the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Yes, after Cats notoriously was rereleased, just a few days after its premiere, with an update to the film’s rushed, slapdash visuals
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
Almost two decades ago, Eminem won an Oscar for the song “Lose Yourself,” from the Curtis Hanson movie he starred in, 8 Mile.
He didn’t, however, attend the 2003 Academy Awards ceremony after being nominated, and was reportedly asleep when Barbra Streisand read his name aloud on TV, as the winner of the Best Original Song award.
This year, after Hamilton creator/composer Lin-Manuel Miranda introduced a montage of famous movie songs (which featured Eminem’s movie character B-Rabbit walking out toward a stage), Eminem arrived live and in-person to perform “Lose Yourself.”
Here’s Eminem, Marshall Mathers himself, tweeting about his surprise performance…
Look, if you had another shot, another opportunity… Thanks for having me @TheAcademy. Sorry it took me 18 years to get here. pic.twitter.com/CmSw2hmcZo
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
