What "The Shape of Water" Winning Best Picture Means to Me

Credit: Naki for Variety

There's certain things that people have come to expect from a Best Picture winner at The Academy Awards. They are prestigious dramas conveying deep and conflicting resonance of the moment it came out. It's supposed to be serious, often contextualizing a piece of history through an artistic prism. But, as someone who has loved classic monster movies, I've also known that another thing is true: genre movies don't win. Comedies or musicals maybe, but never sci-fi, horror, fantasy, or anything considered niche. After all, the Best Picture winner is something agreed upon of thousands of people from differing tastes. So to see The Shape of Water win two of film's most prestigious awards this past Sunday gave me an incredible feeling. Somehow it validated the idea that The Oscars have always preached: all movies matter. For the first time this millennium, that's felt like more than hyperbole.

Best Song: "The Writing's On the Wall" (2015)

Welcome to Best Song, a new weekly column released on Sunday dedicated to chronicling the Best Original Song category over the course of its many decades. The goal is to listen to and critique every song that has ever been nominated in the category as well as find the Best Best Song and the Best Loser. By the end, we'll have a comprehensive list of this music category and will hopefully have a better understanding not only of the evolution, but what it takes to receive a nomination here. It may seem easy now, but wait until the bad years.

The Top 10 Worst Moments of This Year's Oscars

Sam Smith

While 2016's Oscars ceremony may end up going down as one of the best in recent years, it isn't like it was without any faults. Like most years, you have to take the good with the bad, and this year featured some noteworthy standouts. The following is a rundown of the 10 moments form the ceremony that were a little cringe-worthy and maybe will be the butt of jokes for when people think back on this year's Oscars. Is Sam Smith solely to blame for it, especially after he said that it was the worst night of his life? Not exactly, but his dozens of red flags definitely don't help either. He's just one problem in a series of problems.

Best Original Song Nominee Anohni is Boycotting the Oscars

There is a lot to look forward to on Oscar Sunday. While it has been a tumultuous period leading up to the ceremony, there's no denying that it is at least one of the more exciting, unpredictable years for the ceremony. Still, with most people focusing a lot of attention on the Oscars So White movement, there are those that don't even recognize that this year's nominees also features the first time that a transgender performer was nominated for Best Original Song. Anohni (of Antony and the Johnsons) was nominated for her song "Manta Ray" from Racing Extinction; a documentary highlighting the struggles of endangered species. The only catch is that you're not likely to see her at the ceremony because she's boycotting. She's doing so for reasons that make plenty of sense, though.