The 88th Academy Awards, All Its Diversity, and Leo FINALLY Gets an Oscar!!!

AT LAST...Leo got his Oscar!!! I've never cried so much during an award show.  Absolute tears of joy were streaming down my face, I didn't even care what happened next.  So, I feel a little bad for the SPOTLIGHT team, because everyone was probably still overjoyed about Leo's win when they got up to accept their awrad.  However, I'm really glad SPOTLIGHT took Best Picture home, because it's such an incredible and important piece of storytelling.
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Overall, I enjoyed the evening--mostly because I was so anxious to see Leo finally win. Needless to say, Chris rock started off the night instantly hitting it out of the ballpark.  However, as he continued to go on with his wordy opening monologue addressing the diversity issue, all he talked about was black and white, and then he tried to include a little more by spending about a minute talking about women. There are more colours in the rainbow than black and white!

Thankfully, the Academy tried to make up for that by peppering some extra diversity throughout the show by having an Asian award escort lady, Sofia Vergara and Byung Hun Lee presenting an award together, adding a rap song to the end of the show as the credits rolled about "fight the power," and even inviting Mindy Kaling! 

Still, one of the most powerful moments of the night was when Joe Biden came out on stage to introduce Lady Gaga.  I could not stop applauding him and crying.  He's been so important in protecting women against assault and violence, and it's incredibly important that he was able to stand up with that message on such an influential platform in front of an industry that has a lot to do to improve how it address sexual assault and violence against women.  And then I just crumbled during Lady Gaga's performance.  I was bawling.  Thank you Mr. Vice President for continuing to fight for us, and thank you Lady Gaga for sharing your truth and being such an important and powerful voice.  

BIG LOVE & HUGS

Love,

Justine