Amancay Tapia at BBC 2 live with Victoria Derbyshire

Did you watch the Oscars this year? Have you seen any of the movies nominated for The Best Picture Award? or are you one of those people who cannot be bothered with the Awards Season ? In this case, you are one of many. Sunday’s 90th annual Academy Awards will almost certainly go down as the least -watched Oscar telecast in modern TV history. Personally, I think the show is far too long for the current era where a clip over 3 minutes is already too long for some. Even cinema Audiences, do think twice if the movie they go to see is over the two hour mark.

I did watch the Oscars (Uk time 1am-5am) as I was talking about the Oscars the following morning live at the BBC at the Victoria Derbyshire news programme.

I had seen all the movies nominated for Best Picture and being a huge cinephile and a filmmaker , I do love a bit of Hollywood so watching the ceremony sounded like a good Sunday evening plan. The ceremony in itself was a good show, the presenter was reliable and quite funny and overall he kept it all safe despite the life changing year this one has been for Hollywood with the sexual harassment allegations against not only Harvey Weinstein but pretty much everyone who thought he had gotten away with it . The year where the ghosts came back to haunt all the men behaving badly for far too long. However, the ceremony did feel too long and I spend two hours hoping I could fast forward a live show.

As for the movies and as expected, they kept it safe. The year where the films up for Best Picture were pretty unpredictable, was the year that saw the predictable favourite, winning. “The Shape of Water” is a heart warming movie by master fantasy director Guillermo Del Toro but it also has Oscar written all over it. I loved the whole beauty and the beast idea where the beauty is not beautiful and the beast is not a beast but they are human and candid and good people. Hollywood loves the underdog so again no surprises there. On the other hand, more edgy films such as “Get Out” or “Lady Bird” had Sundance film festival written all over their shots. Personally, I loved both of them and particularly, “Get Out”. I also loved the look of “Call me by your name” a love story written by 80 year old James Ivory and directed by Italian/Algerian director Luca Gudagnino. My gut instinct did tell me they were not gonna win. The Oscars do nominate every year lovely films that have soul, heart and ambition and on the low budget for Hollywood standards but when it comes to giving the Top Award, that is The Best Picture, they are always very conservative and they do like for these films to be quite “Classical” in the form and content. So my final verdict regarding the winner’s at the 90th Academy Awards is; no surprises there. The one that everyone thought would win, did win and the ones that every one thought should win, didn’t win or did so in the less important categories.

The morning after the Oscars I headed to the BBC headquarters in London feeling exhausted after only two hours of sleep. My main concern doing live tv was to actually go blank due to sleepiness, but I had two lovely journalists in the panel with me who told me: Don’t worry we are a team, we will back you up. Awww sisters!

I was quite impressed with the super professional and warm Victoria Derbyshire, this is an ALPHA Woman. Good looking, classy, intelligent and so professional doing her job that she definitely made a great impression. Here she was talking Oscars with us live on the BBC but before that, she was talking about transgender issues, a doping  scandal in the cycling world, Russian spies, you name it. I loved being a contributor to her daily BAFTA award winning news programme and I can say that my first time doing live tv on the BBC went smooth. I didn’t go blank, in fact, I could talk Oscars, films and filmmakers for hours on end.Movies,camera,action that’s my passion.

Here is a link to my BBC live appearance talking about The Oscars and women in film. Scroll to minute 42.10 of the programme.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09txbz7/victoria-derbyshire-05032018