Hollywood

The Oscars just delivered more than a slap on the wrist to Will Smith: The academy’s board of governors has banned this year’s Best Actor winner from attending the awards ceremony for the next decade after he assaulted comedian Chris Rock at the 2022 ceremony.

The academy’s 54-member board convened for a reportedly “contentious” Zoom meeting on Friday morning to discuss “possible sanctions” against the actor — who will, as it turns out, be allowed to keep his trophy.

The Grammy Awards were a ratings dud.

Despite putting on an excellent, classy show, the Recording Academy came in with just 7.8 million viewers. That’s down from 8.8 million last year, an 11% drop.

The show still won the evening and beat “American Idol,” its biggest competition, handily.

But the low number is a disappointment considering some great segments, especially Lady Gaga in her tribute to Tony Bennett, Lenny Kravitz with HER Music, the appearance of Joni Mitchell with Bonnie Raitt, and so on.

I’m not even going to bother commenting on Zelensky making a Zoom appearance, that was just so wrong on so many levels.

I was surprised, and I will admit I was relieved, to read about Will Smith’s resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. I had been sure that Smith would follow in the footsteps of Jussie Smollett and Alec Baldwin, two criminals who cried large crocodile tears and blamed everybody else for their wrongdoings. True, Smith did start out with exercising his tear ducts and he did apologize to everyone but his victim, Chris Rock, until public outrage forced an empty apology to Rock, but with his Academy resignation, I believed he had finally come to his senses. That’s because I assumed that, by resigning from the Academy, Smith was making a genuine gesture of contrition.

HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” tackled the infamous Oscar slap Friday night, with the eponymous host cracking that Jada Pinkett Smith should “thank God” that alopecia is the worst she’s dealing with.

“If you are so lucky in life as to have that be your medical problem, just say ‘thank God,’” Maher cracked to his guests, attorney Laura Coates and former presidential and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang.

“It’s not life threatening. It’s part of — for most people, 80 percent of men, 50 percent of women — it’s part of aging.”

Will Smith resigned from the Academy of Motion Pictures Friday in the face of possible suspension or expulsion from the organization for his on-stage slap of Chris Rock at the Oscars last weekend.

Smith said in a statement he would “fully accept any and all consequences for my conduct” imposed by the Academy’s Board of Governors.

The Left and violence at the Oscars.

Mea culpa. Last Friday I predicted here that the Sunday night Oscar ceremony would be wall-to-wall political rants, virtue signaling, celebrations of diversity, and lame, politically correct comedy.

For the first couple of hours of the show, that was true. The attempts at humor by the hosts – Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall – might well have been scripted by Amy’s cousin Chuck. Amy’s first joke was about the (fictitious) gender pay gap: “This year the academy hired three women to host, because it’s cheaper than hiring one man.” Then she took a gratuitous jab at an aging straight white male: “Look at Timothee Chalamet,” she said as the camera focused on 67-year-old J.K. Simmons. “What happened?”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is not telling the whole truth about its role in the slap heard around the world, according to a new report.

Hours after the organization claimed it asked Will Smith to leave the 2022 Oscars but he “refused,” TMZ sources claimed Thursday that a consensus was never actually reached because officials were split about how to handle the situation.

I think there should be more fights at the Oscars. And hire the Bloods and Crips as security.

After Will Smith infamously smacked Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, social media debated whether the incident would’ve happened had another comic hosted the event. One name that came up frequently was comedian Ricky Gervais, who responded by teasing his proposed Oscars speech in a series of tweets with thousands of likes.

“I’d start with ‘Hello,’” wrote the 60-year-old creator of “The Office,” who has MCed the Golden Globes five times, but never the Academy Awards.

Remember Cary Grant? Spencer Tracy? Fred Astaire? Clark Gable? Gene Tierney? Grace Kelly? Olivia de Havilland? Audrey Hepburn?

Hollywood and its Academy Awards ceremonies were once was amazingly elegant.

Now, with the Oscars showing us Will Smith walking up on stage to punch announcer Chris Rock for making fun of his wife’s bald head, they’ve become kind of wretched. The Oscars this year showed just how far the movie idols and their Hollywood juggernaut have fallen.

Will Smith physically assaulted a man during Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, yet that was probably the least bizarre thing to happen all night.

What’s truly weird is that Smith, in the presence of our most virtue-signaling elites, wasn’t escorted from the premise in handcuffs. Indeed, after he struck comedian Chris Rock across the face on stage, he returned calmly to his seat, enjoyed the rest of the evening, and even got a round of applause as he accepted an Oscar for “Best Actor.”

The 2022 Oscars drew more viewers than last year’s record-low ceremony, but still fell well below prior years as award shows struggle to attract primetime attention.

The nearly four-hour telecast drew 15.36 million viewers according to time-zone-adjusted fast national numbers from Nielsen, Variety reported Monday. The audience figures show a 56% improvement over the 2021 ceremony, which drew an all-time low of 10.4 million viewers and prompted the Academy and ABC to shake up the program in an attempt to woo more viewers.

After years of declining viewing figures, the Academy were desperate for more people to watch the 2022 Oscars.

They tried all kinds of ways to boost ratings – big stars, live performances, charismatic hosts, a new category and cutting the craft prizes down to edited highlights.

But in the event, a comedian telling a joke and a Hollywood A-lister’s furious over-reaction to it would ultimately be what seized the world’s attention.

UNCENSORED EXTENDED VERSION of Will Smith smacking Chris Rock from Japanese TV pic.twitter.com/s9BZoRyrrm

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) March 28, 2022

Today’s dull filmstar scolds have turned a must-watch event into a hypocritical bore-fest.

The Oscars used to be massive, didn’t it? A few decades ago, it was a proper big deal in the TV calendar, a seismic cultural event.

You’d read the newspaper previews and predictions for weeks ahead of the air date. You’d have your favourite films and actors, rooting for them with a fan’s fervour as if this was the Premier League (of course, it was the Canon League Division One back then, but I digress).

The morning after the prizes were handed out, you’d try to avoid all mention of who won – mam, turn off the radio! – so you could enjoy that evening’s highlights on terrestrial telly. In the pre-internet days, that was relatively easy. But regardless of knowing the results, you’d tune in later anyway and enjoy every minute.