I'M BLACK AND THE OSCARS DIDN'T HURT MY FEELINGS.

I can honestly say the amount of times I've actually sat and watched the entire Academy Awards wire to wire I can count on one hand. The Oscars too uppity and boring sometimes. They're are really artsy with their pinkies up. I really have to force myself to watch it. Recently I've tuned in for Chris Rock because he's one of my favorite comedians ever. I watched the year Three 6 Mafia and Frayser Boy won for "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp." I also watched the year Denzel Washington won for "Training Day." It's not because I don't love film why I have missed so many Oscar nights. I love the fuck out of film to the point I always keep my opinions to myself about films so I don't be THAT guy that people afraid to express opinions about film to. It's all opinions. I don't really trip if me and someone else don't see eye to eye on a film. I love cool debates about film. I love to breakdown what I see and hear, my younger brother is an professional actor, I've written screenplays. Film outside of music is damn near my life.  This upcoming Oscars has a lack of black actors and actresses nods again and that should hurt my feelings right? Nope! I'm black as fuck and The Oscars didn't hurt my feelings. 

Before I get into why the lack of black actors and actresses being recognized in this years Oscars doesn't bother me let's get into something that REALLY bothers me. I really don't understand why we are so pressed to be accepted by white america when it comes to our art. It's the Oscars. It's a bunch of rich white people with opinions on film. The Grammy's are the same way with music. WE GIVE IT VALUE and guess what, WE CAN TAKE THAT VALUE AWAY. Award shows are just concerts with opinions. I don't care for them too much but let me speak on them for sake of conversation. Let's say every black person decides to NOT watch The Oscars or The Grammy's. Do you think that's going to hurt the ratings? If every black person in the United States didn't watch The Grammy's I'll bet any amount of money those ratings dipping and they will break their neck to culture that mothafucka out the next year to get us to watch again. The Oscars probably not so much but it'll definitely make a difference if we didn't watch that either. It would be some dope shit if our culture start up our own awards and give our own show more value and attention more than any other award show. I want to start a Trap Music Awards Show. It'll do numbers. I would say we should make The BET awards bigger but BET is owned by white people, it's not truly ours, thus further proving why The Source Awards was my favorite award show growing up. It was OURS, but instead of supporting and make it bigger and a actual force in entertainment we all ran to the Grammy's. Laughing at artists for winning awards like Soul Train Awards and saying they're not real awards they're not grammy's. Honestly that's like spitting in the face of our culture to me. We have the population and creativity to make The Soul Train Awards just as big as the Grammy's. Kanye not skipping out no grammy night but he'll easily skip out on the Soul Train Awards. No hesitation. Unless they were giving him a lifetime achievement award. Why? We've been programmed to believe these awards shows (Oscars and Grammy's) are the mightiest and only they decide what's great and what's not. We think of MJ's Thriller night or Lauryn Hill's historic night and think everything else is worthless. Don't get me wrong I was proud of Lauryn that night but I refuse to shit on awards shows that my culture built or put anything over them. We want white america's approval and them to support us so badly but we don't even support our own. We make fun of our own. It seems like some of these artists we look up to don't even want to receive the support from black people. We need to fix that ASAP. What happens if the ratings suffer for those major awards shows that WE deem major year after year? It slowly fades away. The PEOPLE have the power and are the reason these awards shows are running. Okay My rant on that is done on awards shows because I can go on forever. 

Everyone was heated for the lack of black actors and films not nominated. I though that was interesting so I looked at the nominations list. I laughed a little bit. Let me give my 2 cents. Remember this is my opinion. If you get offended, sit the fuck down and have a cream soda. You'll be okay. The reason why the lack of black actors didn't bother me was because the ones people saying should've been nominated wasn't good enough. I've seen the majority of the films nominated and I'm willing to bet majority of my people in my culture who complained have only seen "Creed" and "Straight Out Of Compton" and that's it. Never seen any of the movies that did get nominated. If that's true then how can they judge who got snubbed or if this is truly a travesty? They're just assuming the other actors and movies are below those two films. Out of the names I've seen of the black actors I agreed with only one that people were saying got snubbed. Do I believe Black Actors and Actresses have it harder than white ones? Fuck yeah. I want to see all my people accomplish great things. They have to fly to what white actors can walk to. I'll be the first to tell you if something is some bullshit but this year I don't agree. 

First I seen the cries for the lack of love "Creed" got. Creed's Cinematography is dope as fuck but that movie is very average. It's not better than the movies Rocky 1-4, it's better than Rocky 5 and Rocky Balboa but that's not hard to be. The highlight of Creed was Sylvester Stallone's performance as a mentor. I really felt the pain in his role as an elderly Rocky Balboa and honestly I thought that was his best on screen performance in his ENTIRE CAREER. Think about that, his entire career. We're talking 40 plus years and countless films. Michael B Jordan is an okay actor he's not terrible, he's just okay. Stallone out acted him in that movie. The problem to me is Jordan's character (Adonis) just wasn't really interesting. If you want to keep it 100, his girlfriend in the movie (Bianca) was more interesting. Adonis was just there. He just existed. Bianca and Rocky's presence in the film was very simple yet they were really complex characters and that's what made them awesome. Bianca wore a hearing aid like Rocky's old trainer (Mickey) who died and I thought that was dope as fuck. As Apollo Creed's son I wasn't convinced especially the scene where he was running through Philly with the bikes and I wasn't hyped because the yelling Michael was doing was so poorly acted to me. The yelling made me laugh it didn't make me hyped or feel intense for the next scene. It seemed very forced and wasn't believable. Actually every time Jordan yelled in that movie I laughed. He wasn't intimidating at all. Only part in the film that had me amped was when he came out to "Hail Mary" by Tupac for his title fight and he wasn't talking. Michael B. Jordan didn't receive a nod because he didn't give a Oscar worthy performance better than the actors in the best actors category. Period. People were kind of implying that Jordan should have gotten a nod just because he's black which I disagree with. I want Jordan to get that shit for a masterful performance not out of pity. He's just getting started and I hope he gets better.  

The biggest snub to me was Idris Elba for "Beasts Of No Nation." It's a fucking crime he wasn't nominated. He killed that role and he was robbed. Benicio Del Toro got snubbed for "Sicario." I cant speak on Will Smith because I didn't see "Concussion" yet. I would throw O'shea Jackson Jr and Jason Mitchell in the mix, they did an incredible job portraying Ice Cube and Eazy -E in "Straight Outta Compton," but were they better than the actors in the Best Supporting and Best Actors Categories? No. The film Straight Outta Compton was damn near fucking flawless the first half of the movie but was super cheesy the second half, like on some lifetime movie shit and that's why it wasn't in the best picture category in my opinion. I didn't like how Eazy-E legacy was smeared in the second half of the film and MC Ren and Yella were just invisible as if they made no significant difference in N.W.A. It seemed like Eazy-E was thrown under the bus as this huge loser the second half of the film but that's a WHOLE different topic I'm not going to breakdown. 

The Oscars did not hurt my feelings at all. It was a opinion on who was better and who wasn't. I'm mad about Idris not getting a nod but it's all opinion. Go see "Beasts Of No Nation' because it's incredible. It's sad that there's a lack of diversity in this year show but fuck them let's start our own shit. 

- BENNY