The Oscars have always served as a celebration of movies, carving out time not devoted to the "And the Oscar goes to" part to cheerleading for Hollywood. Yet with movies in a state of flux amid the shift to streaming and a global pandemic that hobbled theaters, Academy voters appear to be trying to strike a balance between streaming and blockbusters, and whether they can be, if not everything everywhere all at once, all things to all people. ...

Jada Pinkett Smith was the butt of the joke for Chris Rock, who seemed to make Will Smith's wife the antihero on his Netflix special, one year after infamous Academy Awards slap. ...