“Meritocracy, gone. Virtue signalling and ‘look at me’ has replaced it. If there ever was a competition about what were the best movies of the year…that’s long gone.

“To give you an idea of how [much] we have changed as a culture, ten years ago the Best Picture [winner] was The King’s Speech, about King George getting over his stutter and going on to give speeches on the radio during World War II. Ten years before that it was Gladiator and Russell Crowe getting [awarded] for Best Actor. And 30 years ago Joe Pesci was getting [an Oscar] for his work in Goodfellas.

“Will anyone remember anything about the movies that won last night, like everyone remembers those three earlier films? Of course not.” — Sky News host Paul Murray.

“What we can blame Soderbergh for is the epic-fail choice to make Oscar a non-performance show. The show suddenly and randomly would offer a few clips. But mostly, not even images from the movies.

“Soderbergh took an inside-baseball show and turned it into Bubble, a show examining the making of the hardball inside the baseball and the people who manufacture it.

“But the truth is, it didn’t work as that either. The one element that was universally loved, it seems, was that winners got their time to speak. I love that, too. But what the hell were they on about? There was so little context, like it was the world’s job to provide its own context.” — David Poland, “The Little Oscar Show That Couldn’t,” MCN, 4.26.