Ah, the end of awards season has come and gone, and for some insane reason I was at a concert while the Oscars were airing! Truth be told, I would have been a day behind anyway, since I no longer have cable, but still, it seems like an egregious move on my part.
Don’t you worry though, I was refreshing my browser every few minutes to see the winners, and film Twitter supplied me with all the juicy bits I had to look forward to. But I have finally watched the ceremony and I’m going to break it down for you! First of all, I can’t imagine at this point that any of the main category winners were much of a surprise. Even if Lily Gladstone did still kind of have her horse in the race, I thought it was going to be Emma Stone’s to lose, and I was right. Da’Vine Joy Randolph brought tears to my eyes early in the ceremony, and by the time Robert Downey Jr. won, he’d all but taken them away. While I appreciate his confidence and sarcastic humor, it really bordered on being too cocky. At least some after party stuff made him seem more affable.
Sweet Cillian got just the slightest bit choked up during his speech, and just what a guy! In fact, there were lots of great speeches to go around during the night! Jonathan Glazer, for winning Best International Feature, called for a stop on the violence in Gaza. While this sparked some controversy, I admire his bravery. Cord Jefferson, winning for Best Adapted Screenplay, gave such a positive speech, urging studios to take more risks and throw money at independent films and filmmakers rather than a handful of blockbusters every year. I can get on board with that! Even Christopher Nolan, who took home the Directing prize noted that the film industry has only been around for 100 years, so there’s much more to go. Justine Treit winning Best Original Screenplay along with her husband started off great by saying, “this will help with my midlife crisis,” while holding onto the trophy.
I was equally tickled to see the Godzilla: Minus One team take home the prize for Best Visual Effects. They were so cute with their Godzilla shoes, little Godzilla toys, and the shear joy of winning and recording that win on multiple phones. Even though he wasn’t there to accept his prize, Wes Anderson finally won an Oscar for his short film. I hope this isn’t the only one he gets – God knows he’s probably earned a few more for his past work! An equally impressive win was The Zone of Interest over the likes of Oppenheimer and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning for Sound. If this and Sound of Metal has taught us anything, is that sometimes the lack of sound packs an equally big punch.
This year, when presenting the acting categories, instead of just being last year’s winner, we got five past winners all talking about the nominees. It was both touching and awkward at times and sort of made for weird pacing in the show. I also found it strange to not get to see the actual acting clips, but I’d be fine with them continuing this in the future. The only real natural presenters in this format were Nicolas Cage applauding Paul Giamatti for wearing a soft contact lens to emulate his lazy eye for the entirety of filming (because obviously he’d do the same thing), and Sam Rockwell serving small jabs at his former Iron Man co-star, RDJ. While not quite as smooth as those, I couldn’t help but notice Ryan Gosling blushing while Christoph Waltz sang his praises.
Other memorable presenters included an almost totally naked John Cena for Costumes, and Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to pick a fight with their former Batman, Michael Keaton in the audience. Something else I gathered from these presenters is that Michelle Yeoh and Sandar huller should be in a film together as soon as humanly possible. I just know they would crush it. I will say that the “I’m Just Ken” musical performance was a high for the night with all the Kens really committing to the bit. Though it was great seeing Ryan Gosling trying to hold back his laughter for much of the performance. And on the opposite end of the spectrum was the wholly anticlimactic win for Oppenheimer for Best Picture. I don’t know whose idea it was to not show the nominees again, but they should be fired.
Anyway, it was another great year celebrating movies and it brought me nothing but joy. I look forward to next year’s ceremony!