It’s easy to find fault with just about everything these days, and Lord knows I tend to go out of my way to do that more often than not. That’s especially true with awards shows, which tend to lean towards biased, elitist and overly political. And certain there’s been more than a few recent Oscars that could be described as such–or worse.
Last night’s 98th edition was blissfully none of those. It was actually well-paced, democratic, at times poignant and mostly free of anything significant that might wind up getting the likes of Brendan Carr to threaten licenses. I suppose if one really wanted to nit-pick one could point out the inevitable omissions from In Memoriam that had they been included might have usurped ABC’s master plan to fill out prime time with a BACHELORETTE preview special, but given the fact the Academy’s long-term commitment plans are right up there with the typical participant in that reality bellweather I’m going to give them a mulligan in this case.
THE WRAP’s Steve Pond captured the essence of my feelings in the recap he dropped last night:
It might not have been a great Oscar show, with plenty of awkward moments and a trigger-happy approach to playing winners offstage. But in many ways, it was a richly satisfying one in the choices that voters made, which honored great and underappreciated filmmakers and spread the wealth just enough that fans of “One Battle After Another,” “Sinners,” “Hamnet,” “KPop Demon Hunters,” “Frankenstein,” “Sentimental Value” and others could all be happy.
DEADLINE’s Erik Pedersen rattled off the diversity–both among titles and participants–of the night’s celebrants:
One Battle After Another scored a leading six wins, and WB’s Sinners was next with four, ending a marathon awards season in which the studio mates battled each other for months. Warner Bros led distributors with 11 statuettes. Netflix was next with five — plus one for Live Action Short — including three for Frankenstein. Michael B. Jordan won the contentious Best Actor award for his dual role as Smoke and Stack in Sinners, following up his triumph at the Actor Awards two weeks ago. It was his first career Academy Award nomination.
Jessie Buckley then surprised no one with her Best Actress win for Focus Features’ Hamnet. She picked up her first career Oscar on her first nom and became the first Irishwoman to win the prize, after steamrolling through awards season for her aching portrayal of William Shakespeare’s partner Agnes. Paul Thomas Anderson took the statuette for Best Directing and winner earlier for Best Adapted Screenplay for One Battle After Another — his first Academy Awards on 14th nominations. He became just the ninth person to win Best Picture, Directing and Screenplay Oscars on the same night.
The seasoned Pond had a coupla other insightful observations:
The main message sent by the 98th Oscars was that the Academy finally decided it was time to recognize Paul Thomas Anderson. After going 0-for-11 in previous Oscar nominations for his first nine movies, PTA barreled through Sunday’s show with his freewheeling drama about a couple of generations of revolutionaries winning one award after another. The key came an hour into the show, when the first-ever Oscar for casting went not to the favorite in the category, “Sinners,” but to longtime PTA collaborator Cassandra Kulukundis for “One Battle.” It wasn’t the first of the record 11 categories in which those two films went head-to-head (that was Best Supporting Actress, in which the nominees from both films lost to Amy Madigan), but it was a significant moment that “One Battle” might have had the upper hand in the showdown between the two frontrunners.
And as for the other staples of the broadcast, sorry to disappoint some of you, but I’m gonna cast some laurel wreaths for a change. The In Memoriam really hit it out of the park IMO, incomplete list notwithstanding. ROLLING STONE’s Larisha Paul and Kory Grow captured the moment:
(T)he Academy celebrated the lives and careers of late Hollywood greats, including acclaimed director Rob Reiner, actresses Diane Keaton and Catherine O’Hara, actors Robert Redford and Robert Duvall, and others.
The segment remembering Reiner, who was found dead in his California home with his wife, Michele Singer, in an apparent homicide last December, was particularly powerful. It began with Billy Crystal paying tribute to the director-actor and his wife in a personal speech that touched on nearly all of Reiner’s films, from This Is Spinal Tap and Stand By Me to The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. Crystal told the crowd how he had befriended Reiner on the set of All in the Family, before recounting Reiner’s storied film career. He also lauded the couple’s efforts fighting social injustice in the world, including their campaigning for marriage equality.
Following the Reiner tribute and the first round of In Memoriam remembrances, Rachel McAdams honored actresses “whose talent and originality widened the world for all of us.” She named Claudia Cardinale, Diane Ladd, and “our mighty wind,” Catherine O’Hara, ending with “the icon,” Diane Keaton. “For over 50 years, [Keaton was] luminous onscreen and indelible in life, believe me when I say there isn’t an actress of my generation who is not inspired by and enthralled by her absolute singularly,” McAdams said. Shortly after, another luminary, Barbra Streisand, came out to pay tribute to Robert Redford, delivering a speech and singing a snippet of “The Way We Were.”
And darn it, any time one still gets a chance to hear “Babs”–as she confessed was Redford’s pet name for her–croon, thankfully still on key even into her mid-80s, that’s a home run in my scorebook.
I’m also kinda sold on Conan O’Brien as a long-term choice for host, the evening’s somewhat bizarre closing sketch that attempted to cement that as reality notwithstanding. As NEWSWEEK’s Peter Aitken explained:
O’Brien made several small but pointed political jokes during his opening monologue at the awards show…He warned that the evening might get “political,” but that if anyone felt “uncomfortable, there’s an alternate Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock – it’s at the Dave and Busters down the street. Lot of tickets to that.”
O’Brien also joked that he might be the last human to host the Oscars, saying that next year would see a “Waymo in a tux” – after the extensive and ongoing battle between the actor and writer guilds and the push from studios to adopt artificial intelligence as a major tool in filmmaking – and in a jab at Netflix, he also noted that CEO Ted Sarandos was in attendance, marking “his first time in a theater.”