Every year, we arrive at the Oscars somewhat exhausted by the monthslong awards season, which this year involved a controversial front-running film, the plentiful problematic tweets of its lead actress, and precursor awards and voting windows that had to move dates due to the catastrophic L.A. wildfires. Now, it’s time to down that second cup of coffee, because Oscar night is here, and it’s the most uncertain race in years. What we do know is that Conan O’Brien is hosting for the first time, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are set to perform something from Wicked; Lord only knows what Doja Cat, Lisa, and Raye will get up to, and June Squibb is in the building. And we’re on it! We’ll be tracking all the presenter pairs, surprise wins, and acceptance speech moments both ridiculous and sublime. Join us! —Joe Reid
It was an incredible night for Brighton Beach, sex workers, and indie film, as Sean Baker’s Anora completed its marathon from Cannes all the way to the Oscar stage. The film won five of the six awards it was nominated for: Mikey Madison for Best Actress, and then four more for the film’s writer, director, producer, and editor, Sean Baker.
Baker’s jack-of-all-trades routine set an all-time Academy Award record, as he’s now the only person to ever individually win four Oscars for the same film. Walt Disney previously won four Oscars in a single night at the 26th Oscars in 1954, but those were for four separate short films.
I am really so shocked, it felt like Demi had this in the bag a while ago. The Oscars just became a meta-text re-enactment of The Substance.
A huge upset as Demi Moore was expected to win for The Substance.
Sean Baker accepted Best Director for Anora (his third award of the night) with a plea to ‘reverse the trend’ of movie theaters closing. Does it look like Anora is winning Best Picture? It sure does.
Maybe Ralph Fiennes.
He takes his second Best Actor Oscar.
If Timmy wins, this would be the most Best Picture nominees (nine) to win at least one award at a single ceremony.
Every awards show should have Queen Latifah come out and perform a song — preferably ‘When You’re Good to Mama’ from Chicago — but I will heartily accept a performance of ‘Ease on Down the Road’ as part of a Quincy Jones tribute.
Why didn’t more people in the audience aside from Ariana, Cynthia, and Colman stand up and dance?
Daniel Blumberg recorded a lot of The Brutalist score piecemeal, traveling in order to accommodate the legendary jazz musicians he wanted to work with.
For the film’s scenes in the marble quarry in Carrara, Blumberg went to the mines himself to make field recordings that he’d later layer into the music.
Its score by Daniel Blumberg! Lovely and epic!
I love the three seconds where they tell us ‘The oscars will continue’ before they cut back to commercial. It’s like when you’re on hold with the bank and you hear ‘your call is important to us.’
It’s a shock (and a thrill for many) that Emilia Pérez lost Best International Feature Film to I’m Still Here.
On nominations morning, Emilia Pérez was just one nomination from tying the record for most nominations of all time and was considered a potential frontrunner for Best Picture. Now, one X-based scandal and a lot of online derision later, the film can’t even win a category it was slated to run away with. Brazil wins!
Penelope SHOULD be presenting Best Supporting Actress because she SHOULD have won it last year for FERRARI
Whenever Alba Rohrwacher appears anywhere I expect her to say ‘estimate the inestimable’ from La Chimera
Unless there is physical violence. Or Chadwick Boseman loses posthumously.
Reminder that ‘Lacrimosa’ is an Oscar song because it plays over Mozart’s funeral in Best Picture winner Amadeus, which won 40 years ago
It was a perfect In Memoriam choice.
This In Memoriam music is all wrong. It’s that music that plays when grape juice spills on a carpet in slow motion in a paper-towel commercial.
Especially with David Lynch’s passing! They could’ve had someone sing “Llorando.” Or “Mysteries of Love.” It really is more powerful with live vocals. Or if they just wanted instrumental, Laura Palmer’s theme?? That music just wasn’t terribly sentimental, it was ominous. It should be SAD and SWEET not SCARY.
Will never forgive Chappelle for this.
At an increasingly self-referential Oscars, Victoria Warmerdam told her partner, Trent, during their speech for Best Live Action Short Film that ‘I’m not having your babies because of this statue.’
Icon behavior. Kieran, whatever you and Jazz do is your business, but now you’ve made it, like, everyone’s business!
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent should have.
Even Better-er Man —Bethy Squires
Bestest Man —Alejandra Gularte
Robbie does have more memoirs. —Bilge Ebiri
During that commercial break, Colman Domigo came onstage and offered a toast to Los Angeles then made people get up and dance
As great as Abraham’s speech was, I can’t help but think about how unfortunate it is that it took this long for anyone to say this so explicitly at an awards show
Not to take anything away from Jonathan Glazer, who was brave enough to express a similar, albeit less comprehensive, sentiment during his acceptance speech last year, and faced a great deal of backlash for it. But that we can still count the number of times a humanitarian crisis of this scale has been acknowledged at these events is hard to process.
No Other Land doesn’t have American distribution, but it does have an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature
All four directors of the film, created by a Palestinian and Israeli collective of creatives who have been working together for years, were at the Oscars to accept their award, with Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham (who appear on-screen the most, and whose friendship is the backbone of the film) each speaking at the podium. Their speeches were both incredibly explicit about what has been going on in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7, 2023, with Adra talking about his hope that his daughter will live in a different political reality than he has, and Abraham pointing out that American foreign policy has long failed the Palestinian people. “Can’t you see that we are intertwined? … There is another way. It’s not too late,” Abraham says. See this movie now, please. You know that Guy Pearce already has, with that “Free Palestine” pin on his lapel and his daps to the filmmaking team as they took the stage.
HE CAN PLAY THE PIANO AND HE CAN PLAY THE HARP HE IS SO TALENTED.
Camille and Clément Ducol break out into song as they accept their Oscar … everyone involved in this film is insufferable
Worse than the year the Sam Smith James Bond song won over the Weeknd’s song from Fifty Shades of Grey and something called “Simple Song #3” from a Paolo Sorrentino movie about two horny old men? Yes!!
We’ve passed a few of the crucial mile-markers of the first half of tonight’s Oscar ceremony, and tea leaves are looking very good for Anora. While Yura Borisov wasn’t expected to pull off some kind of miracle upset in Best Supporting Actor, Anora has taken the other two awards it was up for so far. Sean Baker — who is personally nominated for four awards tonight — is currently two for two, winning Best Original Screenplay (fending off a close challenge by A Real Pain) and Best Editing. With three nominations yet to be decided in Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Picture, Anora has hit all the mile markers it’s needed to. If Baker can take Director and Picture, he’ll tie Walt Disney for the most Oscars won by an individual in a single night (and the only person to do it all for one film).
Elsewhere, the Academy has spread the wealth among the nominated films, bestowing two awards to Wicked (costumes and production design) and one apiece for The Substance (makeup), Conclave (adapted screenplay), A Real Pain (supporting actor), and Emilia Pérez (supporting actress). That makes for half of the ten Best Picture nominees to have picked up at least one Oscar thus far.
Also! Flow crossed the finish line of its storybook awards season, becoming the first Latvian film to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar.
After Sean Baker thanked his dog after winning Best Editing, Zoë Saldaña shouts out her husband’s hair while accepting the award for Supporting Actress
The Oscars are best when they’re flirting with (and occasionally tripping full-on into) bad taste. What’s beautiful about that Bond tribute is that it contains all of the Oscars’ modes: ridiculous, elegant, beautiful, awful, unnecessary, and unforgettable all at once.
Also probably served as a good obituary for the James Bond franchise, now that Amazon is poised to shit all over it.
For the tribute to James Bond, Margaret Qualley brings back my FAVORITE lost Oscars tradition: an elaborate interpretive-dance sequence!
Lotta people talking about who should be the next James Bond. Lotta people talking about how June Squibb was robbed of a nom for Thelma.
There’s a great way to fix both these problems, folks!
And Stéphanie Guillon and Marilyne Scarselli are wearing neon-green accents. I think I approve of theme dressing now.
A really sweet tribute to David Lynch.
It is widely agreed that Anora and Conclave are the favorites to win Best Picture and I appreciate that the screenplay categories are getting us off to a good start by awarding both.
This is a great sign for Anora’s Best Picture chances, since this could have very easily gone to other Oscar faves A Real Pain or The Brutalist. Does this mean it’s going to win? No guarantees, but Brighton Beach’s chances are looking up.
That Costume Design presentation — with cast members from each of the nominated films standing in front of sketches of looks from the films, paying tribute to the designers — hearkens back to the good parts of the oft-maligned Steven Soderbergh–produced COVID Oscars. That ceremony presented the crafts categories by letting the individual nominees monologue about themselves and their art. It was an admirable decision to put the focus on the people who actually make the movies we love, we just would have liked to actually see the product they got nominated for. Tonight’s approach was a welcome improvement.
Paul Tazewell just became the first Black man to win the Best Costume Design Oscar for his work on Wicked
One of the most iconic Broadway customers of the past 20 years (ever heard of Hamilton?), Tazewell is the second Black person to win the category overall, following Ruth E. Carter for Black Panther in 2019 and Wakanda Forever. He also has a Tony Award for Hamilton and an Emmy for The Wiz Live! We’d say that’s a recipe for an EGOT, but there’s no Grammy for costuming … yet.
In light of Conan’s speech about the ceremony honoring the industry in general. It’s a good choice that reminds you how much human labor goes into every film, and something they should do every year!
“Bowen, we barely know each other.”
They still haven’t figured out how to thread the Best Picture nominees throughout the show without it feeling too slight
Conan showing the location of Latvia, which brought us Flow, mid commercial break after the Doctor Odyssey ad
The winner for Best Animated Short Film.
MEOW MEOW MEOW!
Kieran Culkin wins the first and most predictable award of the night for his performance as a very annoying cousin in A Real Pain
And uses the opportunity to ask his wife in public for more kids. Ever so slightly Elon-ish but tbh the wuvvable rascal gets away with it! Excited to see what role he takes on next after this wild couple of years.
That Rolex commercial was good but cutting from a shot of Scorsese directing to a shot of Leo in The Great Gatsby is unforgivable
It was a montage of athletes and movie people set to “The Ecstasy of Gold.”
Awards ceremonies have been an unusually transparent look into Kieran Culkin’s reproductive planning?
It was also mostly bleeped out.
Conan pulls off an Oscars opening that feels completely effortless while also being a painstaking, tonally careful blend of all the things monologues have to do. He was sincere about the L.A. wildfires, he was a little sharp in a joke about Karla Sofía Gascón, and he made jokes about the specific role of Oscars hosting with a musical number called “I Won’t Waste Time” (featuring the sandworm from Dune on keyboard). He pulls it off in part because his particular brand of comedy has always been stratospherically absurd but never nihilistic or cruel. A pro.
Adam Sandler’s “Timothée Chalamet” at the Golden Globes got an extension courtesy of Conan’s opening monologue.
With all the increased violence in the West Bank after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire (which Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham spoke to us about), it’s nice to see all four directors of No Other Land — Abraham, Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor — make it to the Oscars where they should, you know, win.
If only more people watched Trial & Error on NBC, he wouldn’t have to play Dumbledore.
For the most part, the stars looked good, but I could have used some Cher or a swan dress. That said, here are my extremely subjective PERSONAL FAVORITE LOOKS from the red carpet:
Lisa
I still don’t entirely understand what’s going on here — it is a tux that is also a gown, or are there pants underneath there? I can’t tell, but amongst a bunch of safe choices, it stands out.
June Squibb
Sparkly caftan type thing! It’s so good!
Cynthia Erivo
I am on the record as being over Ariana Grande’s Glinda-themed run, but the thing about playing the misunderstood supposed villainess is that you get cooler villainess-inspired outfits, and Erivo wears the velvet and dramatic collar so well.
Sebastian Stan
There were a few bold brown looks among the guys — Jeremy Strong’s russet suit, Andrew Garfield’s disco look — but I am very stuck on the tan shirt Stan is wearing with his tux. It’s just off enough to look like it could be dirty, or like someone spilled tea on him, or like it sat around in a box yellowing with age. I like it! Subversive!
Demi Moore
She came to win an Oscar and she goddamn deserves it in this dress. She looks incredible.
Of having Cynthia and Ariana do a grand Oz medley of The Wizard of Oz’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (Ariana) into The Wiz’s “Home” (Cynthia) into Wicked’s own “Defying Gravity” (a duet in which Ariana also had to supply both the Glinda and the guards who go “we have to bring her down!” vocal lines)? It gave us a grand tribute to L.A. with background shots of the city, Erivo’s trademark ability to hit insane notes without vocal strain, and reaction shots of Ethan Slater and a crying Michelle Yeoh. Glamour! Indulgence! The reminder we have to endure another 12 months of this press tour! All we want from an event like this.
What would be an Oscar Night without stakes?? Tonight’s Academy Awards are about more than just gold statues handed out in 23 categories. They’re the culmination of months’ worth of campaigns, speculation, scandal, and most of all narratives. We Oscar freaks love a good Oscar narrative, and tonight’s show will feature the payoff for a bunch of them.
Is it Anora’s big night?
Anora enters the evening as the betting favorite to win Best Picture, but Sean Baker’s movie has only been in that position for a scant few weeks now, during which time it’s picked up awards from the Producers Guild, Director’s Guild, and Critics Choice, but has lost the top awards at the BAFTAs and SAG Awards (both of those going to Conclave). What does it all mean?? With six total nominations, Anora’s performance in a few categories earlier in the ceremony could be a window into how voters felt about it:Best Original Screenplay: Baker took the Writers Guild Award for Anora, while Jesse Eisenberg won the BAFTA for A Real Pain.
• Best Film Editing: Baker could also win here for his editing, but this category feels truly up for grabs. A win for The Brutalist wouldn’t be great for Anora; a win for Conclave could signal an upset brewing.
• Best Actress: Demi Moore rebounded from a loss to Anora’s Mikey Madison at the BAFTAs with a win at SAG, to remain in the driver’s seat to win the Oscar. If Madison pulls out the upset here, the Anora narrative will feel mighty strong.
• Best Director: If Anora is going to win Best Picture, Sean Baker will likely win Best Director, but that’s not a guarantee. The last decade or so has seen a trend towards splitting up Picture and Director, with the latter award going to films with more sweeping scope and technological achievement. Don’t be shocked if The Brutalist’s Brady Corbet sneaks out a win.
How far did Emilia Pérez fall?
Karla Sofía Gascón’s toxic tweets were the reason most Oscar pundits shot the French film down their list of predicted winners in most categories. But Oscar voters aren’t necessarily guaranteed to follow suit. Emilia just cleaned up at the César Awards (the French Oscars), and with the Academy membership more international than it’s ever been, Jacques Audiard’s maligned film could still pick up awards in Best International Feature, Best Original Song, and Best Sound, in addition to Zoe Saldaña’s widely predicted win in Best Supporting Actress.
Will Timmy supplant Adrien as Oscar’s favorite boy?
Adrien Brody spent all season picking up Best Actor awards for his acclaimed performance in The Brutalist, even though the drumbeat for him to win a second Oscar, after he triumphed in this same category for 2002’s The Pianist never felt all that strong. At that time, Brody broke the record as the youngest Best Actor winner ever at age 29. But after A Complete Unknown’s Timothée Chalamet took Best Actor at the SAG Awards last weekend, he’s now poised to score a late-breaking Oscar win, and with it take the youngest Best Actor winner designation away from Brody, if only by a matter of several months.
Could it finally be Diane Warren’s time?
The prolific songwriter has been nominated a grand total of 16 times and in ten of the last eleven years. And while nothing in that last decade has approached the grandeur of her old hits like “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” Warren has hit the campaign trail hard every year, not even letting up after winning an honorary Oscar in 2022. With Emilia Perez’s two Best Original Songs now imperiled because of the Karla tweet scandal, some folks are wondering if the door is now open for Warren to finally win. It would help if people could remember anything about her nominated song — “The Journey” from the Tyler Perry disaster The Six Triple Eight — but Oscar voters have never been overly bound by taste.
Ariana did “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” while Cynthia followed with “Home” from The Wiz.
Down with tiny mics!!!
Really adding another layer to Challengers’ Oscars shutout. Even for best score?? The horny women and club rat gays of cinemaland will never forget this slight.
Swoon.
I wonder if Margaret Qualley’s dress is intentionally evoking the low-backed gown Demi Moore wears at the bar in The Substance
Than she did last year, when she wore a silly Louis Vuitton outfit that burst at the seams — and then landed Best Actress for Poor Things. In many ways, it makes sense: She didn’t expect to get onstage last year (everyone expected Lily Gladstone to win for Killers of the Flower Moon), and this year, Stone knows she’s presenting Best Actor. Still: sad!
Elle Fanning, Ethan Slater, and Matt and Bowen. If we must endure them, I’d like to see more duos tackle the GlamBOT together: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin, Brady Corbet and Sean Baker.
March 2nd, 2014 is a day that will live in Oscar infamy. Host Ellen Degeneres, in a show of force that one assumed was meant to intimidate any future Oscar emcees, declared her intention to set the world record for most retweets on Twitter, and to that end called to heel ten of Hollywood’s top stars to assemble for a selfie. Assemble they did — Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, Channing Tatum, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Spacey, Angelina Jolie, and two of that night’s newly minted Oscar winners, Jared Leto and Lupita Nyong’o — in what remains one of the more cursed totems in Academy Awards history. Within a decade, both Spacey and Ellen would be canceled, Pitt and Jolie’s marriage would end in deeply ugly fashion, Tatum and Lawrence would be debased in various ways by the X-Men film franchise, Streep would be exiled to the cold wasteland of television, Jared Leto would portray the Joker so off-puttingly that it helped kill an entire wave of DC superhero films, and Bradley Cooper would proceed to get infinitesimally weirder each day, until one day he made Maestro.
Even the photo itself looks haunted: Julia Roberts’ floating head and all-devouring grin; Kevin Spacey jump-scaring into the background, probably directly from the depths of hell; Jared Leto’s one intense eye; Angelina obscuring her own face. Thank goodness for Peter Nyong’o, an oasis of unblemished normalcy amid this tableau of the soul-sucking nature of fame, where A-List stature damns you to an eternity of assembling at the whim of a mom-dancing talk-show host who everybody in the room knows is mean but nobody will say anything about it for another six years.
Anyway, eleven years! A lot’s happened since then, huh?
Got in a cab and told the guy the address and he said, “Hollywood?! Oh my God.” Then he said “I will see what we can do” and it sounded like he was planning a heist.
March 2, 1944 was a landmark Oscar day for a few reasons, but the one remembered best now, 81 years later, is that the legendary Casablanca won the award for Best Picture. Oscar history tends to be speckled with the blemishes of legendary films that somehow didn’t win BP: Just two years prior to Casablanca’s triumph, Citizen Kane infamously lost to How Green Was My Valley. Around the World in 80 Days bested Giant, The King and I, and The Ten Commandments in 1956. Driving Miss Daisy won over the unnominated Do the Right Thing in ’89. On the most recent AFI list of the best American films of all time, only half of the top ten were Best Picture winners.
So a win for Casablanca wasn’t just a win for director Michael Curtiz or for Warner Bros.; it was a win for Oscar history. According to Inside Oscar, that year’s ceremony was also the first to take place in a theater — Hollywood’s famed Grauman’s Chinese Theater — and not as part of a banquet. They were also the first Oscars to be attended by people outside of the film industry, as the Academy gave passes to 200 members of the armed forces. (Both of these suggestions were reportedly made by actress Bette Davis.) They were even the first Oscars, way back in 1944, to make a big deal about nominees keeping their speeches short, allotting a mere 30 seconds to each winner. The event lasted a shade under two hours.
I appreciate some theme dressing, especially when the arc of a publicity campaign is long and full of photocalls. But there are only so many variations on fairy-princess fashion anyone can wear in a season before starting to give off the aura of a very high-end children’s birthday party entertainer. The frills, the poofs, the pinks — I can’t handle a whole other press cycle of these looks! Free Ariana: For Good.
In past years, you needed to shell out $70-plus for the Hulu with Live TV service (or something similar like YouTube TV, DirecTV Stream or a cable login) in order to steam the Oscars. This year, the Oscars will be available to all Hulu subscribers regardless of their subscription tier, including the entry-level $9.99 Hulu with Ads plan.