Director Paul Thomas Anderson and cast members celebrate as they accept the Oscar for Best Picture for One Battle After Another.Mike Blake/Reuters
Kicking off with Conan O’Brien running for his life as he burst through the scenes of the year’s Best Picture nominees and ending with Paul Thomas Anderson’s political epic One Battle After Another taking home the top prize of the evening, the 98th Academy Awards offered more than its fair share of watercooler talking points during its approximately six-and-a-half-hour length. Before YouTube thinks twice about its plan to stream the ceremony starting in 2029, The Globe and Mail presents the best, worst, and weirdest moments from, in the words of O’Brien, a real humdinger of an Oscars.
Host Conan O'Brien and Sterling K. Brown perform onstage at Dolby Theatre.Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Conan the Conqueror
Learning the best lessons of Oscars hosts past (most notably Billy Crystal), Conan O’Brien mixed easy charm, sharp jabs, and delightful absurdity to deliver one of the strongest opening Academy Awards monologues in a decade-plus. His cold open, in which he Weapons-ized himself in full Amy Madigan drag, was perfectly constructed and cut.
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His rat-a-tat-tat series of jokes was also on point, targeting a range of deserved targets, from Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos (“It’s his first time in a theatre!”) to He-Shall-Not-Be-Named (“This is the first time since 2012 that no British actors were nominated for Best Actor or Best Actress. A British spokesman said, ‘At least we arrest our pedophiles’”).
All that, and O’Brien delivered sincerity (“We pay tribute tonight to not just film, but the ideals of global artistry, patience, resilience, and that rarest of qualities today: optimism”) while still keeping things weird. Not everyone can pull off a monologue that ends with a Josh Groban song and a puppet falcon. (Let’s collectively agree to ignore that Casablanca bit with Sterling K. Brown.)
Paul Thomas Anderson accepts the Oscar for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) for One Battle After Another.PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images
One Win After Another
Collecting a total of six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, Anderson’s One Battle After Another was the champion of the night. “I really blew it when I won the Best Director award and forgot to thank my cast,” Anderson said while cradling the Best Picture statuette. “What a night. Let’s have a martini.” It’s anyone’s guess as to what the mood might be inside the film’s studio, Warner Bros., given that it was just sold to Paramount, which seems to have no real stomach for the bold themes and provocations of Anderson’s film. Enjoy the martini while it lasts, everyone.
Elbows Way Up
Maggie Kang poses with the award for the Animated Feature Film for KPop Demon Hunters.Supplied/Getty Images
Canada enjoyed an unusually golden evening Sunday. The first victory was the country escaping any easy 51st-state and/or Heated Rivalry jokes in O’Brien’s monologue (even with star Hudson Williams in the crowd).
But then the real wins started stacking up, coming first when Canadian director Maggie Kang of KPop Demon Hunters took home the award for Best Animated Feature. Up next were Montreal animators Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski who, while on stage accepting the award for Best Animated Short for their stop-motion drama The Girl Who Cried Pearls, gave shout-outs to the National Film Board, Telefilm’s Julie Roy, actor/national treasure Colm Feore, and their fellow Montrealer, musician Patrick Watson. (The win also marks the 12th Oscar for a NFB film.)
Canadians, Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau, won Oscars for Best Production Design for Frankenstein.Mike Coppola/Getty Images
Then it was the made-in-Canada Frankenstein team nearly cleaning up across the craft categories, including Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey (who shared the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling with their British teammate Mike Hill) and Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau (Best Production Design).
Oh, and also Marty Supreme’s Kevin O’Leary was also hanging around, wearing bling bright enough to blind the understandably befuddled Jafar Panahi. Kevin, buddy, we need to talk.
Michael B. Jordan won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Sinners.VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images
Chala-nay
The opera and ballet gods were surely smiling as Sinners star Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor over Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet, who only a few weeks ago felt like the frontrunner. After tightly embracing his costar Delroy Lindo, Jordan took to the stage to deliver an emotional acceptance speech, singling out his longtime collaborator Ryan Coogler, with the crowd inside the Dolby Theatre rising to anoint a true Hollywood force.
Gone But Not Forgotten
In what was certainly the most emotional, and longest, “In Memoriam” segment in recent Oscars history, producers separated the typically closely watched sequence into three distinct moments in order to highlight the unusually high number of major industry losses over the past year.
Rachel McAdams speaks about Catherine O'Hara during the In Memoriam segment.Chris Pizzello/The Associated Press
First up was Oscars mainstay Billy Crystal, who recalled “what fun we had storming the castle” with his best friend (and Princess Bride director) Rob Reiner. (Crystal was flanked by a number of other close Reiner collaborators, including Meg Ryan and John Cusack.) Then Rachel McAdams came out to honour the legendary actresses that passed, including her “fellow Canadian” Catherine O’Hara and Diane Keaton, a “legend with no end.”
Finally, the tearjerking (or by this point tear-drowning) portion of the evening was capped with Barbra Streisand coming out to serenade the memory of Robert Redford with a short rendition of “The Way We Were.” What could have been crass and simply overdone felt sincere and deserved, even at 15 minutes.
Ryan Coogler accepts the award for Writing (Original Screenplay) for Sinners.Chris Pizzello/The Associated Press
Welcome to the Family
If you were to pick apart many of the Best Picture nominees, you’d see there’s a running theme of men torn between their families and their pursuits of glory. Hamnet, One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value, and Train Dreams all find their central tension in fathers who struggle to put their children before themselves.
And while you can’t quite fit Sinners into this category, the parental-responsibility issue clearly resonates with that film’s writer-director Ryan Coogler, who while accepting his award for Best Original Screenplay put his family front and centre. Similarly, One Battle’s Anderson thanked his children after winning Best Adapted Screenplay, mentioning that his film was made for “his kids, to say sorry for the housekeeping mess they were left in this world we’re handing off to them.”
A performance of I Lied to You from Sinners was one of the more memorable moments of the evening.Mike Blake/Reuters
More Like “Song Sung, Woo”!
In a standout performance that brought the house down, and underlined just how far Sinners could go for the rest of the evening, the cast of Coogler’s vampire thriller delivered a blast of energy with their performance of “I Lied to You,” led by musicians Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq. Misty Copeland, Buddy Guy, and Jayme Lawson were among the performers who helped the Oscars stage a tribute to the film’s standout “Pierce the Veil” sequence, in which Coogler traversed decades and genres to piece together the cultural history of Black music. Regrettably, the track failed to win Best Original Song (KPop’s “Golden,” the odds-on favourite, triumphed). But it won enough hearts and minds to live forever in Oscars history.
Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh accept the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film for Two People Exchanging Saliva.PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images
Tie One On
Prior to Sunday, there were only six ties in Oscars history. Well, another was added Sunday after presenter Kumail Nanjiani opened the envelope to announce the winner, or rather winners, for Best Live Action Short Film. The teams behind The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva seemed as surprised as anyone, especially the filmmakers behind the latter title, as producers retracted the microphone stand while they were still speaking (a decision that O’Brien immediately reprimanded onstage).
Autumn Durald Arkapaw won the Oscar in Cinematography for Sinners.Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Shot for Shot
In another moment of awards history, this one an egregiously long time coming, Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman (and the first Black artist) to win the Oscar for Best Cinematography. In an acceptance speech that was at once gracious and resolved, Arkapaw asked all the women in the room to stand up: “I don’t feel like I get here without you guys.”
Let’s Get Political, Political, I Wanna Get Political
Compared to last year’s relatively light touch when it came to Donald Trump, this year’s ceremony took on the U.S. President with a fiery glee. Not only were there several digs courtesy of O’Brien, but one-time Oscars host (and frequent source of agita for the MAGA crowd) Jimmy Kimmel returned to dunk on the White House’s favourite television network, the Paramount-owned CBS, and the First Lady’s faux-doc Melania.
David Borenstein,left, accepts the Documentary Feature award for Mr. Nobody Against Putin.Kevin Winter/Getty Images
But the real mic drop came from David Borenstein, director of Mr. Nobody Against Putin, who upon accepting the award for Best Documentary noted that his film is “about how you lose your country, and what we saw is you lose it through small little acts of complicity. When a government murders people on the streets of our major cities. When oligarchs take over the media and how we produce it and consume it. We all face a moral choice, but luckily even a nobody is more powerful than you think.”
Where in the World is Sean Penn?
Does the One Battle After Another actor love indoor-smoking more than being on hand to accept his third Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actor? Perhaps he was busy tracking down another drug lord. Or fighting the good fight in the war in Ukraine. You do you, Sean Penn. Godspeed.