Last night, the Oscars actually ended early.
Not that early, of course. In fact, towards the end of the show, Jimmy Kimmel came out and did his usual anti-Trump schtick just to pad out the running time so that the Oscars managed to make it to the allotted 3 hour and 30 minute mark. (And yes, it is schtick. The late night hosts need Trump just as much as Trump needs them.) The thing is, though, the Oscars usually run over by a good 30 minutes. The show ending on time means that it ended early. This is the first Oscar telecast, in my lifetime, to end on time. I could actually go out and do stuff after the show ended. It was fun!
As for the show itself, it was a relatively smooth production. No one got slapped. There were no major technical snafus. As to be expected, there were a few embarrassing acceptance speeches. I thought Zone of Interest was a powerful film and I also thought Under The Skin was brilliant but I can still do without ever having to listen to Jonathan Glazer give another speech. One can only imagine how Martin Amis would have reacted to Glazer’s “speech.”
(Martin Amis wrote the novel that served as the basis for the film that won Glazer an Oscar. Amis never had much use for the wimpy or the self-important.)
Ryan Gosling’s performance of I Am Ken was the highlight of the show. Of course, then the song failed to win the Oscar. It reminded me a bit of how, in 2021, the entire broadcast was designed to end with Chadwick Boseman receiving a posthumous award, just for a confused Joaquin Phoenix to read Anthony Hopkins’s name instead. Sometimes, the voters really do just vote for who or what they think should win, regardless of the preferred narrative.
In fact, for all the hype, Barbie wasn’t much of a factor in the awards. It won one Oscar, for the song that wasn’t I Am Ken. The Academy was far more impressed with Poor Things. Still, Barbie did better than Killers of the Flower Moon, which won not a single award. Poor Things‘s Emma Stone defeating Lily Gladstone was the upset of the evening. Am I the only one who briefly got worried that Poor Things would somehow win Best Picture over Oppenheimer?
The big winner, of course, was Oppenheimer. My top film of 2023 was Past Lives but Oppenheimer was a close second. (Until Glazer gave his speech, Zone of Interest was my third pick.) Robert Downey, Jr. became the first former SNL cast member to win an acting Oscar. Christopher Nolan accepted his Oscar from Steven Spielberg, which felt like a real changing-of-the-guard moment. Cillian Murphy won Best Actor. I would have voted for Paul Giamatti but Murphy still deserves a lot of credit for holding Oppenheimer together.
Godzilla is an Oscar winner! Yay!
All in all, it was a good show. Occasionally, it was even fun. It was very efficient, as if the Academy specifically picked this year to show ABC that it actually could put on an orderly show that didn’t preempt the entire network’s programming by an extra hour. My advice for next year would be to stop doing the thing where five previous winners came out to praise the current nominees. (That bit has always felt a bit condescending and I would much rather see clips of the nominated performances.) And maybe get John Mulaney to host because Jimmy Kimmel has become just way too impressed with himself.
Now, 2023 is done. Onward to 2024!
(Actually, you know what I haven’t done, yet? I haven’t posted my picks for the best of 2023. I’ll do that this week, even though I doubt anyone cares at this point. But I’ve posted my lists every year and I’m not going to break tradition now. I just have a handful of movies to watch today and tomorrow….)
Through the Shattered Lens