I'm continuing the occasional pop-in for the blog here today with a look at last night's Oscars, an annual tradition on a blog that is largely devoted to the Academy Awards. Because I just finished a vacation, I will actually be revealing my OVP for 2024 two weeks from today (and my My Ballot two weeks from tomorrow), but I did see all of the 2024 OVP nominees before the ceremony, a first for me (I have never gotten them all done in advance, a testament specifically to the lack of surprises in the International Feature Film lineup which is usually where I struggle). We're going to play around with the formula a little bit from last night, which we normally refer to as the "The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly" of the Oscars, mostly because I wasn't really impressed at all with last night's Academy Awards, but also because it was more blasé than actually bad (which would've honestly been more fun). Let's instead break it out by the components of what makes a quintessential Oscar night, starting with our host Conan O'Brien.
I initially thought of O'Brien as a really strong choice for the Oscars. I enjoy O'Brien's brand of self-referential and dry humor, and he was an ace host when he did the Emmys, particularly in 2006. But I felt underwhelmed. His musical number about how long the show was was a complete dud, and he particularly couldn't figure out how to continue the emcee role beyond the opening monologue. The monologue had some good lines, my favorite being "Bob Dylan wanted to be here tonight...but not that badly" but it also included both that tired number and a weird bit with Adam Sandler where he came out dressed like John Fetterman that felt like it might be an attack on Donald Trump's attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's appearance...but was so out of place that it was hard to tell. I get that Oscar-hosting is a tough job, but I was underwhelmed by O'Brien here, and he wasn't able to keep up with the jokes throughout the night the way that Billy Crystal used to be able to (think of Crystal's many post-speech jokes about people like Jack Palance & Cuba Gooding Jr.), losing a lot of the improvisational humor that normally is important for hosting (Crystal, for example, would've had at least one good line about Kieran Culkin wanting his wife to have two more kids with him). O'Brien has indicated this was a one-time thing for him, and I think that might be for the best; like his hero Dave Letterman, this might not be his schtick.
The winners continued to be what they have been for years-a continuation of the slow death march of a too crowded awards season, where stats-based punditry has not just taken over, but it's also taken all of the fun out of Oscar predictions. The one truly competitive major race of the night was Best Actress, which was weirdly the only competitive race of the night the past few years in a row, and did result in something of a surprise: the Anora sweep took out sentimental favorite Demi Moore in favor of the film's title actress Mikey Madison. But most of America didn't see that (we'll get to that in a second), and the rest of the acting winners (Adrien Brody, Zoe Saldana, & Kieran Culkin) were preordained months ago, and outside of the Shorts categories and Animated Feature Film, there were no really big shocks in the remainder (and the Shorts, let's face it, don't count as surprises).
This wouldn't have been so bad if it was a quartet that truly deserved it, but Culkin & Saldana's wins feel particularly untoward because they are not remotely supporting performances. Category fraud has been a threat to character actor performances like those of Yura Borisov & Isabella Rossellini (true supporting roles) for years, and some have scoffed at this, saying it's not that serious. What happened last night, though, was the complete death of supporting performances. Culkin has a larger screen presence than any Supporting Actor winner ever, including people like Jack Albertson (The Subject was Roses) and Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People) who are pretty much universally agreed-upon to be leads by Oscar observers (he nearly has more screen time percentage than Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon, who is literally in all but one scene of that movie). Saldana isn't much better-she has more screen time than her lead costar Karla Sofia Gascon, and is #5 on the list of largest screen time shares, right around the mark of clear leads like Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower and Viola Davis in Fences. This means that for the first time ever(?) literally no supporting performance actually won an Academy Award...I don't know how to fix this, but you're going to continue to see leading stars ensure that performers who are in the true category actor vein of Eileen Heckart, Walter Brennan, & Joe Pesci will never have a shot at an Oscar win again. And given the group think is getting worse, those victories will not be a surprise.
The one silver lining for me in last night's ceremony was the presenters. Billy Crystal & Meg Ryan were an inspired choice to present Best Picture, both screen favorites who have never given out the big award (and two actors who have weirdly never been nominated for an Oscar, a rarity-just four actors, the other two being Carol Burnett & Will Rogers, have presented Best Picture without eventually getting a nomination or a win...perhaps something in their future?). I loved some of the oddball pairings like June Squibb & Scarlett Johansson, Goldie Hawn & Andrew Garfield, Miles Teller & Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez & Samuel L. Jackson all come to mind as actors that make sense as Oscar presenters, just not together, and that's honestly what I want (Oscars should be about being inventive). You also had a few names I wouldn't have guessed (Mick Jagger & Darryl Hannah specifically) which got us some new energy and gave this ceremony its own appeal. Overall, whoever chose the presenters this year deserves a pat on the back.
The musical performances, though, were unnecessary. Somehow on a night where we had genuine musicals in contention (Emilia Perez, A Complete Unknown) we instead got not one but two musical numbers from The Wiz, a film that came out 47 years ago. The Wicked opening was inevitable (and understandable), and lord knows the Best Original Song contenders were so dreadful that not including them made sense, but did we need yet another uninspired tribute to James Bond, presented, once again, by Halle Berry...is she the only person they know from this movie?!? I get the rationale here (Michael G. Wilson & Barbara Broccoli just won the Thalberg, and this felt like a death knell for Bond given they just sold the rights to Amazon), but at least mix it up-bring out Bond girls from every era or something, or have the original singers sing their songs (how cool would having Paul McCartney, Shirley Bassey, & Madonna taking the stage have been?). Something more was needed, as the music felt either boring or silly.
It has become a performative bit each year for people to call out random missing names in the In Memoriam, and generally I don't get behind it. I always find the way that certain performers are signaled out for recognition a bit arbitrary (why Gene Hackman & Quincy Jones instead of Maggie Smith, for example), but this year...woof, I cannot remember the Oscars bungling this badly. And I say this as someone who generally has sympathy for AMPAS on how hard it is to handle the In Memoriam (side note: I kind of liked the Amadeus dirge being the background, as at least it was memorable).
Most of the headlines you'll see this morning will be about Michelle Trachtenberg, who is the most recognizable name to most people, but honestly feels like one of those performative callouts since Trachtenberg's career was largely in television (the same for Shannon Doherty, Linda Lavin, & Martin Mull), even if her death hits hard since it's so recent (and she was so young). But the In Memoriam segment forgot some major classic film stars in its list, including some of the biggest snubs I can remember. Claude Jarman, Jr., who won the Juvenile Oscar for The Yearling, became only the third Oscar-winning actor since the advent of the In Memoriam as a recurring segment in 1994, to be cut from the ceremony. Mitzi Gaynor, who received the longest standing ovation of any musical performer in the history of the Oscars for her rendition of "Georgy Girl," and whose musical South Pacific is so engrained in Hollywood culture that June Squibb & Scarlett Johansson walked out to "Some Enchanted Evening" earlier in the night, was also cut. Janis Paige, Kathryn Crosby, Alain Delon, Olivia Hussey...these are not just movie actors, they're movie stars...skipping them felt intentional. In a night where we were being asked to celebrate the movies, it was hard not to think of it as celebrating movies...as long as they were made after 1975.
The single biggest issue for the Oscars last night-most people didn't get to see how they ended. ABC & Disney had made a big deal about how this would be the first year ever that all Hulu subscribers could watch the ceremony in full on their streamers. It was included in all of their advertisements, and was omnipresent at the top of the Hulu page for weeks. And then, right in the middle of the Best Actress field (for me they'd just announced Karla Sofia Gascon), a giant blue screen popped up, saying the live show had ended. What it appeared had happened was that ABC had only allotted 3.5 hours for the ceremony, not taking into account the Oscars regularly run long, and for streamers this meant that they weren't still watching live like they would've on ABC, and instead this allotted time was over and it was now time for American Idol. But in the process they cut off their two signature awards of the night. I was one of those impacted (I have since sought out and saw the full presentations and speeches for Best Picture & Actress so I can say I've seen the full ceremony), but it is a fitting epitaph for the evening. After all, the night's biggest winner, Sean Baker (tying Walt Disney's record for most wins in a single evening), made an impassioned plea to go to the movies in theaters rather than streaming. That streaming proved it was too incompetent to handle celebrating Hollywood's biggest night just an hour later kind of feels like an exclamation point that even Baker couldn't have anticipated.
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