5 Most Talked-About Moments From The Oscars
It was the biggest night in Hollywood, and the Oscars race (which seemed longer than normal) is done and dusted for another year. This time around, the more dramatic moments happened during the campaign, like the viral furore over Timothée Chalamet’s comments about ballet and opera dying out. But the race itself was still tight between Sinners and One Battle After Another. The award choices were good, but the ceremony was… not quite. Here are a few of the big moments…
1. It was Michael B. over Timothée
Surely the most anticipated award of the night was Best Actor, which at the start of this year looked surely to be Timothée Chalamet’s for Marty Supreme – but he was pipped to the post by Michael B. Jordan for Sinners instead. Jordan has been in the mainstream since being in The Wire, aged 14, it was a victory as he scooped for his dual role as brothers Smoke and Stack in vampire horror movie Sinners.
2. Jessie Buckley gets her Oscar
On the other side, the Best Actress race seemed anything but tight because Jessie Buckley, nominated for her role as Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet, went far ahead of the pack coming into Oscar night. She shouted out the fact that it was Mother’s Day in the UK and Ireland, and made an emotional acceptance speech.
Jessie Buckley, nominated for her role as Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet, went far ahead of the pack coming into Oscar night.
3. There was a tie
It’s a very rare thing for two nominees to end up tied for an Oscar, so much so that when presenter Kumail Nanjiani opened the envelope for Best Live Action Short, he had to stress that it was not a joke.
There was added suspense as musical comedy The Singers was announced first, and the team went to get their award, just as surprised at the tie as the rest of us were. Then up came the team for Two People Exchanging Saliva, a French dystopian short, who collected another Oscar statuette. Everyone got their time in the spotlight, and the Academy got another viral moment.
4. The ceremony was mixed
The actual ceremony proceedings were a bit… all over the place, however. It’s always a tough gig to host the Oscars, but returning host Conan O’Brien did a good job, bringing some much-missed physical comedy to the show and his usual goofy but always fun comedic energy.
There were a couple of jokes that didn’t seem to land, but that may have been down to the numerous technical issues that plagued the event. Mic problems and audio dropping in and out often made it hard to hear what people were saying (it wasn’t just my TV). A few people got cut off by the infamous “playing music over a speech to save time”, including one of the winners for the K-Pop Demon Hunters song Golden, very unfairly. There were a few gags about YouTube taking over the Oscars in a few years, but maybe they’ll do a better job?
Conan O’Brien did a good job, bringing some much-missed physical comedy to the show and his usual goofy but always fun comedic energy.
5. The big prize went to…
Sinners ended up with the most nominations in Oscars history to the surprise of many, a couple of months ago, but as I predicted then, those nominations didn’t translate to a huge haul. Unlike some similarly highly nominated films, it did take some important wins, like Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler for Best Original Screenplay.
I had a feeling that One Battle After Another would be the biggest victor overall, and I was right- it triumphed to win Best Picture. Director Paul Thomas Anderson, known for Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, was definitely overdue for an Oscar, so it was good to see him win for Directing and Adapted Screenplay.
