The Super Bowl of cinema aka the 95th Annual Academy Awards finally happened on Sunday night, and as I suspected Everything Everywhere All At Once cleaned up in most of the major categories, taking home seven out of eleven trophies including Best Picture, Best Direction for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan, Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh and Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis.
Speaking of Best Supporting Actress, Marvel fans got their tits in a twist when Angela Bassett lost the Oscar to Curtis, with some even saying that Jamie didn't deserve her win. I don't know what film you all were watching, but Jamie Lee was phenomenal in EEAAO.
Angela was definitely the standout as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and the buzz around Hollywood that both actresses were the top two that were up for the award.
For the longest time I thought Angela was a lock to win the Oscar, but the minute Jamie Lee Curtis won the SAG Award, which is voted on by your peers (just like the Oscars), I had a strange feeling that Jamie was going to win.
I also found it annoying that people were judging Angela for her authentic response to not winning, especially when she's been gassed to believe for months that she was a lock for the award. At the end of the day she's human, and if you were to say as you're reading this that you would have responded with a phony, performative Hollywood congratulations I'd say you were full of it.
Angela may have not walked away with an Oscar for the second time, but look on the brightside - she is one of the most respected actresses working in Hollywood today, and with her role on 911 she's the highest paid actress of color on TV, taking home half a million dollars an episode.
As for Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh, it was great to see two well-deserved Asian actors break the glass ceiling and win in the major acting categories of Best Supporting Actor and Best Actress, respectively. And their speeches (especially Quan's) brought me to tears.
Yeoh is a phenomenal actress, and as someone who has been following her career for over three decades, it's about time she's getting her flowers.
I also enjoyed the Naatu Naatu performance at the Oscars, which would eventually go on to win Best Original Song. However I was saddened to hear that the creatives behind the song were upset with the Academy for not featuring any South Asian dancers on stage.
South Asian creators were critical of the performance on social media, slamming the Academy for having non-Indian duo Tabitha and Napoleon D'uomo, aka NappyTabs, choreograph, direct and cast the performance, as well as oversee costume and set design.
For those who haven't seen the movie, Telugu actors N.T. Rama Rao Jr., who also goes by Jr. NTR, and Ram Charan (who weren't at the Oscars due to prior commitments, and didn't have enough time to rehearse the performance) dance in front of Caucasian British colonists who say that the two are not sophisticated enough to dance. The characters proceed to put on a spectacular show with a dance native to their culture, impressing the women and angering the men who can't keep up with their skill.
The two leads in the Oscars performance were played by Jason Glover, who's American, and Billy Mustapha, who's Canadian, and were made to look like the two main characters of the movie, despite not being South Indian.
While the choreography and production teams diversified the cast by casting people of color in some of the "White" colonist roles, they failed to extend that representation to South Asians in the ensemble and lead roles, argued Shivani Reddy, a Telugu-American film and TV critic and TikTok content creator.
"I liked that they went a more diverse route, because the movie itself became this global phenomenon," Reddy told CBS News. "It just felt very exclusionary that the one race they didn't include was the one that was supposed to be represented because of the film and where it's from."
Reddy, who is a part of the South Asian dance scene in Los Angeles, said that South Asians are rarely represented in the arts, and that this performance would have been the perfect opportunity to give them that representation on Hollywood's biggest stage.
"It's unfortunate because there are so many South Asian dancers that I know that are in the industry trying to get into those spaces that just don't get afforded those opportunities," she said. "And for the one time that we maybe could have gotten access, we were denied."
Joya Kazi, a professional dancer, choreographer, consultant and producer in Los Angeles, who is a member of both the Screen Actors Guild and the Television Academy, said her agent submitted her for consideration as a dancer or member of the production team for the Oscars' "Naatu Naatu" performance. Her agent later told her that NappyTabs had decided not to audition or even consider dancers they had not worked with previously.
I did like that they diversified the performers, but not at the expense of the South Asian community who according to the report weren't even considered to represent their culture on stage.
During the In Memoriam segment, Anne Heche, Leslie Jordan, Charlbi Dean, Tom Sizemore, Robert Blake, and Paul Sorvino were left out of the telecast. Heche and Jordan were mentioned on the website, while the others mentioned in this report were not.
Check out the full list of winners below.
BEST PICTURE Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) A Hot Dog Hands Production Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert and Jonathan Wang, Producers
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE Brendan Fraser in The Whale (A24)
DIRECTING Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
FILM EDITING Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) Paul Rogers
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG) Naatu Naatu from RRR (Variance Films/Sarigama Cinemas) Music by M.M. Keeravaani Lyric by Chandrabose
SOUND Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) Mark Weingarten, James H. Mather, Al Nelson, Chris Burdon and Mark Taylor
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY) Women Talking (Orion Pictures/United Artists Releasing) Screenplay by Sarah Polley
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY) Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) Written by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert
VISUAL EFFECTS Avatar: The Way of Water (Walt Disney) Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE) All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix) Volker Bertelmann
PRODUCTION DESIGN All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix) Production Design: Christian M. Goldbeck Set Decoration: Ernestine Hipper
ANIMATED SHORT FILM The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (BBC and Apple Original Films) A NoneMore and Bad Robot Production Charlie Mackesy and Matthew Freud
DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM The Elephant Whisperers (Netflix) A Netflix Documentary/Sikhya Entertainment Production Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga
INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany) A Netflix/Amusement Park Film in co-production with Gunpowder Films in association with Sliding Down Rainbows Entertainment/Anima Pictures Production
COSTUME DESIGN Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Walt Disney) Ruth Carter
MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING The Whale (A24) Adrien Morot, Judy Chin and Anne Marie Bradley
CINEMATOGRAPHY All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix) James Friend
LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM An Irish Goodbye (Network Ireland Television) A Floodlight Pictures Production Tom Berkeley and Ross White
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM Navalny (Warner Bros./CNN Films/HBO Max) A Fishbowl Films/RaeFilm Studios/Cottage M Production Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller and Shane Boris
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix) Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson, Gary Ungar and Alex Bulkley
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