(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Everything Everywhere All at Once
It did not Everything Everywhere All at Once. But it’s pretty close. “All At The Same Time,” a howlingly insane sci-fi action comedy mash-up about a Chinese-American immigrant who travels across the multiverse to keep his family together, premiered at the 95th Academy Awards on Sunday night. The Best Picture winner beat out a diverse field that included blockbusters and intimate art films.
With 11 nominations, the leading film “Everywhere” has seven nominations, including lead actress Michelle Yeoh, Michelle Kwan and supporting actor Jamie Lee Curtis, and co-director Daniel Kwan and original screenplay and direction Shanat. The simple indie film, with dizzying martial arts fights, fingers made of hot dogs and sex toys used as weapons, initially seemed unlikely for Oscar glory when it hit theaters nearly a year ago.
But “Everywhere” proved successful, grossing more than $100 million worldwide and gradually becoming a real contender with its gonzo filmmaking combined with poignant themes of family love and generational trauma. As awards season approaches, the film is taking off, taking over the Hollywood guilds and becoming an Oscar contender.
Scheinert, who shared the director’s award with Kwan, thanked his parents for “not stifling my creativity when I was making really disturbing horror movies, really weird comedies, or wearing drag as a kid — that’s great for everyone. No one was threatening.”
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Yeoh won the lead actress award for her portrayal of the pure matriarch in “Everywhere,” making the Malaysian-born action icon the first Asian woman to win the award. “It’s a beacon of hope and opportunity for all the little girls and boys who watched tonight’s game like I did,” Young said. “Ladies, don’t let anyone tell you that you’re past puberty.”
As one of the year’s most inspiring comeback stories, Kwon, who debuted as a child star in the 1980s in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Goonies but gave up acting due to a lack of opportunities, takes the honor. twist He plays the submissive man in the film.
“My journey begins with a boat,” Kwan said in one of the most emotional speeches of the night. “I spent a year in a refugee camp. Somehow I ended up on the biggest stage in Hollywood. They say stories like this only happen in movies. “
Former matinee icon Brendan Fraser began his comeback story with a harrowing turn as a morbidly obese man in The Whale, which won Best Actor.
Audiences for the Academy Awards have dropped by nearly two-thirds over the past decade, and this year’s best picture race includes some bona fide blockbusters, including “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Elvis.” . As a tribute to the movie “Top Gun,” which grossed $1.5 billion worldwide last summer, the show opened with a US Navy flyover. In the end, Top Gun and Avatar, like many commercial blockbusters before them,
only won in technical categories, with Avatar winning visual effects and Top Gun sound effects. “Top Gun” star Tom Cruise and “Avatar” director James Cameron did not attend the awards ceremony despite their roles in helping Hollywood emerge from the pandemic crisis – host Jimmy Kimmel pointed to the absence at the beginning of his monologue: “Two people who insisted that we go to the theater, not come to the theater.”
Some of this year’s other top contenders also fell short of what was initially predicted. Steven Spielberg’s autobiography The Fabermans came out empty-handed, as did the hit TV show Tar and the acclaimed Elvis Presley.
For the Academy, the performance is an attempt to restore the luster to the Oscars after last year’s disastrous telecast, when Will Smith shockingly slapped Chris Rock on stage for a joke about Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith going off the rails.
There has been as much speculation leading up to Sunday’s show about how the telecast will handle “The Slap” as there has been about the game itself. In a largely uncontroversial monologue, Kimmel feels like a departure from a light-hearted Billy Crystal-style Oscar joke, changing the Academy’s handling of events and their aftermath.
“We have a strict policy,” Kimmel said. “If someone commits an act of violence in this theater during the show, you get the Oscar for best actor and you get to give a 19-minute speech.” (Smith resigned from the academy after the incident and was banned from the academy for 10 years.)
While many believed the nearly century-old awards ceremony needed an overhaul for the TikTok era, Sunday’s Oscars mostly stuck to a familiar template, offering the film industry a welcome respite and freeing it from existential angst about the company’s future. In one of the few obvious departures from tradition, the red carpet is not red, but champagne. (At the opening ceremony a few days before the show, Kimmel joked that the decision to change the color “shows our confidence that there will be no bloodshed.”)
With a single host for the first time since 2018 — Kimmel is on his third — the show’s producers are leaning toward raucous musical performances, including pop hits from the Super Bowl halftime show. Singing stars Rihanna and Lady Gaga gave a very emotional performance of her original song nominee ‘Take My Hand’ from ‘Top Gun’.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
Last year, the Academy moved eight offline and short film categories from live broadcasts and edited clips of winners’ speeches to the show in an effort to shorten the show’s notoriously bloated running time. All 23 awards were presented live this year after Academy management reversed the decision not to create a shorter program following strong opposition from members of the group.
The increased focus on behind-the-scenes aspects of filmmaking was undoubtedly appreciated by the Dolby Theatre’s audience, despite the fact that it lengthened the performance. With many categories still to be decided, the show was entering its third hour when Kimmel joked that the hour that had been lost to daylight savings time had been added back into the broadcast.
This year’s Oscars gave exhibitors some encouragement at a time when they are struggling to get back to how they were before the pandemic. Netflix’s World War I drama “All Quiet on the Western Front” only managed to land one of the top 10 best picture spots this year, following last year’s historic best picture victory for Apple’s “CODA,” the first for a streaming service. “.
The movie won four Oscars for its cinematography, international feature, production design, and score; this was a noteworthy performance that spoke to the academy’s recent expansion to more than 10,000 members and its increasingly international makeup. Volker Bertelmann, the film’s composer, was heard saying, “This is not an American academy anymore,” as he accepted the award. “.
As in previous years, the show highlighted the diversity of its nominees, and Kimmel gave a special shout-out to two Black actresses, “Woman King” star Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler of “Till,” who many felt had been overlooked. The success of “Everything Everywhere” marked a high point for Asian representation at the Oscars, despite the fact that no Black actors were among this year’s acting award winners. Ruth E. Carter won an Oscar for her work on “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which was a movie. Carter became the first Black woman to receive two Oscars.
Sarah Polley won the award for best adapted screenplay for her drama “Women Talking,” which centers on a group of women in a segregated religious community who band together against their sexual abusers, despite the fact that there were no female directors nominated this year. “I want to thank the academy for not being mortally offended by the words ‘women’ and ‘talking’ so close together like that,” Polley said upon receiving the honor.
The audience of Hollywood greats in the Dolby seemed ready to forget its problems and self-soothe for the evening, perhaps in spite of all the challenges the business and the Oscars themselves have faced in recent years.
In keeping with this, Kimmel once brought out what he claimed to be Jenny, the donkey from the movie “The Banshees of Inisherin,” in the middle of the program. “.
He informed the audience that Jenny was not only an actor but also a trained emotional support animal. Feel free to approach her and hug her. “.
According to Kerry Condon, who was nominated for best supporting actress in “Banshees,” the donkey in the movie was not the real thing. All the way from Ireland?” Condon asked The Times. Sure, why not?
Nevertheless, that is Hollywood.
