Nice having Conan again. He brought back the old Billy Crystal "in the movies" schtick for the opener, he had several good barbs, the jabs at the future of the Oscars with YouTube ads and the potential threat of Mr. Beast as a host were effective, and he had a nice balance of goofy and seriousness, with little to no smug. The only misfire was the concluding skit of him becoming "host for life" only to die via air poisoning and having his body burned. While wacky, it was just a little too grim and dark to end the ceremony on. Apparently, it may have been a reference to One Battle After Another but still, a bizarre coda.
Having Matt Berry as the announcer was a nice touch.
15-9 in my Oscar predictions. Mainly got tripped up on the obvious winners (seriously, I went with F1 over Avatar in Best Visual Effects?!) and forgetting that the Academy absolutely loves Guillermo del Toro.
I'll get around to watching One Battle After Another some day. At least I can find comfort in the fact that the PTA fans can finally shut up about how amazing and great and stupendous he is and how the Academy never showed him love. He personally walked with three last night and his film got the most awards with six. You can stop now.
Glad that Sinners got four awards and made history with its Best Cinematography win. Still stinks that Delroy Lindo didn't win.
Michael B. Jordan. Oscar winner in acting. Still crazy that it actually happened.
So glad Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress. It's so great when one of your favorite underrated actors finally get their moment to shine and get an Oscar for it.
I called it. Marty Supreme. Zero wins. A part of me is actually kinda happy that it lost.
Liked the "I Lied To You" performance but no lie, the live-staging of the "piercing the veil" loses a lot of the magic, plus it's so confusing to anyone who hasn't seen it.
The presentation of the newest award, Best Casting, unfortunately brought back the model of having five actors telling the nominees how great they are. Even with the nice fact that three of the five presenters were actors who famously got snubbed (Paltrow, Mescal, Infiniti) and that they were saying all the fluff to a regular Hollywood worker instead of another actor, it again slowed things down, way down. Even Francine Maisler was getting tired of it all before shockingly losing to Cassandra Kulukundis.
We saw another tie with Best Live Action Short. Both filmmakers had good speeches, particularly the Two People Exchanging Saliva crew, who also refused to be played off by the orchestra.
Kieran Culkin saved the Sean Penn win, audio drop-out, and Penn no-show by basically calling out his disappearing act and infamous bad boy behavior.
The In Memoriam did kinda have to be long, what with the major passings of Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford. However, it was hampered by visual/audio problems and many major snubs. Boo on the Academy for leaving out Brigitte Bardot, Bud Cort, and Hulk Hogan. Yeah, you might question that last one but Hogan starred in many movies and had a bigger impact than say T.K. Carter, and I like T.K. Carter.
Pedro Pascal made so many worst-dressed lists what with his decision to go suit jacket-less and have a giant ugly flower pined to his left breast.
Those audience members who went crazy for the documentary mentions and awards were a nice surprise.
Good skit: the Bridesmaids reunion and the secret messages they got from the audience.
Bad skit: the Pullmans, Bill and Lewis, trying to get through a weird, uncomfortable bit about who's better.
No back-to-back wins for Brazil in Best International Feature. Sentimental Value needed to get something.
Everything with "Golden", save for the actual singers and presentation, was just disappointing. After all the controversy of who gets to perform during the show and what the actual audience would want to see, they come out and don't do the full song. And then when it won Best Song, the show producers finally had enough of "long" acceptance speeches and played the songwriters off with no chance of continuing.
And that's all I have to say. See you all next year!
