In a sense you could say that it was in the right old days. Oscar evening, whether the broadcast is great or so-so-way (I am almost unable to find the Oscars downright badly-I am too much of an entertainment junkie), you always gave the feeling that Hollywood stood in the middle of the world. The Oscars were about the popularity of the quality meeting, about a kind of middle-of-the-road solid soil and at times artistic fearlessness. They were a dream of how Hollywood wanted to be seen, a referendum about the state of the film business. The image that the industry had projected in itself always came through loud and clear.
That was certainly the case this year, as ‘Anora’, the epic comedy by Sean Baker about a sex worker who makes a quick job to marry a Russian Oligarch’s son, won five of the six Oscars for which it was nominated, in what came down on a great sweep. What felt new and different is that in so decisively an independent film anointing that the vast majority of those who watched the broadcast had never seen the Oscars, the spirit of the Independent Film Awards Duplicated, sealed what would quickly become their new identity as a Boetiekprijs.
The broadcast itself was a fast and elegantly performed piece of Media -StageCraft, successful in more ways than not. It was richly designed and evicted from dead places, and the winners were given the opportunity to reveal who they were, which is really the heart of the show. The evening was opened in high with a fanfare of ‘Wicked’, as Ariana Grande, in a dress that looked like a Schiahararelli-designed accessory for Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers, sang ‘somewhere about the rainbow’, and was then accompanied by Cynthia Erivo had that nobody’s gravity ‘.
Toen kwam Conan O’Brien naar buiten, en hoewel ik beken dat zijn merk meta-cynisme nooit mijn beker van talkshow-japery is geweest, schommelde hij absoluut zijn debuut als een gastheer, de perfecte lijn tussen zuur en genegenheid, of hij ribbing was “de Brutalist” (“Ik wilde niet dat het was, en een beetje in de knop, of observeren dat “Bob Dylan hier vanavond wilde zijn, maar niet zo bad. “This was Conan on his Acerbic Best, giving Jimmy Kimmel a run for his money. He came in a hilarious sparring competition with Adam Sandler, sitting in the audience in his video-playing guys, and even did a fake musical song,” I Wall Will Wasten Waste “, that an old Bill-Productien, that was a parody of the Bille-Productien, that the old Billy Products” evoked.
The show had many good things: the appearance of Mick Jagger to present the best song prize, the Sandworm Puppet -joke (at least the first), Conan’s fake commercial for “cinemastreams” (a way to stream a film for a blitzed young people on a large screen! make a big screen. There were a few non-so-good things, such as the forgetful James Bond-Meerbeton (007 assembly, variety show dances, three songs) and the second sandworm joke.
But the staging of the prizes itself made use of the best innovations of recent years to make each category feel meaningful. Kieran Culkin, who won the best supporting actor for ‘A Real Pain’, let the ball roll by raising the ante on the reproducing bet he had made with his wife in his Emmy Acceptance speech. (Now that he has won an Oscar, he wants one fourth Jochie.) For a while it seemed that there would be a Spread-the-Richness dimension for the prizes. But the first tip that ‘Anora’, after winning the best original scenario, would get a big night when Sean Baker, the celebrated writer-director of the film, won Best Editing (Baker edited his own films).
While “Anora” continued to win, you could see that the audience in the Dolby Theater was ecstatic, even when people at home probably said things like: “So what is that film, right?” There were various speeches of moving import, such as the plea for communion in the Middle East of the Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers team who directed the best documentary winner, “No Other Land”, or best actor winner Adrien’s Peiness-Ploedooi, after he hadn’t cut the music). “
Is it wrong to choose quality over popularity? Theoretical, no. You could of course say that it is probably the right thing to do. But by effectively rejecting the mainstream Hollywood, even when it enjoyed the conventional attributes, the Oscars from 2025 gave a message that was remarkably different from the sweeps of yesteryear. The image of the industry that had projected the show was that of more dominated than before by the new international voice block. Dit was een soort filmmaak die geen ruimte zou hebben voor potentiële publiekelijke winnaars als Demi Moore, voor haar geïnspireerde werk in “The Substance”, of Timothée Chalamet, die afgezien van het briljant was van Bob Dylan als Bob Dylan gaf wat aantoonbaar de enige uitvoering is van een acteur van een acteur van een acteur van een acteur dit jaar die een soort nationale gesprek dreef. I think Chalamet would have easily won if this were the Oscars from ten years ago. But Brody’s tough, tormented version in ‘The Brutalist,’ as the film itself, is a kind of running significant of artistic purity. And that, in front and adversity, is what now rules the Oscars.