The Academy should take a bow this morning for bringing back the Oscars, restoring them to their former glory in every way possible, from Jimmy Kimmel’s (mostly) decent job hosting, to the dance numbers — especially the showstopper, I’m Just Ken — to the quick pace of the entire night. The big broadcast will likely see a major ratings bounce, I predict. This year, the movie that won was actually a movie that millions of people saw. That means, if history is any indication, lots of people will have tuned in to see how their favorites fared.

The Good

Oppenheimer made its own unique history last night, even if its ultimate number of wins tied with last year’s Everything Everywhere All At Once. In both eras of the expanded ballot (pre-1943, and post-2008) the most Oscars any film has ever won was Gone with the Wind with 8, just one more than Oppenheimer won last night.

Yes, Pacino bungled through his presentation of Best Picture, but it was deeply satisfying to see Christopher Nolan pick up well-deserved Oscars at long last. This is what the Oscars were made for, recognizing the highest achievement in film. When they deviate from that one job they have, they falter in their prime directive. The honor of winning an Oscar should raise the bar for all concerned rather than merely making the Academy members look good or feel good. More on that in a minute.

Nolan’s tireless producer and wife, Emma Thomas, was also finally awarded a much-deserved Oscar. Oppenheimer won Picture, Director, Actor Supporting Actor — a feat not accomplished since 1959’s Ben-Hur. You can see the difference between having only five nominees for Best Picture in a sweep — Ben-Hur won 11, and Oppenheimer won 7.

The song that should have won the Oscar had the best performance of the night:

I’m Just Ken was the song of the year, just like Ryan Gosling’s Ken was the best thing about Barbie the movie. I guess in the end the voters didn’t have the stones to give out the one award that pays homage to the guy in a movie revolving around girls, so they gave it to the grammy-winning woman who sings about being a woman. Billie Eilish thus becomes the first person as young as age 22 to win two Oscars. Fine, but I’m Just Ken was robbed. Sorry, but it was.

Anyway, in case you were wondering what the inspiration was:

Field of Dreams

John Mulaney’s really hilarious joke leading into Best Sound was the best comedy bit of the night. He upstaged the host, John Cena, and everyone else. It is wild unwieldy original humor unlike anything we’ve seen at the Oscars. Note to the Academy, if you’re not going to hire Ricky Gervais (and you should), then this guy is your next best option. Kimmel was fine but he’s not really a comedian. He’s more of an activist whose general desire is to be seen as a good human being.  And that never works for optimal comedy.

This was pure genius:

The upbeat tone of the show

It’s been a while since the Academy prioritized its audience instead of turning it into what Richard Rushfield once called a “group therapy session.” They did that right this year. It was nice to be able to relax and not to hear one agonizing self-righteous speech after another. They gave us a decent enough night’s entertainment.

The opening film montage and the Best Picture contenders

The more people who promenade onstage to take a stab at witty banter to explain movies and introduce montages, the more of a slog it can be for modern audiences who’ve grown accustomed to the wham-bam insta-scrolls of TikTok. The producers of this year’s glamour pageant did a good job just showing them. We can figure the rest of it out on our own. Well, everyone except my mother. She was upset that they didn’t read all 10 Best Picture contenders. She told me she didn’t even know what was nominated. Then she went into a long monologue about how she only likes the “foreign” movies, and not anything coming out f Hollywood, and she was mad that she never got to see or hear all the titles.

Either way, we all love montages, so it was nice to see the show open that way.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Speech

People tune in to the Oscars to see the dreams come true. That’s the only reason most people watch. Yes, it’s to see the beautiful people parade around in their finery, but it’s also witness once again the familiar Cinderella story — and these days those are too few and too far between. Nobody is looking for a dry exercise on “who is the most deserved,” except Film Twitter nerds. It’s really about the happy ending, Cinderella at the ball. And when it hits that mark exactly right, it can be glorious for the viewers at home. Only one speech did that last night:

In this case, Randolph both deserved to win and gave a moving speech. Most people in the dark still believe in the magic of the dream factory, even if too many in Hollywood no longer believe in it. That’s the role these awards have always played in our lives — to give us something extraordinary, to make us feel better for one night out of our otherwise mundane or miserable lives.

The Internationalizing of the Oscars

Two of the Best Picture contenders came from the Cannes Film Festival but I think that’s largely due to the weakness of the American film industry overall — complete and total collapse, if you want to know the truth. The voters had to draw from other countries to fill the ten slots with consistent quality, which I believe is why the Academy should, to save the American film industry, shrink the Best Picture race down to five.

If I might make an alternate suggestion, how about an International Academy Awards that is separate from the Oscars? Imagine how great that could be with all of the categories on display for films from around the globe, instead of just five in the “International Feature” category. I think that could be a great way to satisfy both desires.

Most readers here and people in general don’t agree with me. We have a lot of international readers and they love the Oscars so the two things together is a perfect world. The problem is that the industry here is what keeps movie theaters alive, to create a thriving film economy that enables the making of movies in the first place. This country can’t lose its film industry. We just have to compete harder, make better movies, tell better stories, evolve within rather that escape out of the mess.

That’s how I see it, but it’s certainly not bad to have more international films in play.

The Bad

I’m not sure whose face haunted me more last night – Emma Stone’s or Lily Gladstone’s. It was obvious that the Academy had planned on Lily Gladstone winning. Everyone was anticipating that Cinderella moment. Though most of us had a gut feeling that it could tip either way, the Oscar eventually went to Emma Stone, The look on her face said it all. She didn’t want to win that Oscar. She wanted Lily Gladstone to win, like everyone else in the Dolby. My heart went out to her. (And I hated that her zipper broke.)

People sometimes say to me, “but you’re anti-woke, how can you want Lily Gladstone to win just to make a historic statement”? First off, I don’t think choosing Gladstone is necessarily “woke,” though others do see it that way. I bever did. The first rule of Oscarwatching is to not let your heart get involved because once it does, you’re done for. My heart got involved.

It wasn’t just these kids:

It wasn’t just Lily Gladstone’s yearbook photo. It’s because she had the better Oscar story. She was the Cinderella at the ball and that’s sort of memorable moment that millions of people had tuned in to see.

Of course, maybe Lily Gladstone will win an Oscar someday. Or I should say, maybe someone will write the right role for Lily Gladstone — the kind of role vaults her once again to the Oscars. This year’s awards run was, overall, a net positive for her so there’s that. But if she only ever gets roles that are defined by her identity, she may never get the kind of multi-faceted roles that win Oscars.

I get annoyed that people seem to think it was only the “making history” factor that led to Lily’s win at the SAG Awards. For me, it wasn’t that at all — though I do feel ongoing rage that so many people can be such hypocrites. They do all the virtue signaling in the world with their lawn signs and their land acknowledgments, but when it gets right down to it, just two non-white actresses have won in 96 years. If that is who you really are, then don’t pretend to be anything else.

Ironically, Emma Stone’s performance in The Curse is every bit as brilliant as her portrayal of Bella Baxter in Poor Things — and in that brilliant series she plays a woman exactly like those who just gave her the Oscar.

I felt bad for both of the talented actresses. They were caught up in something that seemed far more important from the perspective of Lily Gladstone — a win for her is the kind of win that brings could the house to tears and makes headlines the next day. Yes, ordinarily, I would joke about this being “the rapture,” but I guess in this case, I didn’t personally feel excited about Emma Stone winning a second Oscar. Just like I didn’t feel excited about Billie Eilish winning a second Oscar where Diane Warren has been nominated 15 times. Lots of people on this site and on Film Twitter and in the Academy loved Poor Things and were happy to see it win four Oscars last night. I just wasn’t one of them.

Let’s face it, the Academy is filled with heterosexual boomer dudes. I wish I’d remembered that heading into my own predictions. They love their naked women having sex. It doesn’t make them perverts. They can’t help it. Men can be forgiven for being obsessed with sex because their pursuit of sexual conquest is what propagates the species. In every species. What I didn’t like about Poor Things was that they projected their biology onto Emma Stone and it didn’t ring true to me. But there was much to love about the movie.

Emma Stone winning isn’t bad. It was just uncomfortable and sad for many of us. That’s the reality. We can pretend otherwise, you can go on and on about “the material” and “wokeness” and the role of Mollie “was really a supporting part” (it wasn’t). But none of that matters. Human beings, by nature, want to experience a happy ending, and everyone I know was looking forward to it. That’s not Emma Stone’s fault. I believe she was looking forward to it, too.

The Ugly

Jimmy Kimmel was overtly played by Trump. And while people in Trump World will find this hilarious, I thought it was self-sabotage by him by way of the Oscars. He had to get in a dig at Trump after Trump tweeted about him on a social media platform that no one in that room would ever go near. And in so doing, Kimmel was massively trolled in the way that only Trump can.

To me, though, all it did was undo all the goodwill the Oscars had built with the majority, the viewers who tuned in with probably record numbers to watch the Oscars. Kimmel’s decision to mock the guy that millions admire showed them that no, sorry, you’re still not invited to OUR party, just like you’re not invited to our culture or our country. It’s gross. The applause after Kimmel’s joke about Trump being “up past his jail time” was like the applause at the State of the Union — and just like that, we were dragged back into our Cold Civil War. If Kimmel can’t let go of this attitude, then ABC should let him and his attitude both go.

The Zone of Oscar

One of the biggest stories from the show was Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech when The Zone of Interest won Best International Film. He pissed off more people than Kimmel ever could by drawing the comparison of Israel’s treatment of Gaza to the Nazis, as “the banality of evil.” But what’s happening in Gaza can’t be turned into something it’s not just because people use words like “genocide.” Killing people because of who they are and attempting to wipe them out because of who they are is what has been happening to the Jewish people for thousands of years now, and what happened during the Holocaust.

War, even the kind of assault Israel has waged on Gaza after the attacks on October 7th, is still war, not the “banality of evil.” The “banality” of it is when people go about their lives while dehumanizing and exterminating undesirables from their comfortable utopia. I could make a pretty good argument that this is what I’ve watched happen in this country, how half of the people here have been treated by the more powerful side, but even that would an insult to what the Jews suffered in the Holocaust. These are not the same things.

https://youtu.be/IbV5p9Lv4ZQ?si=eLYAVo6otd36HlTm

If I thought that was the statement Jonathan Glazer was trying to make with The Zone of Interest I would not have seen it as a great film. The film itself tells the truth about what happens when a utopian society must become fascist or totalitarian to cleanse itself of people they don’t like.

That said, I am not saying people should not criticize Israel. But it is wrong to say the Israelis are anything like the Nazis.

All in all, though, the Oscars have done well for themselves this year. I might even say they’re back.