LOS ANGELES - In the late 1960s, young cineastes shook up a moribund film industry by delivering idiosyncratic, startlingly original work. The moment became known as New Hollywood.
When film historians look back at the 95th Academy Awards, they may mark it as the start of a new New Hollywood.
Voters honoured A24’s head-twisting, sex toy-brandishing, TikTok-era Everything Everywhere All At Once with the Oscar for best picture – along with six others – while also naming Netflix’s German-language war epic All Quiet On The Western Front the winner in four technical categories.
The Daniels, the young filmmaking duo behind the racially diverse Everything Everywhere All At Once, won Oscars for their original screenplay and directing.
The Daniels is an oh-so-cool sobriquet for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. They are both 35.
The film, which received a field-leading 11 nominations, also won Oscars for film editing, best actress and best supporting actor and actress, with Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis honoured for their performances.
“Ladies, don’t let anybody ever tell you that you are ever past your prime,” Yeoh, 60, said when accepting the best actress Oscar. “Never give up.” She was the first Asian woman to receive the award.
Quan’s win provided the Academy Awards with a hall-of-fame comeback story: After early success in movies like The Goonies (1985) and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984), his acting career grew so cold that he turned to stunt work.
“Dreams are something you have to believe in,” Quan, 51, said as tears streamed down his face and A-list attendees gave him a standing ovation. “I almost gave up on mine. To everyone out there, please keep your dreams alive.”
Curtis, 64, was also in tears by the time she reached the fiery conclusion of her acceptance speech.
“To all of the people who have supported the genre movies that I have made for all these years,” she said, “the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, we just won an Oscar together!”
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spread nominations remarkably far and wide this year.
Two blockbuster sequels, Avatar: The Way Of Water and Top Gun: Maverick, made the best picture cut. So did the little-seen art films Triangle Of Sadness, Women Talking and Tar. Voters also made room for a musical (Elvis) and a memory piece (The Fabelmans).
In some ways, spreading nominations widely reflected the jumbled state of Hollywood.
No one in the movie capital seems to know which end is up, with streaming services like Netflix hot then not, and studios unsure about how many films to release in theatres and whether anything but superheroes, sequels and horror stories can succeed.
Over the weekend, Scream VI was the top movie at the North American box office, with an estimated US$44.5 million in ticket sales.
First-time nominees filled 16 of the 20 acting slots, with new stars like Austin Butler (Elvis), Barry Keoghan (The Banshees Of Inisherin), Brian Tyree Henry (Causeway), Paul Mescal (Aftersun) and Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once) honoured for breakthrough roles.
But first-time acting nominations also went to Hollywood stalwarts like Curtis, Yeoh and Brendan Fraser. To some degree, the inclusion of Quan, Curtis, Fraser and Yeoh was seen as redemption for Hollywood: All had somehow been cast to the side at some point over their careers.
An overcome Fraser, who won the Oscar for best actor for his performance as an obese professor in The Whale, thanked Darren Aronofsky, the film’s director, “for throwing me a creative lifeline”.
The academy was also trying to balance old and new in the Oscars ceremony itself.
The academy’s chief executive had promised a return to the polished, glamorous Oscar ceremonies of the past to recover from last year’s chaotic telecast, when an angry Will Smith walked onstage and slapped Chris Rock.
In a change from last year, when eight categories were scuttled to a non-televised portion, all 23 Oscars were handed out live on air.
Jimmy Kimmel arrived on the Oscars stage by parachute, moments after a pair of Top Gun-style fighter jets flew over the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles at 345 mph, and breezed through a self-assured monologue that left the A-listers seated before him cheering in support.
He teased director Steven Spielberg – gently – for his lack of recreational drug use and Fraser and Quan for once appearing together in Encino Man (1992). It was the kind of affable ribbing that once made Billy Crystal the king of the Oscar emcee’s.
“And if any of you get offended by a joke and decide you want to come up here and get jiggy with it? It’s not going to be easy,” Kimmel said, addressing last year’s slap without directly mentioning Smith.
He then joked that people like Michael B. Jordan, the Creed star, and Pedro Pascal, who plays the title role in The Mandalorian, were prepared to intervene.
“Seriously, the academy has a crisis team in place,” Kimmel said. “If anything unpredictable or violent happens during the ceremony, just do what you did last year – nothing. Maybe even give the assailant a hug.”
As expected, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio received the Oscar for best animated feature, and Navalny was honoured as best documentary. Less anticipated was Ruth Carter’s win for her Black Panther: Wakanda Forever costume design.
Most awards handicappers had predicted victory for the Elvis costume designer Catherine Martin. Carter also won for Black Panther in 2019. NYTIMES
2023 Oscars Winners
Best Picture
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Best Actress
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All At Once
Best Actor
Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Best Director
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All At Once
Editing
Everything Everywhere All At Once (Paul Rogers)
Adapted Screenplay
Women Talking (Sarah Polley)
Original Song
Naatu Naatu, by M.M. Keeravaani and Chandrabose (RRR)
Original Score
All Quiet On The Western Front (Volker Bertelmann)
Original Screenplay
Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)
Animated Short
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse
Costume Design
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ruth Carter)
Makeup and Hairstyling
The Whale”(Adrien Morot, Judy Chin and Annemarie Bradley)
Cinematography
All Quiet On The Western Front (James Friend)
Live-Action Short
An Irish Goodbye
Visual Effects
Avatar: The Way Of Water (Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett)
International Feature
All Quiet On The Western Front, Germany
Sound
Top Gun: Maverick (Mark Weingarten, James Mather, Al Nelson, Chris Burdon and Mark Taylor)
Production Design
All Quiet On The Western Front (Christian M. Goldbeck and Ernestine Hipper)
Documentary Feature
Navalny
Documentary Short
The Elephant Whisperers
Best Supporting Actor
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All At Once
Best Supporting Actress
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All At Once
Animated Feature
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
