Oscar season is over at last! Tonight the 97th Academy Awards were aired live on ABC and streamed live on Hulu, once again held at ye olde Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and hosted for the very first time by beloved funnyman Conan O’Brien. This year’s soiree clocked in at 229 minutes, twenty minutes longer than last year’s and fifteen longer than The Brutalist with intermission. O’Brien was his usual uproarious self, taking more potshots at himself than at anyone or anything else and (mostly) refraining from hot-button politics. Anyone who needs more political debate can go overdose on any given social app anyway. Most such netizens generally avoid the Oscars anyway, or spend the evening replying to Oscars fans with such scintillating pearls of Oscar Wilde brilliance as “Who cares.”

In all, the field welcomed 50 nominees across 23 categories, not counting the extra Oscars they dropped from the ceremony years ago and henceforth receive only the barest on-air lip service. This year’s appendix of adjunct-award recipients:

• Honorary Oscars to casting director Juliet Taylor, who helped facilitate ensemble chemistry for hundreds of films; and to the late Quincy Jones, who in fact was honored during the telecast after all because he was that huge.
• The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, longtime producers of the James Bond franchise who recently sold out to Amazon.
• The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to screenwriter and sometimes director Richard Curtis (Love, Actually; Four Weddings and a Funeral; the first two Bridget Joneses), co-founder of the UK charity Comic Relief, best known as the “Red Nose Day” people.
• The multiple winners of this year’s Sci-Tech awards, such as the developers of a new kind of “naked burn gel” that lets filmmakers set people on fire better. Their annual dinner, usually hosted by an up-‘n’-coming young actress, has been postponed all the way out to April 29th.

The main awards were divided amongst the following works, all of which we’ve previously reviewed here on MCC. This was yet another year in which the voting body of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists decided to divide most of the awards almost evenly among the nominees, like schoolteachers making sure every student gets roughly the same number of valentines. Surprisingly, the year’s biggest winner was a proudly stubborn indie and not one of the major studios’ big-budget extravaganzas or even their mid-budget Oscar-chasing dramas:

• Anora: 5 – Actress (Mikey Madison), Director (Sean Baker), Original Screenplay (also Sean Baker), Editor (once again, Sean Baker), Picture (you guessed it: Sean Baker! And two other folks)
• The Brutalist: 3 – Actor (Adrien Brody), Cinematography, Original Score
• Dune: Part Two: 2 – Visual Effects, Sound
• Emilia Perez: 2 – Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldana), Original Song (“El Mal”)
• Wicked: 2 – Costume Design, Production Design
• Conclave: Adapted Screenplay
• Flow: Animated Feature
• I’m Not a Robot: Live-Action Short Film
• I’m Still Here: International Feature
• In the Shadow of the Cypress: Animated Short Film
• No Other Land: Documentary Feature
• The Only Girl in the Orchestra: Documentary Short Subject
• A Real Pain: Supporting Actor (Kieran Culkin)
• The Substance: Makeup and Hairstyling

Nominees in the major categories that walked away empty-handed: The Apprentice, A Complete Unknown, Nickel Boys, September 5, Sing Sing.

We pause here respectfully to acknowledge the only part my wife Anne ever cares to watch, the annual In Memoriam segment. ABC hates whenever folks embed that annual video, so please enjoy this direct link. In light of the horrible week we all just had, this year’s edition is prefaced with a special tribute to Gene Hackman from Morgan Freeman, who worked with him in Unforgiven and Under Suspicion. The montage itself, which was accompanied by “The Lacrymosa” from Mozart’s Requiem, sped through the decedents a tad quickly, but at least they didn’t repeat last year’s “And the Rest” wall of unpictured honorable mentions.

Per MCC tradition, please enjoy my wife Anne’s annual Roll Call of the Snubbed Dead — actors who died within the past twelve months with films on their resumés and weren’t covered in this year’s In Memoriam montage. Social media rattled off a few omissions last night as well. For a show humbly introduced to us as a celebration of Hollywood’s “little people”, they sure did skimp on the character actors, the TV actors who did at least a few noteworthy films, and those whose most notable films were less “respectable” (for lack of a better term, or one less ironic in light of Anora‘s celebrated objective of redefining that very term). Maybe pageant producers don’t have time for them — especially those who weren’t AMPAS members, so screw them, I guess — but we do. [UPDATED SIX TIMES NOW, most recently 3/3/2025 at 4:57 p.m. Eastern.]

• Jim Abrahams (director — Airplane!, The Naked Gun, Hot Shots!)
• Erich Anderson (Missing in Action, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter)
• Tom Bower (Die Hard 2, Nixon)
• Bill Byrge (five of Jim Varney’s Ernest movies)
• Joe Camp (creator of Benji, director of eight of his films!)
• Jeannette Charles (the Queen Elizabeth II impersonator in The Naked Gun, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, et al.)
• Diane Delano (The Ladykillers, 2006’s The Wicker Man remake)
• Alain Delon (Godard’s Breathless, among others)
• Shannen Doherty (Heathers, Mallrats)
• Marianne Faithfull (Ghost Story, Marie Antoinette)
• Richard Foronjy (Repo Man, Midnight Run)
• Barbra Fuller (The Red Menace, Flame of Youth)
• Mitzi Gaynor (South Pacific, There’s No Business Like Show Business)
• Kathryn Grant Crosby (Anatomy of a Murder, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad)
• Bernard Hill (Titanic, The Return of the King)
• Earl Holliman (Giant, a Golden Globe winner for 1956’s The Rainmaker)
• Olivia Hussey (Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet, Death on the Nile)
• Linda Lavin (Being the Ricardos, The Intern)
• Tony Lo Bianco (The French Connection, F.I.S.T.)
• Angus MacInness (Strange Brew, Star Wars‘ Gold Leader)
• Elizabeth McCrae (The Conversation, The Incredible Mr. Limpet)
• Martin Mull (Clue, Mr. Mom)
• Ken Page (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Dreamgirls)
• Janis Paige (Of Human Bondage, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies)
• Marisa Paredes (All About My Mother, The Devil’s Backbone)
• Nicholas Pryor (Risky Business, Less Than Zero)
• Alan Rachins (Showgirls, the ’97 Leave It to Beaver film reboot)
• Tony Roberts (Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters)
• Barbara Rush (The Young Philadelphians, It Came from Outer Space)
• James B. Sikking (Fever Pitch, Soul Man)
• O.J. Simpson (The Naked Gun trilogy, The Towering Inferno) (yeah, I know, but still)
• Morgan Spurlock (documentarian: Super-Size Me, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?)
• Tony Todd (Candyman, Final Destination)
• Michelle Trachtenberg (Harriet the Spy, Inspector Gadget)
• Bob Uecker (the Major League trilogy)
• Patti Yasutake (an Independent Spirit Award nominee for The Wash, Star Trek: Generations)

Enclosed below are highlights from the notes I took along the way, buried here exclusively due to my retirement from live-tweeting. I’m usually fine with watching on ABC (Indianapolis affiliate WRTV 6!), but this year decided to give the Hulu stream a try. This is not a rundown of every single award handed out or every name of every deserving person. It’s just the tidbits that felt worth sharing or keeping. All stamps are Eastern time.

7:01: The ceremony began nearly on time by my count. As expected, first up is a tribute to Los Angeles in the wake of the devastating wildfires earlier this year. A montage of L.A.-set films concludes with the final seconds of La La Land‘s “Another Day of Sun” with the message “WE ❤ LA" superimposed in the sky above the 405. Then comes a medley of songs from the land of Oz: Ariana Grande covering "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", her Wicked costar Cynthia Erivo resurrecting “Home” from The Wiz; and the two of them united for, of course, “Defying Gravity”.

7:10 After a brief pre-taped send-up of The Substance (rather than all ten Best Picture nominees, as was once the tradition), Conan is introduced as a “four-time Oscar viewer” and gets down to monologue — occasionally awkward as he jerks from one film-joke to the next, but he soon finds his footing. Wicked is summed up as the film for Wizard of Oz fans who asked, “Sure, but where did all the minor characters go to college?” He confirms no A.I. was used tonight (“We use child labor. Hey, they’re still people!”), pokes fun at Timothee Chalamet’s banana-yellow suit (“You will not get hit on your bike tonight”), sends a shout-out to the guy Chalamet just played in that biopic (“Bob Dylan wanted to be here tonight, but not that badly”), and threatens everyone if their acceptance speeches drone on too long, “We’ll cut to John Lithgow — not angry, but slightly disappointed.”

7:22: Conan also insists all attendees must be “properly dressed”. The camera cuts to special guest Adam Sandler out in the audience, in a hoodie and shorts. Harsh words are exchanged and Sandler mock-storms out of the auditorium, shouting to everyone where they can come meet him for some pickup basketball at midnight.

7:24: Conan says a few serious words about the L.A. wildfires, which of course are still on the minds of many. He acknowledges the parade of A-listers and rich folks being congratulated is “seemingly absurd”, but that this entire spectacle is also about all the other thousands of people who work on these films — the crews, the lower-rung categories, in general the working class of the Hollywood economy.

7:26: Conan concludes with his only musical number, a time-wasting musical number called “I Won’t waste Your Time” with a herd of dancers, a Dune sandworm cosplayer feigning “Chopsticks” on a piano, and a dancing Deadpool.

7:28: Last year’s Best Supporting Actor winner Robert Downey Jr. gives lengthy rapid-fire kudos to each of this year’s nominees, with a special acknowledgment to The Apprentice‘s Jeremy Strong, whom he recalls noticing sleeping on the bleachers outside the Oscars theater way back when Downey was nominated for Chaplin. Strong tries really hard not to react. But the winner is A Real Pain‘s obvious standout Kieran Culkin, whose speech contains two F-bombs, is muted for several extra seconds (even on Hulu, which apparently was just carrying ABC’s direct feed), and is very nearly the only person requiring any censoring tonight. His motormouth ramble concludes with tales of the times his wife promised them they could have more kids if he keeps bringing home awards, and he might just hold her to that.

7:34: Our first official sighting of this year’s Oscars announcer, Parks and Rec‘s own Nick Offerman.

7:39: Andrew Garfield and Goldie Hawn present Best Animated Feature, but not till after a few minutes of Garfield gushing about how his late mom absolutely loved Hawn’s work. This goes on for so long that I wondered if he was about to hand her an Honorary Oscar. After a time, Flow becomes the first Latvian Academy Award winner — a wondrously micro-budgeted animal adventure whose central metaphor (“We’re all in the same boat”) rings too true.

7:43: Garfield and Hawn continue the artists’ celebration with the winning Animated Short In the Shadow of the Cypress. Iranian animators Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi are overwhelmed, almost out of breath, and surprised to be in the house: their visas were only just approved Saturday, and their plane landed in L.A. three hours before the ceremony began. English is not their first language, so they have a pre-written speech on one phone. Sohani begins reading it just fine but with a few mild stumbles; Molayemi takes the phone from her, decides to start over and reads the entire speech himself with virtually the same amount of stumbling. From inspiring to awkward in the space of two minutes, apropos of their short.

7:50: A quick “The Oscars will return!” check-in during a commercial break treats us to the quick sight gag of Conan with a teacher’s pointer and a map of Europe, giving a geography lesson to Dancing Deadpool.

7:52: After Latvia’s win, Conan announces, “Ball’s in your court, Estonia!” then greets some international viewers in their own language — Spanish, Hindi, and Chinese (the latter version is an altered message begging for money and work). Then five presenters take the stage for Best Costume Design, one costar from each nominee — Lily Rose Depp, Elle Fanning, Connie Nielsen, John Lithgow, and Bowen Yang. (Yang, in his flamboyant Wicked costume, is ticked that only he wore a costume. Fanning calls his choice “cringe”; Lithgow adds, “Cringe, yes, that’s what I was going to say.”) Each presenter is allowed to give lengthy kudos to their respective costumer, which implies every category on its tier will receive the same extended courtesy and the ceremony might run till after midnight. Among the commentaries, Lithgow is awed at how Conclave‘s Lisy Christl had “300 pages of notes. But then Oscar history is made when Wicked‘s Paul Tazewell (who also handled Spielberg’s West Side Story) becomes the first Black man ever to win the category. Out in the audience, Cynthia Erivo bolts up first to lead the standing ovation.

8:01: From the Department of Private In-Jokes, Offerman announces the next presenter after the break will be his old castmate “Amy Po-Eller”.

8:05 Conan congratulates Tazewell on his win and announces, “Ball’s in your court, Estonia!” he and Offerman then proceed to comedy-sparring for a bit.

8:07: Amy Poehler hands Best Original Screenplay to Anora‘s Sean Baker, who thanks the cast (You elevated everything I wrote”) and, in keeping with the titular heroine’s job, insists he shares the award with “the sex workers community”, which might also be an Oscar first.

8:20: Presenting for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Scarlett Johansson escorts elderly delight June Squibb, who brags, “I’m actually being played by Bill Skarsgard right now!” Trying to keep up, Johansson says she’s being played by Andy Serkis.

8:25: A salute to the aforementioned Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson and the general existence of the James Bond IP features an intro from Die Another Day costar Halle Berry, a time-wasting dance number starring The Substance‘s Margaret Qualley and an army of dancers, and a medley of Bond themes. Lisa from Blackpink does “Live and Let Die” better than Wings; Doja Cat doesn’t quite nail “Diamonds Are Forever”, and Raye is no Adele with “Skyfall”. On the bright side, as of tonight I can now say I’ve heard of Raye after some hasty Googling.

8:35: Not actually of the ceremony, but the commercial break features the new trailer for Andor season 2, set to the rune of Steve Earle’s banger “The Revolution Starts Now“. Remember when Earle was in a few episodes of The Wire and his version of the theme song was used for season 5? Good times. Yes, it is getting awfully late for me to still be typing. Why, what are you implying?

8:37: A grade-a pre-taped comedy segment for a “new” products called CinemaStreams.

8:39: Daryl Hannah presents Best Film Editing, but her first words are “SLAVA UKRAINI!” Upon being called again, Anora’s writer/director/editor/producer Sean Baker returns to the stage: “I saved this film in the edit. That director should never work again!”

8:43: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, our Best Supporting actress winner for last year’s marvelous The Holdovers, handles all the extended kudos for this year’s nominees with a graceful sincerity. Emilia Perez‘s Zoe Saldana becomes by her count “the first American of Dominican origin” to win an Oscar. She tries not to collapse into a crying mess as she shouts thanks to her mom, her grandma who emigrated here all those years ago, and “my husband with that beautiful hair!” Out in the audience, Marco Perego-Saldana and his flowing blonde locks are a tad mortified yet understanding.

8:54 Ben Stiller mock-struggles with a faulty rear-stage elevator while complimenting the nominees for Best Production Design. Of the two gents who win for Wicked, one is elated he can actually remember all four of his kids’ names in this moment.

8:58: Surprise guest Mick Jagger claims Bob Dylan was approached to present Best Original Song but insisted the producers “should find someone younger.” Believe it or not, Jagger is two years younger than Dylan. In lieu of full performances of all five songs (I’m unsure which songs the producers did not want to have to see performed live), we get short clips of each and commentary from their respective writers. Of the trio responsible for Emilia Perez‘ “El Mal”, the mononymous Camille reaches the mic first and sings the “Wooo-woo! Wooo-woo!” part from “Sympathy for the Devil”.

9:01: In an extraordinarily rare moment for our household, during this year’s Super Bowl my wife turned briefly to the halftime show, which is something we never, ever go out of our way to check out. Thanks to that mysterious whim, I understand the reference when Conan announces, “We’re halfway through the show. That means it’s time for Kendrick Lamar to come out and call Drake a pedophile!” Then we meet the orchestra, which includes the sandworm cosplayer pretending to pluck at a harp.

9:10: For Best Documentary Short, Selena Gomez accompanies Samuel L. Jackson, who loves documentaries because they’re “the best shortcut to being the smartest person in the room!” For our winner, The Only Girl in the Orchestra director Molly O’Brien quotes her aunt and her short’s subject: “Music helps us organize our emotions.”

9:13: The evening’s mandatory Major Political Statement comes in the segment that provoked more chatter in my feeds than any other, when the harrowing Gaza-set No Other Land wins Best Documentary Feature. I’m genuinely shocked to see its two stars Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham accepting in person. As two members of the four-person joint Israeli/Palestine collective who share its directing credits, they’re accompanied by a woman who’s possibly one of the other directors and a large gentleman who seems bodyguard-shaped. They acknowledge the strife in their native lands (“the harsh reality that we have been living for decades”), the power of team filmmaking beyond borders (“Together our voices are stronger”), hope for “a different path without ethnic supremacy”, and condemn the current American administration for “block[ing] this path.”

9:22: Conan brings out a dozen L.A. firefighters onstage who were among the first-responders who dealt with the wildfires. As an added bonus, three of them get to read jokes for him from the TelePrompter. (“Everyone in the audience has to laugh. THESE ARE HEROES.”) Targets include the second Joker, Conan himself, and A Complete Unknown. (“[Chalamet’s] singing was so good, he almost lost the part.”)

9:26 Best Sound comes courtesy of Miley Cyrus and Miles Teller, who was in the category’s previous winners Whiplash and Top Gun: Maverick. Ironically, the winners for Dune: Part Two go on so long that the mic is cut and they’re orchestra’d off.

9:30: Dune: Part Two‘s winning streak continues and ends with Best Visual Effects, presented by Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler, both DCEU veterans and costars of Disney’s upcoming live-action Snow White, which I do not expect to hear named in this category next year.

9:37: Ana de Armas and Sterling K. Brown hand Best Live-Action Short Film to the makers of I’m Not a Robot. Director Victoria Warmerdam concludes her speech by turning to mononymous producer Trent and telling him, “We levelheaded Dutch people don’t say this often, but I love you!”

9:40: At long last, the aforementioned In Memoriam segment. After Freeman’s prelude tribute to Hackman, the montage begins with Maggie Smith and ends with, um, Hackman again. The clips are quite abrupt (John Amos from Die Hard 2 and Coming to America only gets a still, not even a clip) and Hulu’s closed-captioning on our TV obscures a few of the names.

9:50: The only other category besides Costume Design to receive the extended-kudos treatment for all five of its nominees is Best Cinematography. We welcome Joe Alwyn, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana again, Alba Rohrwacher, and Willem Dafoe. The Brutalist‘s visual mastermind Lol Crawley takes a while to reach the stage and take out his glasses, but practiced timing his speech in advance, so he fits into the time allotted.

10:05: Conan welcomes us back to “the 97th Long-Form Content Awards!” He follows with his lone overtly political joke of the night — in complimenting Anora‘s wins so far and its plot: “I’m finally excited to see someone stand up to a powerful Russian!” [UPDATED 3/3/2025, 10:40 a.m.: I finally remembered the full context while in the shower this morning.] He then makes way for Mark Hamill and Best Original Score, though he makes a face at the orchestra for of course playing him on with the most obvious theme. (“I suggested they play the theme from Jaws, but what do I know?”) The Brutalist‘s Daniel Blumberg runs long and is orchestra’d off, but sings his last three thank-yous along to their tune.

10:10: Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg host a segment for Quincy Jones, whom Oprah credits with “discovering” her for The Color Purple. Among the thousands of songs he wrote, produced, or otherwise had a hand in throughout his storied career, the tribute of choice is “Ease on Down the Road” from The Wiz, performed by Queen Latifah.

10:19: Conan: “If you’re still enjoying the show, you have something called Stockholm Syndrome.” Then Cillian “Oppenheimer” Murphy curtly passes the Best Actor baton to The Brutalist himself, Adrien Brody, who last won the category 22 years ago for The Pianist. He gives the night’s longest speech — thanking God, noting how acting is “a very fragile profession” that “can all go away”, but that such an award “signifies a destination…a chance to begin again.” The Viewers at Home may or may not be distracted by the gigantic face of Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, which is blown up on the mosaic screens behind him and remains in-shot through his entire speech. It takes the orchestra two tries to chase Brody away.

10:29: Special guest Quentin Tarantino doesn’t say much in giving Best Director to (once more, with feeling) Anora‘s Sean Baker, who in turn thanks Tarantino for casting his star Mikey Madison previously in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was a huge stepping stone for her to Anora. Out of folks to thank, Baker extols the virtues of “the communal experience” of seeing films in theaters, decries how we lost nearly 1,000 theaters during the pandemic, and wishes his mom a Happy Birthday.

10:33: Just as Baker finishes his third speech of the night, the Hulu app announces the Oscars are over, severs the feed and deletes it from their main menu. As a middle-ager who still pays for cable TV, I grumbled for about fifteen seconds before switching to ABC, which carried the rest of the ceremony without any broadcasting problems and enjoyed a consistently clearer picture than the vacillating resolution I was getting with Hulu.

10:36: Emma Stone, who won Best Actress last year for Poor Things, passes the crown to the star of another film with roughly the same amount of nudity: Anora‘s Sean Baker. Wait, no, I mean Anora‘s Mikey Madison. “I grew up in Los Angeles, but Hollywood always felt so far away from me,” she reminisces before seconding Baker’s shout-out to the sex worker community. As Best Actress speeches go, hers is among the shortest in recent memory.

10:41: (Give or take a minute: my poor handwriting fudged the number in my notes.) Conan welcomes the stars of When Harry Met Sally…, Meg Ryan and “the best Oscar host ever, Billy Crystal!” The latter recalls, “I used to work here…nine tuxedos ago.” Resisting the urge to make us laugh for too much longer, Crystal reworks Harry Burns’ best line in that film: “When you have a chance to be an Oscar winner, you want the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible.” And with that, the Oscar goes to Sean Baker’s Anora. The acceptance crowd includes Anora‘s Sean Baker and the other two producers who are not Sean Baker, Alex Coco and Samantha Quan, all representing for “the dreamers and the young filmmakers out there” to “keep making independent films.” Over at right, Anora costar Mark Eydelshteyn cheerfully throws up a pair of metal devil-horns.

10:47: Conan bids us all goodnight without any further jokes and swears, “This was fun!” Yeah, I thought so, too.

10:50: No, there’s no scene after the 97th Academy Awards end credits. And now, back to watching junk that’s bad for us all. Let’s get back out there and enjoy the magic of movies and whatnot!