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Well, for once this month, I think the nation averted catastrophe. It had looked for a few scary weeks there that the Oscars might instigate the armageddon culture war, if Sinners was callously shut out and too many other movies snatched victory instead. But on Sunday night, trophies were meted out with some fair proportion. And thus, I think, tempers have been soothed and everyone has shuffled off into their corners, happy with their prizes.

Or, I guess, one particular battle has reached its final armistice. Sinners walked away with four awards (in cinematography, score, original screenplay, and lead actor), while One Battle After Another took home six (picture, director, adapted screenplay, editing, and supporting actor). Had Sinners won the brand-new casting award over OBAA, as many expected it to, we would have seen an even split. Still, I think it was a pretty good outcome for two movies—from the same studio—that had been brutally pitted against one another for months. Some sort of compromise was reached. And now, thank the celebrity-stuffed heavens, it’s over. 

The wins were pretty good, and the show was pretty good too. Conan O’Brien did well his second time around, though there was a slight sophomore slump. It felt like he was a little in his head, and that the audience wasn’t following him there. The opening Weapons bit was the kind of inspired idea that confirms its obvious, only-thing-they-could-have-done inevitability the minute it starts. The subsequent monologue was soft, though, and as the show unfolded I found myself wondering why that might be. 

Maybe the discourse around some of the movies had soured into something unfunny. Maybe real-world news made certain jokes hard to reach for. Or maybe O’Brien’s second at-bat was just never going to connect in the same surprising, relieving way that his first did, when it came as such a refreshing change of pace from years of Jimmy Kimmel’s “why the fuck are we even here??” laziness. There was plenty to laugh at, and I’m glad that O’Brien kept the comedy coming at a steady pace throughout the show. But after all the terrible, agonizing waiting for this ceremony to happen, I really wanted O’Brien to burst through that tension with truly cathartic jokes. He didn’t quite do that, but maybe no one could.

There were also serious matters to attend to, chiefly some kind of special recognition for the fact that 2025 was a real extinction level event for an older era of Hollywood. I’m happy that the producers took the time to slow the show down and reflect on the losses of Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford, among others. Those three felt like they merited something more than mere applause-o-meter clip treatment. They got just that, and thus Barbra Streisand sang live at the Oscars for what very well could be the last time in this planet’s dwindling life. We are, I’m afraid, going to get many more moments like that—or, at least, many more In Memoriams of the same heft and timbre—as the true luminaries die out and we’ve few younger legends to replace them with. 

Though that extra time was taken, the show on the whole was pretty efficient. It clocked in at 3h45m, a tiny bit shorter than last year. The doubling up of presenters was smart, though I’d rather some of that patter had been trimmed rather than having to endure the embarrassment of winners being rudely cut off. Or, better yet, just let the show run longer! That is one great hope for the show’s impending decampment to YouTube: where we’re going, we don’t need runtimes. 

I’ll brag a little: the predictions I offered up to you last week were correct except for three categories. I miscalled animated short, casting, and best actor. The animated short thing was a simple mistake; I forgot that one was puppets, and that people would be impressed by puppets. Casting was a toss-up for every predictor, because the award is brand new. Turns out that, for now, casting might just go to the best picture winner. (Is it the new editing in that way? Hard to say this year, because OBAA won both.)

But in best actor, I really did boof it. 

My reasoning in predicting Chalamet over Jordan was multivarious. I thought Chalamet’s BAFTA loss meant nothing, because a hometown hero winning for a homegrown feel-good movie (that everyone immediately felt bad about) was just a BAFTA thing. I thought Jordan winning at SAG happened largely because Chalamet had won last year, and the actors didn’t want to double up. My mistake was not seeing the Sinners SAG ensemble win coupled with an individual Jordan victory as the telling indicator. 

That’s the numbers reason. Past that dispassionate analysis, I’ll admit that some grimy bias might have taken hold. I was so sick of Chalamet campaign talk after two years of it that I just wanted the motherfucker to win—I was trying to will it into existence—so we could move on to another topic.

And, honestly, I probably wanted internet people ginning up controversy to be rebuked. I really do not think that much voting was swayed by dumb readings of Chalamet’s correct, if unfortunately phrased, comments about dying art forms. And I kind of doubt much voting was swayed by Chalamet talking about how he wants to be one of the greats. But plenty of people online seemed to think just that, imagining that their outrage was shared by far more offline people who are, still, rather indifferent to the noise. I thought it would be instructive for there to be yet another lesson that internet discourse does not really affect who wins all that much. 

Did tonight contradict that? Maybe! I’ll concede that. But Oscar voters didn’t care about how much the internet hates Adrien Brody, or how much it hated The Whale. So instead I think that, yes, there was just that much more respect for Jordan’s wonderful and worthy performance(s), and that Chalamet is not yet adding up in the Academy’s broad calculus of male actors they want to venerate. The last true pissant they’ve named best actor—remember, no one knew who Brody was when he first won—was arguably Richard Dreyfuss, like 50 years ago. If Chalamet was felled by insouciance, I suppose he’d be wise to remember the earnest professionalism that Jordan calmly projected during his speech. As a colleague said while we were watching the show on Sunday night: the Academy might not vote for Chalamet until they’re absolutely confident he will give the kind of lovely, event-appropriate thanks that Jordan did. 

It’s great that Jordan won, and that he will now (one hopes) be elevated to a new echelon of his career. I worry how the loss will affect Chalamet’s choices. Though, there is reason to hope there, too. Now that he has real wounds that need licking, and maybe some reflecting to do, I’d love to see Chalamet give a performance that is less brashly eager to endear—and, yes, his work as a lovably awful rogue in Marty Supreme was definitely meant to do that in its antihero way.

But that we’re even having this strain of conversation, about the bitter meta-minutiae of a campaign, leads us to the most glaring message issued out by this year’s Academy Awards ceremony: this thing needs to happen a lot fucking sooner. 

Not everyone follows this as closely as I do, and thus is perhaps not as exhausted by the mole-hill-mountain-making of the last many weeks. But nearly two whole months between nominations and the ceremony is insane. What is anyone supposed to do with that time but grow bored and angry, obsessed with tiny, mostly imagined undulations? All that molecular nitpicking gets really frustrating, to the point that I had developed some bizarrely “principled” stand about Chalamet winning because it would prove something about… the internet? I don’t want to think about these things that way! That goes past the usual awards cynicism and into the realm of Carrie Mathison red-string psychosis, which I would prefer to relegate to political elections. (Or, ideally, to nothing.) 

This season made monsters of some of us, in a few categories at least, and it’s the Academy’s fault for allowing the space for that to happen. It’s time to permanently move this shit to mid-February at the latest. Mid-March is crazy when the internet is churning along so quickly, mutating perspective every second and making my forehead veins throb as I yell at friends, “if Timmy wins it’s finally over!!” The Academy, and Hollywood as a whole, would be wise to not give us all that time to curdle the excitement. 

That said, I’ve had a blast covering the Oscar race here, and as a co-host of the Critical Darlings podcast (on the Blank Check podcast feed). I hope you’ll listen to this week’s post-mortem! And that you’ll stay tuned for news about the future of the show. New movies (actual new movies!) await, and I am dying to talk about all that lies ahead.

There is a ton coming your way on these here pages, about movies and TV shows you haven’t even dreamed of. Isn’t it so nice that we are finally cleaning the slate? Usually toward the end of an Oscar season, I ask people which one movie it is that they’re most eager to never talk about again. This year, I fear it might be all of them. 

On to the next, I say. Cannes is less than two months away. And you can read all about that right here. Yes, I’m going to France. But we’ll do plenty of springtime stuff before that happens. Stick with me.

Also, did you know that I’m a fucking YouTuber now??

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