Oscars 2023

[Dave Gray]

It was a great ceremony this year.  It went off without a hitch, it was funny, despite being 3.5 hours, it moved along.  The performances were great, they did some innovations to the show that all worked.

Kimmel was a great host with good content -- no stupid comedy bits that wasted time.

And they nominated a lot of movies this year that people actually saw.

Avatar 2, Top Gun, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Elvis all had big turnout at theaters.

Pinocchio and All Quiet on the Western Front were available on streaming for a long time, too.


And, in terms of the actual awards, the movies and performances that people liked actually won, for the most part.  And, it just so happened, that those were the most deserving.



There were two misses, but that's how it goes:
Angela Basset was the best supporting performance, was projected as the favorite at one point.  She lost.  Jamie Lee Curtis was probably awarded a legacy-style award for a movie that people loved.  There's also likely an anti-Marvel bias.  Curtis wasn't even the best supporting actress in her own movie.  She was the 4th best performance in EEAAO.  However, I'm still happy for her.  It was still a great role and that movie was a freight train.  She also played the promotion part of it right.  So, good for her.

The other, fewer people will care about, but Babylon lost for score and production design and it really should've won both.  I think the movie got shut out because of its content, but it was a standout in those categories, so it was kinda sad to see it get blanked for more popular films.


A couple of notes: Naatu Naatu winning for best song was big for the academy.  And the performance was a banger.
Having presenters come up and present two awards at once cut the bullshit banter in half, so that was good.
The academy guessed right with a few things.  Having Travolta announce the in-memorium was smart.  He was choked up about the death of Olivia Newton John (and he'd also worked with Kirstie Alley).  Also, having Harrison Ford award best picture gave a moment of him reconnecting with Short Round on the stage, which was nice.
They did a good job of making each award get highlighted...so little stuff like showing a few shots of where a camera is to explain cinematography was cool.  And having the actual costumes on the stage in a display was also good.

Great job to all involved.  I hope the numbers are better than in years past because it was a very entertaining show without any bullshit.