WASHINGTON. Everything Everywhere All at Once triumphs, Brendan Fraser (The Whale) and Michelle Yeoh and I Daniels, actress and directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once win, the best song is Naatu Naatu from the Indian blockbuster RRR. All Quiet on the Western Front is the best foreign film. The Italians remain empty-handed and “Navalny” takes the statuette for best documentary. And the Americans Spielberg and Austin Busler (Elvis in Elvis) are left empty-handed.
Ke Huy Quan, from the refugee camp as a child to winning the Oscar: “This is the American dream”
A riot of colors
The 95th Oscar ceremony is archived after almost 4 hours of live coverage in a blaze of colors and the exaltation and revenge of Asia, of oriental immigrants in America, a land of redemption. Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan (supporting actor) are the incarnation of the American dream, they evoke it, exalt it and staring into the camera they speak to the new generations, inviting them to dream big. Cinema is infinitely smaller than reality, says Ke Huy Quan, look at my dream, from a refugee camp to an Oscar. He has tears in his eyes when, among the very first, he goes on stage and greets his mother «who is at home and looks at me: I did it».
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Then it’s a succession of prizes, thanks always identical, to the cast, the family, the wife or the husband who is always the best of the whole audience. Yeoh, 60, stands out: «Lord, don’t let anyone tell you that you are past a certain age. I dedicate it to my mother, to all mothers, they are the super heroines. Mine is a dream come true.”
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And Brendan Fraser displaces, excited, almost paralyzed by emotion and by a whirlwind of feelings that seemed to have overwhelmed him: “It hasn’t always been easy for me, like an expedition to the bottom of the ocean, getting back to the surface isn’t easy”.
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The Kimmel case
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel dispenses jokes, barbs. He arrives at the Dobly Theater catapulted by a parachute miming the maverick Tom Cruise, absent, like James Cameron, from the evening. Kimmel – as promised – makes a few references to last year’s slapgate and closes the live broadcast by leaving the stage where a sign indicates the number of Oscar evenings finished without incident. Zero, pass Kimmel and turn the sign: una. That of 2023, the third conduction of him. It was the film festival, no extras, the duel on stage between Rihanna and Lady Gaga, minimalist and powerful. Splendid, especially that of Lady Gaga, performance.
While Lenny Kravitz sings for the Memorial, a tribute to the talents, actors and men and women of cinema who have died. There are Gina Lollobrigida and Maurizio Salvi. John Travolta presents it and is moved, the first large image is that of Olivia Newton-John.
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Politics and social issues remain on the sidelines, an elegant and ironic twist with which Sarah Polley, thanking for the statuette won for the non-original screenplay for Women Talking, comments: «I really appreciate that the Academy didn’t feel offended to put next to it the two words women and talking.
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Reference to the absence of female directors in the five 2023. Inclusiveness that is touched upon by Kimmel in the opening monologue: «James Cameron not Avatar 2 was able to do what he likes best, to drown Kate Winslet. He’s not here because he wasn’t nominated for Best Director: what did the Academy think, that he was a woman?” Laughs.
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But not as many as when he said that «many films are sequels or franchises, Hollywood has no more ideas, even Spielberg had to make a film about Spielberg. The only director nominated in six different decades». The master – in contention with The Fabelmans, but no statuette in the end – smiles pleased. The wind has changed. Like the red carpet, for the first time since 1962 not red, but champagne-coloured.
Why do we award films with Oscars? And why is the statuette called that?
