Hollywood’s 2022 award season has officially come to a close with the 95th Academy Awards taking place March 12.
I still remember my first Oscars in 1990. It was the first year Billy Crystal hosted and “Driving Miss Daisy” won Best Picture. None of that mattered to a then 11-year-old kid. I initially watched because the weekend prior I caught a commercial for the upcoming Oscars and among the film clips it showed was one of the Batmobile from Tim Burton’s “Batman.” At that time I didn’t care what the show was, I just wanted to see Batman.
I came to find out that Batman had very little to actually do with the Oscars (it did win one Oscar for Production Design) but I did walk away with a love for the show and a new found idolization of how talented Billy Crystal is.
This year’s Oscars saw late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel host for the third time. Kimmel hosted the infamous 2017 Oscars where “Moonlight” won Best Picture but due to an envelope mix up, “La La Land” was initially read as the winner. Coupled with last year’s even more infamous slap, I was interested to see how “safe” Kimmel would play it. After seeing the show I have to say that this was the best of Kimmel’s three hosting gigs.
His jokes were, for the most part, funny but not mean spirited and he kept the show moving. What more can you ask of a host?
As for the awards themselves, I think the Academy got it right in most of the categories. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” cleaned up with seven Oscars, the first film to do that in a decade — “Gravity” won seven in 2013 — and the first to do it while taking Best Picture since 2008 when “Slumdog Millionaire” won eight. Oscar voters have adopted a “spread the wealth” mentality over the last several years not wanting to leave films with multiple nominations out. That was not the case this year with three films getting multiple nods and going home empty handed: “The Banshees of Inisherin” with nine, “Elvis” with eight and “The Fablemans” with seven. I can’t say that I was disappointed as I found all three of those films — especially “Elvis” — to be overrated.
On the flip side of that coin, I can’t tell you the joy I felt when Brendan Fraser won Best Actor for “The Whale.” That film and his performance were some of the most inspiring I saw on screen in 2022. The film itself caught a lot of flack by some but as an overweight gay man with a best friend who is a nurse, I felt seen.
I also can’t tell you how happy I was to see one of the Goonies win an Oscar. Ke Huy Quan, who played Data in one of the ‘80s greatest films — “The Goonies,” won Best Supporting Actor for “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” In an interview after he won, Ke Huy Quan said that all of his “Goonies” co-stars called him throughout the award season and to learn that the Goonies all still check in with each other to this day renewed my faith in humanity.
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” and “The Whale” were not only two of my favorite films in 2022 but they were history making for A24. The independent film studio released both films and became the first studio in history to win all the top Oscar prizes: Best Picture, Best Director and all four acting categories.
This year’s Oscars were also history making for women of color. Michelle Yeoh became only the second woman of color to win Best Actress. Making it even more special, she was given her award by Halle Berry, who was the first woman of color to win that award in 2002 for “Monster’s Ball.”
Ruth Carter won her second Oscar for Best Costume Design for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Her first Oscar came in 2018 for the first “Black Panther” film. This year’s win made her the first Black woman in any category to win two Oscars. That is one of those stats that seemed unbelievable when I heard it. In 95 years, the Academy has never given a Black woman more than one Oscar until now.
In another historic win for women of color, Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga became only the second Indian women to win Oscars for their documentary short film “The Elephant Whisperers.” The first was Bhanu Athaiya, who won Best Costume Design in 1983 for the film “Gandhi.”
All-in-all this year’s Oscars were a return to “normalcy.” The socially distanced seating from the last couple of years was gone, I only noticed actress Jessica Chastain wearing a mask and the event as a whole was pretty uncontroversial. While I’m sure those at ABC who are concerned with the show’s ratings were disappointed, an Oscars with no violence and where every name was read correctly was an A+ in my book.
Now to start looking ahead to Oscars 2024. Is it too early to call Best Picture for “Cocaine Bear”?
