My Oscars Post-Mortem - All At Once

To the surprise of no one, the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once"  (hereafter to be referred to as EEAAO), swept the Oscars last night, winning seven Oscars overall, including Awards for picture, director, screenplay, and three of the four acting categories.  A historic sweep by any measure.  While it is a movie that had no appeal to me on the face of it, I am now determined to see it, if for no other reason than sheer curiosity.  The big question for this movie is, as it is for any Best Picture winner, Will it endure?  Come 2033, will people still be popping it into their DVD players (or whatever the equivalent technology will be in ten years time), to watch EEAAO, or, for that matter, any of the other nine nominees?  Or will they just decide to watch "Casablanca", "Vertigo", "Citizen Kane", "Caddyshack". or "Groundhog Day" one more time?

Some other quick thoughts on the Oscars and last night's show.

The Winning Actors

Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, 

Brendan Fraser, and Jamie Lee Curtis

• In regard to the four winning actors, can anyone NOT be excited for Jamie Lee Curtis win as Best Supporting Actress?   Her acceptance speech, wherein she talked about her career in "genre movies" and paid tributes to her parents, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, was a pure delight and perhaps the highlight of the evening.
• Host Jimmy Kimmel was quite prescient when his opening monologue included the line "Just think, two actors from 1992's "Encino Man" could possibly win Oscars tonight."  They, Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser, actually pulled it off!
• Speaking of Kimmel, I thought he, once again, did a good job as host.  He referenced last year's Will Smith Debacle without actually mentioning either Smith or Chris Rock's names.  He was funny without being over the line, and he kept the traffic moving.  The only bad part of his shtick was the "questions from viewers" and trying to include Malala in the bit.  God bless Malala for the work she does, but she obviously has no sense of humor, at least not for stuff like this.
• One movie that I am definitely prompted to see after last night was the other big winner of the night, "All Quiet On The Western Front."  That viewing via Netflix could come as soon as tomorrow.
• I have said for years that one way to shorten the length of the Oscars telecast would be to remove the performance of the five nominated Original Songs, and last night's show did nothing to change my mind.  Twenty minutes of the show could be chopped off just like that!
• As for the winning Song, "Naatu Naatu" from "RRR", well, I will plead a general lack of knowledge of Indian culture, so I hope that I am not being too critical or ignorant when I say that nobody will be humming that one like they do past winners like Moon River or Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.  My own thought was that the song was actually a terrific dance number and a great piece of choreography, and would it have won if it was just a song without the accompanying dancing?
• Having said that, I loved the acceptance speech from the two songwriters when the one gentleman said he grew up listening The Carpenters and then did a riff on Top of The World.
• The onstage-and-part-of-the-program commercials for Disney's "Little Mermaid" and Warner Bros. 100th Anniversary. What was that all about?
• The only shock of the In Memoriam segment was seeing that Kirstie Alley had died.  I had either forgotten that or missed it completely.  I looked it up today and saw that she died on December 5, two days after our wedding.  That explains that.
• In THIS POST from yesterday,  I gave you seven predictions for the Oscars, and I was correct on four of them, missing on three of the four acting categories.  I hope that by next year, I will have seen more of the nominated films and will thus be able to give some better and more informed predictions.
• One last thing, my award for Best Gown of the Evening goes to Eva Longoria. (Runner Up: Halle Berry)

Best Gown of the Evening

Eva Longoria