Esraa Mahmoud
It was thrilling, heart-touching, and slap-free! That’s right; we are talking about the big night of the 95th Oscars! Luckily, no drama was present at the 95th Oscars, and we got to see an old-fashion exciting ceremony led by the always-funny Jimmy Kimmel, who was back at the Dolby Theatre hosting the 95th Oscars for the third time. The 95th Oscars ceremony started with Jimmy landing on a parachute, and it was just a smooth ride from there!
While many of us were waiting for the big night, wondering if we would see our favourite stars going home with the 95th Oscars or not, a lot of us were also wondering how the 95th Oscars would address the slap fiasco of last year?! Well, leave it to Jimmy Kimmel to do the deed!
In his monologue for the 95th Oscars night, Jimmy answered the question in the most graceful and funny way, tackling the last year’s drama with a few jokes and an announcement of the crisis team in place in case anyone would think about coming up to the host of the 95th Oscars. In fact, Jimmy roasted the incident about six times to be exact, without even mentioning the actor’s name! Yes, that’s how good he is!
The 95th Oscars ceremony was everything we hoped it would be and a little more. So, without further ado, the 95th Oscars go to…
The Oscar for Best Picture & Best Editing: Everything Everywhere All at Once
There is no surprise here, Everything Everywhere All at Once has been sweeping the most awards wherever it landed, and it went home with seven Academy Awards from the 95th Oscars! The film dominated the awards season, setting new records for the number of awards won by one film, and rightfully earned, if we may add!
The 95th Oscars Best Picture winner —yes, that’s how this film will go down in history from now on— took us all on a wild journey across the multiverse with the Asian-American mother, Evelyn Quan, who is striving to keep her family together while travelling through the multiverse.
The film has been making records at many prestigious award shows, like the Golden Globes Awards, where it received two awards (Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor) and the Critics’ Choice Awards, where it won the Best Picture award along with four other awards. There is also one BAFTA Award for editing, four Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG-Awards), and seven Independent Spirit Awards, among others.
The film also received the Oscar for Best Film Editing to Paul Rogers for his work in the movie.
The Oscar for Best Director & Best Original Screenplay: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (The Daniels)
The second & third Academy Awards of the seven that Everything Everywhere All at Once won at the 95th Oscars were for the great minds behind the film’s story, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known as The Daniels, who wrote and directed the film.
The Daniels not only brilliantly directed one of the funniest sci-fi films ever, but they also managed to write a screenplay that effortlessly presented some of the most complex themes, such as existentialism (examining human existence), nihilism (discarding fundamental elements of the human existence), and absurdism (the idea of the human existence’s absurdity).
The two filmmakers have been in the field since 2007; they started by directing musical videos, then went on to short films and in 2016, they finally ventured into feature filmmaking. Believe it or not, Everything Everywhere All at Once is only their second feature film! We wonder what these brilliant minds will come up with in the future!
The Oscar for Best Actor: Brendan Fraser
It’s been like I’ve been on a diving expedition to the bottom of the ocean.
Brendan Fraser
Thankfully, Brendan Fraser came out to the surface from “the bottom of the ocean”, as he mentioned in his speech at the 95th Oscars, in what could easily be considered the best epic renaissance an actor could ever have! Brendan’s winning the Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Category was just heart-warming and made us all leap for joy for him. Not only was our favourite childhood star back in the business, but he also just won an Oscar!
While we may still feel a bit sad for Colin Farrell, who has outdone himself in The Banshees of Inisherin, Brendan, playing Charlie’s role in The Whale, unmasked a significant amount of talent that many have forgotten he had. He didn’t chase a mummy or make us laugh—no, not this time—he made us all cry and sympathise with him in a way most of us didn’t see coming!
The Whale follows the troubled relationship between a father and his estranged daughter. While the story seems quite ordinary, Brendan’s performance as the morbidly obese father was every bit of extraordinary.
Brendan has already grossed several important awards before his 95th Oscars win, to name a few; the Best Actor award at the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards, the Phoenix Critics Circle, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and many others.
Besides Brendan’s award, the film also received the 95th Oscars for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for Adrien Morot, Judy Chin, and Anne Marie Bradley, who did such a glorious job in the film.
The Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role: Michelle Yeoh
Don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime.
Michelle Yeoh
At 60 years old, Michelle Yeoh is far from being past her prime! In Everything Everywhere All at Once, Michelle left her comfort zone of martial arts cinema and proved she could do so much more with a superb performance that made us laugh at her, feel her pain, and empathise with her! In the film, Michelle plays the role of the overtired mother who takes us with her across the multiverse as she tries to keep her family together.
With this win, Michelle made history, becoming the first actress of Asian descent to win the Oscar for this category. She has been the front-runner for almost all the awards shows this season winning the Best Actress Award at many of them, like the Golden Globes, the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards, the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, the Critics Association of Central Florida Awards, and many more.
The Oscar for Best Supporting Actor: Ke Huy Quan
Mom, I just won an Oscar!…. Dreams are something you have to believe in. I almost gave up on mine. To all of you out there, please keep your dreams alive.
Ke Huy Quan
No, we are not crying; you are! In one of the most emotional acceptance speeches at the 95th Oscars, Ke Huy Quan brought tears to our eyes as he received his well-deserved award! Ke Huy Quan played the role of Waymond Wang, the husband in Everything Everywhere All at Once, who, along with his wife Evelyn Quan, navigated the multiverse to save their family and the world.
As if Ke Huy Quan’s flawless performance was not enough reason to root for him, the story behind it is much more heart-wrenching. Ke Huy Quan started his career in the 1990s; his most memorable roles from then are Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and The Goonies (1985).
He then went on a hiatus from acting for 20 years, where he worked behind the cameras instead as a stunt choreographer and an assistant director. Fortunately, he didn’t give up on his dream as an actor, and in 2018, Daniel Kwan, one of the film’s directors, came across Quan, and the rest is history!
Ke Huy Quan has received rave reviews and wide praise for his role, not to mention many awards, including the Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actor and the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role. He became the first man of Asian descent to receive an individual award in a film category in the SAG awards’ history.
The Oscar for Best Supporting Actress: Jamie Lee Curtis
To all of the people who have supported the genre movies that I have made for all these years, the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, we just won an Oscar together.
Jamie Lee Curtis
After around 45 years in the business, Jamie Lee Curtis received her first nomination and won her well-earned Oscar for playing the role of Deirdre Beaubeirdre in the film Everything Everywhere All at Once, the character we thought was the villain at first!
The veteran actress is famed for being the “scream queen” thanks to her horror and slasher genre films, which include many hits like The Fog (1980), and the Halloween franchise (1978-2002), to name a few. However, Jamie’s talent has helped her span over many other genres like comedy—who can forget her role in Trading Places (1983) or the beloved Freaky Friday (2003). There is also the action genre, like her film True Lies (1994), for which she won one of her Golden Globes.
Jamie Lee Curtis is no stranger to the awards scene; she has previously won numerous awards throughout her career, including two Golden Globes out of seven nominations, a BAFTA, two Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG-Awards), and the list keeps on going! She has been nominated for almost all of Hollywood’s top awards, and it is safe to say there are many more to come because, luckily, this talented lady is far from being done with acting.
The Oscar for the Best Adapted Screenplay: Women Talking
The talented Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley went home with the 95th Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay for her film Women Talking, which she wrote and directed. The film is based on writer Miriam Toews’ novel of the same name from 2018.
The film is inspired by the gruesome true events that took place in Bolivia, where the women of a religious colony discover that the colony’s men have been horrifyingly abusing them! Finally, the women decide to reveal the dark secret, and we get to hear the Women Talking!
The film has received critical acclaim since its premiere at the 49th Telluride Film Festival. Besides the Best Adapted Screenplay award, the film was nominated for the Best Picture award at the 95th Oscars. The film also received many other nominations, including Best Screenplay and Best Original Score awards at the Golden Globes Awards, the Best Ensemble Cast of a Motion Picture award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG-Awards), and it also received six nominations at the 28th Critics’ Choice Awards.
The Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film: Pinocchio
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, or just Pinocchio, is loosely based on the old story of Carlo Collodi’s Italian novel from 1883, The Adventures of Pinocchio. However, this time the same old story is told from the perspective of the brilliant mind behind Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017), Guillermo del Toro.
Thanks to his magnificent work, one of the best-animated movies released in 2022, Guillermo has been a recurrent face at almost all awards shows; he has been nominated for 5 Academy Awards, three of which he won, including this one. He has also won three BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globes Award, and an Emmy Award. These are only a few of the accolades the Mexican filmmaker has received.
The Oscar for Best International Feature Film: All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Edward Berger has been making some buzz since its release, winning numerous awards and making it to the nomination list of pretty much every award show! The film is an adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel of the same name, with a story following a young German soldier during WWI.
The film received three other awards at the 95th Oscars for Best Cinematography by James Friend, Best Film Editing by Paul Rogers, and Best Production Design for Christian M. Goldbeck and set decoration by Ernestine Hipper.
After going home with four Oscars this year, the film joined the list of the most-awarded foreign films in the history of the Oscars alongside Fanny and Alexander (1982), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Parasite (2019).
The Oscar for Best Documentary Feature: Navalny
Navalny by Daniel Roher is a documentary dealing with the troubling story of Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition and the events surrounding his poisoning.
The Oscar for Best Documentary Feature is not the film’s first Best Documentary Award, as it received the same award at the 76th BAFTA awards and the Best Political Documentary Award at the 7th Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards.
The Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject: The Elephant Whisperers
The Indian short film, The Elephant Whisperers, is the directorial debut of the filmmaker Kartiki Gonsalves. The film follows the sweet story of a couple and their relationship with an orphaned elephant.
The film has received praise since its release on Netflix, and with this award at the 95th Oscars, it will go down in history as the first Indian film to win the Oscars in this category.
The Oscar for Best Live-Action Short Film: An Irish Goodbye
An Irish Goodbye by Tom Berkeley and Ross White is set in Northern Ireland, where two brothers, who haven’t seen each other in a long time, come together to say goodbye to their mother, who just died.
The short film has received critical acclaim since its release making it to the nominations list of many awards shows and winning several, including the Best British Short Film Award at the BAFTA Awards and the Best Short Film Award at the Chicago Irish Film Festival.
The Oscar for Best Animated Short Film: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is a short, animated film by Charlie Mackesy and Matthew Freud, who also co-wrote it based on the novel of the same name from 2019 by Charlie Mackesy.
The critically-acclaimed film features the voices of the stars Idris Elba, Tom Hollander, Jude Coward Nicoll, and Gabriel Byrne. Before winning the Best Animated Short Film at the 95th Oscars, the film also won the BAFTA for Best Short Animation.
The Best Original Song Award: “Naatu Naatu” from RRR
You have probably heard this smash-hit song already on TikTok or Instagram reels! The Indian song “Naatu Naatu” from the film RRR by M. M. Keeravani and lyrics by Chandrabose has been quite the sensation!
Within only 24 hours of its release, the song crossed over 35 million YouTube views! “Naatu Naatu” is the first song from India to snatch the Best Original Song at the 95th Oscars and at the Golden Globes as well!
The Best Sound Award: Top Gun: Maverick
Well, there are a few things we know for sure about Tom Cruise’s films; there will be some killer action scenes that leave us with bated breath and mesmerising soundtracks that we all google once the movie is over!
So, it’s no surprise that the 95th Oscars for Best Sound Award goes to Cruise’s film Top Gun: Maverick thanks to the fantastic job done by the musicians Mark Weingarten, Al Nelson, James H. Mather, Chris Burdon, and Mark Taylor.
The Oscar for Best Costume Design: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
There is no argument here! Ruth E. Carter did an excellent job with the costume designs of the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s characters, making us all wish she could dress us!
This is not a first for Ruth; she has been nominated for four Oscars—including this one—in the same category before for her marvellous work in Malcolm X (1992), Amistad (1997), and Black Panther (2018), which she also won.
The Oscar for Best Visual Effects: Avatar: The Way of Water
When a film takes three years to shoot and requires new technology, you know it is an Oscar-worthy film! We are, of course, talking about the long-anticipated Avatar: The Way of Water, which finally came out in 2022.
The film is one of the most expensive films ever shot, with a budget of around $350–460 million. At the 95th Oscars, it was nominated for four Academy Awards and earned the talented Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Daniel Barrett, and Eric Saindon the 95th Oscars for Best Visual Effects.
Luckily, the 95th Oscars went without a “Hitch”—pun intended! While some of us may be disappointed for not having our favourite artists going home with the 95th Oscars, there is no doubt that the winners truly deserved this honour, and we got to enjoy some of the finest cinematic works this past year.