Best Moments from 97th Annual Academy Awards

by Julian Spivey
With the crowning of writer-director Sean Baker’s “Anora” as Best Picture at the 97th annual Academy Awards on Sunday night (March 2), award season has officially come to an end.

Both award season, which seems to take up more and more calendar space, and the Academy Awards, which neared four hours in length, can be a slog to get through, especially in years like this year, when the winners were mostly the same from award show to award show.

There were still some things to be excited about on Oscars night, many of which came from the lovable emcee of the evening, Conan O’Brien, making his debut as Oscars host.  
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Here were my favorite moments from the 97th annual Academy Awards telecast: 

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Sean Baker’s Historic Night
Sean Baker is the kind of filmmaking wunderkind we should be thrilled for, even if he made the movie we wouldn’t have voted for to win ourselves (which is true in my case). He’s a do-it-all and do-it-independently type filmmaker who writes, directs, edits, and co-produces his films – often telling small, real-to-life stories, the type you won’t get from blockbuster Hollywood cinema. This do-it-all process made Baker the winningest person in Oscar history for one year when he won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Screenplay on Sunday night. Technically, he tied Walt Disney with four wins in one night, but Disney’s came for four different films (three of which were shorts) and not the same film. Baker’s achievement is cooler.

Kieran Culkin’s Acceptance Speech
The one actor who kept winning everywhere throughout award season who I didn’t tire of was Kieran Culkin, who was honored with just about every Best Supporting Actor award there is for his portrayal of manic free spirit Benji in writer/director Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain.” The reason why I never tired of Culkin is he brings some of that mania into the real world with his acceptance speeches and his bit about how after winning an Emmy Award last year for his TV role in “Succession” he asked his wife for a third child and then mentioned he’d actually like to have four children. She told him he’d have to win an Oscar for that. Culkin’s acceptance speeches always seem off-the-cuff, but that’s probably just his style and he’s a good enough actor to make it feel that way.

No Other Land
There wasn’t as much political talk in acceptance speeches as one might have predicted going into the night, especially given the current political climate of the United States and the world. But politics would be hard to ignore, particularly in the Best Documentary Feature category, especially with the win going to “No Other Land,” which is such a hot button topic in this country that it still doesn’t have a U.S. distributor (hopefully that’ll change after winning the Oscar). The film, made by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta region. Palestinian director Basel Adra was the first to accept the award and mentioned how he hoped his daughter would not grow up in a world of “ethnic cleansing.” Then his Israeli co-filmmaker Yuval Abraham pointed out that although “No Other Land” was made in the spirit of cross-cultural love, his country was one of freedom to move wherever and his co-filmmaker’s (Adra) was one of military rule and there was a path forward, but “the foreign policy in this country (U.S.) is helping to block [that path] … There is another way. It’s not too late for life and the living. There is no other way.” It was also nice to see actress Daryl Hannah shout out Ukraine before presenting an award.

The Little Film from Latvia Wins
One of the biggest surprises of award season was the animated film “Flow” from Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis. Featuring no dialogue, “Flow” tells the story of a community of animals – a cat, capybara, secretarybird, ring-tailed lemur and golden retriever – that band together during a flood to help each other survive. It’s a beautiful film that features beautiful animation using the free and open-source software Blender. It was going up against behemoths from DreamWorks Animation and Pixar and came out victorious winning Best Animated Feature. It was the first Oscar win ever for the country of Latvia. The film was also nominated for Best International Feature, a rarity for an animated movie, but fell to Brazil’s “I’m Still Here,” the first ever Oscar-win for Brazil, in that category.

In Memoriam Done Right
One thing I’ve taken issue with for years from many awards shows is messing up the in memoriam section by focusing as much, if not more, on the artist chosen to perform a song during the segment than the deceased artists being remembered instead. The Oscars made the terrific decision this year to not get a superstar performer for the segment and let the audience, both in the theater and at home, focus on the most critical aspect of the segment. Instead, the orchestra in the theater performed Mozart’s “Lacrimosa,” which a friend of mine felt odd (but I didn’t really notice or care), while we paid tribute to legends like Donald Sutherland, James Earl Jones, Maggie Smith and more. The segment began with a lovely in-person tribute to two-time Oscar-winner Gene Hackman, who died earlier in the week, from his friend and multiple-time co-star Morgan Freeman. This is how the in memoriam segment at every award show should be handled.   

Conan O’Brien
Conan O’Brien was my dream choice to host the Academy Awards, and he didn’t disappoint, though I don’t think he was funnier than the man who’s hosted most of the last few years, Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel has more bite to his humor, which plays better at an award show than O'Brien's wacky, zaniness. However, O’Brien did have many highlights of his hosting stint, not just in his opening monologue, but throughout the evening. I enjoyed that he didn’t let the Karla Sofia Gascon scandal go untouched, joking about how the 400-plus ‘F-words’ in “Anora” were second only to Gascon’s publicist, “you tweeted WHAT?!” I like that he didn’t let President Donald Trump off the hook for his ridiculous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a poke at President Trump after a winning streak by “Anora” was forming, saying: “I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.” I also immensely enjoyed his jokes at the halfway point of the evening when he said this is the portion of the night where Kendrick Lamar shows up to call Drake a pedophile, and later on about the telecast’s runtime saying, “if you’re still enjoying the show you have something called Stockholm Syndrome.” While O’Brien’s jokes may not have had quite the bite from some hosts in the past, his awareness of the ridiculousness of the evening was a nice touch. The intro based on “The Substance,” Adam Sandler’s cameo and the “Cinemastream” pre-tape were also delightful.