Category: Daily Dispatch

Leave it to The Academy Awards to schedule its ceremony, which always runs long, for the night after everyone has lost an hour’s sleep!

All told, however, after two excruciatingly horrible years, the broadcast managed to deliver the goods. In fact, the start was so strong, with wins for – and emotional acceptance speeches from — Ke Huy Quan (a.k.a. Indiana Jones’ Short Round) and Jamie Lee Curtis, that I wondered if perhaps it would be an Oscars for the ages.

It didn’t maintain quite that level of promise, which after all is as foolish a hope as pulling for a no-hitter after a pitcher has had a good first inning. But there were some satisfying wins. Everyone loves a good comeback story, and last night seemed to be full of them. Quan and Brendan Fraser, in particular, both notable presences in some pretty big movies a few decades ago, until this awards season couldn’t get arrested.

Last year, the Academy made the boneheaded decision to omit from its ceremony a number of important technical awards and some they deemed to be of lesser interest to the public, maybe, and certainly to the network, which is always grasping for ratings. This is one of the reasons I decided to give Oscar the big eff-you. Personally, I am always very interested in the technical achievements – and of course the Best Original Score – but the evident passion that goes into the short subjects and feature documentaries is exemplative of what drives real filmmaking.

Last night, the award for Best Documentary Feature went to “Navalny,” about anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, who was mysteriously poisoned and continues to rot in Russian prison. His wife was on the podium to lend support, as the film’s director, Daniel Roher, dedicated his award to political prisoners everywhere. It was one of the evening’s rare political moments, but this one, I think, was well-justified.

It has always annoyed me when the recipients of awards for these “smaller movies” get played off without everyone having had their say. These guys work hard with very little remuneration, and it’s often their one moment in the limelight. Their sincerity is always a breath of fresh air and frankly they come across as much more interesting people, in many cases, than most of the celebrities. I like people with real interests and evident passion.

The lifetime achievement and humanitarian awards, alas, seem to be barred from the broadcast forever. After all, who wants to see Michael J. Fox get the Jean Hersholt Award or Peter Weir, director of “Gallipoli” and “Witness,” get an Honorary Oscar?

On a more positive note, there were recurrent appearances by writers and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – known collectively as “the Daniels” – two exuberantly creative knuckleheads whose film “Everything Everywhere All At Once” won big. Of its staggering 11 nominations, the film walked away with Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director(s), Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Kwan), Best Supporting Actress (Curtis), and Best Original Screenplay. Kwan and Scheinert are those two doofuses in high school who were oblivious to ridicule, shut out the noise, and just did what they wanted. I think we would have gotten along fine. Good for them, and more power to them.

For me, the ”In Memoriam” segment is always a litmus test for a worthy Oscars ceremony. Last night’s didn’t quite live up to the best. The design was flat and uninteresting – the most effective, and affecting, incorporate moving images with the stills which, combined with the music, tend to raise a lump in the throat – but at least the tone was appropriate, even if the accompanying song by Lenny Kravitz didn’t do much for me. Thankfully, for the first time in the past three years, it didn’t seem rushed. So not a big plus, perhaps, but also not a glaring minus. And John Travolta, who introduced the segment, was clearly struggling with emotion when alluding to Olivia Newton-John. TCM puts together these in memoriam segments on their network all the time, and they never fail to bring a tear. I wish Oscar would just hire whoever it is they’ve got putting those together.

Jimmy Kimmel proved to be about as good a host as they could have gotten. He’s smart and actually funny, without being crude. I thought he did a good job, right up to the final gag where he walked off stage to a sign that read “Number of Oscars Telecasts without Incident” and selected the number 1 to hang on a peg.

Congratulations to Volker Bertelmann, who was recognized with the Academy Award for Best Original Score for “All Quiet on the Western Front.” It was Bertelmann’s first Oscar, although he was previously nominated under his stage name, Hauschka, for his music for the 2016 film “Lion,” which he co-composed with Dustin O’Halloran.

It would have been great to see John Williams get it, of course, but I knew that he wouldn’t. For some reason, with all the other records he holds, it escaped me that if he had won, he would have been the oldest Academy Award recipient. For now, he’ll have to content himself with being the oldest nominated AND the most-nominated person alive (with 53 nominations), and second in Oscar history only to Walt Disney (with 59).

As Kimmel quipped in his opening monologue, ““He’s been nominated 53 times” – pause for audience applause – “He’s only won five, which is honestly not that great.”

It’s not often that a comedian singles out a composer during the awards broadcast, but Williams of course is known to all.

Kimmel further jibed, “John Williams is now the oldest nominee in Oscar history. He looks great. John turned 91 last month. And he’s still scoring, if you know what I mean…”

The Best Original Song award went to M.M. Keeravani and Chandrabose for “Naatu Naatu” from the film “RRR.” In his acceptance speech, Keeravani cited Williams as one of his inspirations and continued by expressing himself with new words put to a song by The Carpenters, which he said he had always listened to as a boy growing up in India. The media at home, apparently, mistook Keeravani’s reference as his having listened to actual singing carpenters!

Rickey Minor was the music director for last night’s show. As far as I can tell, the orchestra was in the theater, as opposed to being piped in from down the block as has occurred in a few of the past ceremonies. Oscar certainly does not always get it right, but last night was good enough that I would consider coming back.

PHOTOS: (top) Volker Bertelmann and (left to right) Ke Huy Quan, Chandrabose and M.M. Keeravani, and Kimmel logging an evening “without incident”