Entertainment

The 95th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, was held Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. Everything Everywhere All at Once was the big winner, winning seven Oscars out of its leading 11 nominations, including Best Picture. Star Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress, while Brendan Fraser won Best Actor for his starring role in The Whale.

Here are the winners from Sunday night’s broadcast:

Best Picture
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert and Jonathan Wang, Producers

Best Director
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

Best Actor
Brendan Fraser, The Whale

Best Actress
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Supporting Actor
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Supporting Actress
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Adapted Screenplay
Women Talking, Sarah Polley

Best Original Screenplay
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

Best Animated Feature
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson, Gary Ungar and Alex Bulkley

Best Animated Short
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Charlie Mackesy and Matthew Freud

Best Live Action Short
An Irish Goodbye, Tom Berkeley and Ross White

Best Cinematography
All Quiet on the Western Front, James Friend

Best Costume Design
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ruth E. Carter

Best Documentary Feature
Navalny, Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller and Shane Boris

Best Documentary Short Subject
The Elephant Whisperers, Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga

Best Editing
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Paul Rogers

Best International Feature Film
All Quiet on the Western Front, Germany

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
The Whale, Adrien Morot, Judy Chin and Anne Marie Bradley

Best Production Design
All Quiet on the Western Front, Christian M. Goldbeck; Set Decoration: Ernestine Hipper

Best Original Score
All Quiet on the Western Front, Volker Bertelmann

Best Original Song
“Naatu Naatu” from RRR, Music by M.M. Keeravaani; Lyric by Chandrabose

Best Sound
Top Gun: Maverick, Mark Weingarten, James H. Mather, Al Nelson, Chris Burdon and Mark Taylor

Best Visual Effects
Avatar: The Way of Water, Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Everything Everywhere All at Once won Best Picture Sunday night at the 95th Academy Awards.

The film won over fellow nominees All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, The Fabelmans, Tár,  Top Gun: Maverick, Triangle of Sadness and Women Talking. 

“This feels incredible,” said producer Jonathan Wang. “There is no movie without our brilliant and big-hearted cast and crew. But not just these beautiful souls here, also up there and in little Tokyo, we see you. So, this award is ours.”

“But this is for my dad, who like so many immigrant parents died young and he is so proud of me, not because of this, but because we made this movie with what he taught me to do, which is no person is more important than profits. And no one is more important than anyone else,” he continued. “And these weirdos right here supported me in doing that. Memory eternal.”

Wang also shouted out the film’s directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as The Daniels.

“I love you guys. You just won Best Picture,” he concluded. 

Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, Everything Everywhere All at Once won seven Oscars: Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Picture.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Brendan Fraser is an Oscar winner. The 54-year-old took home the trophy for Best Actor at the 95th annual Academy Awards Sunday night for his role as a 600-pound man in The Whale.

“So this is what the multiverse looks like,” Brendan said as he accepted his award, holding back tears. He then thanked his director Darren Aronofsky “for throwing me a creative lifeline and hauling me aboard the good ship The Whale.” He later thanked his sons for all their support.

Fraser added, “I started in this business 30 years ago and things, they didn’t come easily to me, but there was a facility that I didn’t appreciate at the time until it stopped.”

Fellow nominees for Best Actor included Austin Butler for Elvis, Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin, Paul Mescal for Aftersun and Bill Nighy for Living.

Holding dual Canadian/American citizenship, Brendan’s win makes him the first-ever Canadian to win the Oscar for Best Actor.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress for her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once Sunday night at the 95th Academy Awards.

The historical win makes Yeoh the first Malaysian to win an Oscar and also the first Southeast Asian actress to win in the category. 

“For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities,” Yeoh began her acceptance speech. “This is proof that dreams, dream big and dreams do come true.”

The actress added, “And ladies, don’t let anybody tell you, you are ever past your prime. Never give up.”

Yeoh went on to dedicate the award to her mother who was watching in Malaysia, stating, “I have to dedicate this to my mom, all the moms in the world, because they are really the superheroes, and without them, none of us will be here tonight.”

“Thank you to the Academy, this is history in the making,” she concluded. 

The historical win also makes Yeoh, along with Best Supporting Actor winner Ke Huy Quan, the first actors to win for portraying Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese-speaking characters.

Other nominees in the category were Cate Blanchett for her role in Tár, Ana de Armas in Blonde, Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie, and Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert took home the trophy for Best Director at the 95th annual Academy Awards Sunday night for their film Everything Everywhere All at Once. Known as “The Daniels,” the pair also took home an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film earlier in the evening.

“Our fellow nominees, you guys are our heroes, this is weird,” Scheinert said in his acceptance speech, thanking his parents, “for not squashing my creativity when I was making really disturbing horror films, or really perverted comedy films or dressing in drag as a kid, which is a threat to nobody.”

Kwan added, “I know every director agrees with me when I say a director is nothing without their incredible cast and crew,” adding,  “If our movie has greatness and genius it’s only because they have greatness and genius flowing through their hearts and souls and minds and they gave that precious gift to our film.”

He then shared, “There is greatness in every single person, it doesn’t matter who they are. You have a genius that is waiting to erupt, you just need to find the right people to unlock that. Thank you so much to everyone who has unlocked my genius.”

With their win The Daniels become the third duo in Oscar history to win the Best Director award. Previous winning pairs include Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise for 1961’s West Side Story, and Joel and Ethan Coen for 2007’s No Country For Old Men.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Sorry, Rihanna and Lady Gaga — you got beat by dancing Indian revolutionaries.

“Naatu Naatu,” from the Indian film RRR, won Best Original Song at Sunday night’s Academy Awards, beating out songs by Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Diane Warren and rocker David Byrne.

One of the song’s composers, M. M. Keeravani, took the podium and told the audience, “I grew up listening to The Carpenters. Tonight, I’m here with The Oscars!”  He then sang a parody of The Carpenters’ hit “Top of the World,” changing the lyrics to reflect his hopes that he’d win, and that the Oscars would “put me on the top of the world.”

“Naatu Naatu,” the first song from an Indian film to be nominated for Best Original Song, is sung in the Telugu language, which is spoken mostly Southern India.  The title translates to “local, local.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

After the Oscars producers said that Lady Gaga wouldn’t be performing her Best Original Song nominee “Hold My Hand” at the ceremony, she surprised everyone by delivering a performance that was highly unusual — at least for her.

Sporting a makeup-free face, her hair in a French braid, and a black t-shirt and torn black jeans, Gaga sang the song while sitting on a stool, surrounded by musicians who were similarly dressed down.  At the end, she got up to belt out the final part of the song.

Gaga introduced the song, from Top Gun: Maverick, by calling it “deeply personal.”   “I think we all need each other. We need a lot of love to walk through this life,” she said. “There are heroes all around you…but you can be your own hero, even if you feel broken inside.”

The Oscar producers initially said that Gaga wouldn’t be able to perform the song because she couldn’t create the kind of performance we’ve come to expect from her, due to her commitment to filming The Joker sequel.  It appears as though she came up with a way to present it that made even more of an impact.

If Gaga wins, it’ll be her second Best Original Song trophy: She previously won for “Shallow,” from A Star Is Born.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

A performance of “Naatu Naatu,” the Best Original Song nominee from the Indian film RRR, earned a standing ovation Sunday night at the 95th Academy Awards.

The first song ever nominated from an Indian production has become a worldwide sensation thanks to its inclusion in a key scene of the film. It’s a non-stop dance number that literally has had movie audiences dancing in the theater.

The production at the Oscars mimicked the RRR scene which features “Naatu Naatu”: A garden party in front of a stately pastel-colored mansion, during which two Indian revolutionaries show up rude British colonialists by dancing them into submission. 

As the two Indian vocalists whose voices were heard in the film sang the song, a group of dancers recreated the movie’s frantic hook-step choreography, including the suspender-twanging moves of the two main characters.  At the end, the dancers made their way off the stage and into the aisles.

But sadly, despite host Jimmy Kimmel‘s promise at the beginning of the telecast, the “Naatu Naatu” dancers did not “dance off” the winners whose speeches ran long.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Ruth E. Carter became the first Black woman to win multiple Oscars Sunday night at the 95th Academy Awards. 

Carter won the Oscar for Best Costume Design for her work on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; she previously snagged the award for the first Black Panther film. 

Additionally, Carter joins a small group of other African Americans who have won two competitive Oscars. That group includes Denzel Washington, Willie D. Burton, Russel Williams II, and Mahershala Ali.

Carter paid tribute to her mother during her acceptance speech, “Thank you to the Academy for recognizing the superhero that is a Black woman. She endures, she loves, she overcomes, she is every woman in this film. She is my mother.”

“This past week, Mabel Carter became an ancestor. This film prepared me for this moment. Chadwick [Boseman], please take care of mom,” she added, making mention of the late Black Panther star. “This is for my mother. She was 101.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Singer/actress Sofia Carson and 14-time Oscar nominee Diane Warren performed Warren’s Best Original Song nominee “Applause” from the anthology film Tell It Like a Woman, at the 95th Academy Awards Sunday night.

Wearing a sparkling white gown with a silver netting detail, Carson sang the female empowerment song as Warren accompanied her on a white piano. A string section and an all-female chorus, along with dramatic lighting, created an impactful performance.

In the middle of the song, Carson stopped singing and spoke to the audience, saying, “To each and every single woman in this room, and to all the women in this world, give yourself some applause!”

If Warren wins the Oscar, it’ll be her first-ever win, and it’ll come within the same 12 months that she won the Academy’s honorary Governors Award Oscar — the first songwriter ever to do so.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.