Jon Batiste and wife Suleika Jaouad; Disney/Scott Kirkland
Grammy and Oscar-winning musician Jon Batiste performed his Best Original Song nominee “It Never Went Away” at the Academy Awards on March 10.
The song is from the documentary American Symphony, which documents a year in Batiste’s life, during which he received 11 Grammy nominations, but also saw his wife struggle with leukemia.
As Batiste sang the ballad seated at the piano, clips from famous movie love scenes were projected on a circular screen above him.
In 2020, Batiste won the Best Original Score Oscar for co-composing the score for the animated film Soul. He co-wrote “It Never Went Away” with Grammy winner Dan Wilson, best known as a member of the band Semisonic.
Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Robert Downey Jr. won Best Supporting Actor at the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday night.
He won for his turn as Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s biopic blockbuster Oppenheimer.
This was Downey Jr.’s third nomination and first-ever Oscar win. He was nominated alongside Sterling K. Brown, Robert De Niro, Ryan Gosling and Mark Ruffalo.
“I’d like to thank my terrible childhood, and the academy, in that order,” Downey Jr. said as soon as he took the stage, before giving gratitude to his wife.
“I’d like to thank my veterinarian, I meant, wife, Susan Downey,” he said. “She found me a snarling rescue pet and loved me back to life.”
Five previous winners took to the stage to announce this year’s Best Supporting Actor nominees. Sam Rockwell announced his Iron Man 2 co-star Downey Jr.’s recognition. Rockwell won the award in 2018 for his performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
In what was surely one of the more unique performances in Oscar history, Scott George and the Osage Tribal Singers performed “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People),” the Best Original Song nominee from Killers of the Flower Moon.
The movie is about the real-life murders of members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma after oil was discovered on tribal land. The performance of George’s song was delivered a cappella in the Osage language, with the singers, many in tribal attire, gathered around and pounding on a large drum. As they sang the song, tribal dancers in ceremonial garb performed outside the circle.
In the film, the song is featured in the emotional final scenes. The nomination made George the first Indigenous nominee in the Best Original Song category, and the first member of the Osage Nation to be nominated for an Oscar.
George, who’s been composing Native American songs for 20 years, told The Oklahoman, “When you see us up on stage, we’re hoping that you see us as a people that have survived and that are able to hold on to what we have.”
Cord Jefferson, winner of the Best Adapted Screenplay award for “American Fiction” (Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
While many thought it would be a battle of Barbenheimer in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, it turns out neither Barbie nor Oppenheimer wound up with the trophy. Instead, Cord Jefferson took home the honor for American Fiction.
In his acceptance speech, Jefferson mentioned how he has talked about how so many people passed on the movie and said he worried that made him sound vindictive, noting, “I’m not vindictive anymore. I’ve worked very hard to not be vindictive anymore.”
Instead he said he mentioned it as “a plea to acknowledge and recognize that there are so many people out there who want the opportunity that I was given,” urging studios to take more risks and think about making more films with smaller budgets rather than just $200 million blockbusters.
“I just feel so much joy being here I felt so much joy making this movie and I want other people to experience that joy,” he said. “And they are out there I promise you.”
In the Best Original Screenplay category, Justine Triet and Arthur Harari took home the honor for Anatomy of a Fall, with Justine joking the win would “help me through my midlife crisis, I think.”
She also talked about how the film was written during lockdown, noting, “we were stuck in the house with two kids, it was lockdown and we hooked them up with cartoons to have peace and there was no line between work and diapers.”
Billie Eilish, ‘Barbie’ star America Ferrra & FINNEAS; Disney/Chris Willard
At the Oscars on March 10, Billie Eilish and her brother and collaborator FINNEAS delivered a simple, touching rendition of their Best Original Song nominee, “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie.
On the red carpet ahead of the show, Billie said the most important thing about the performance was that people really focus on the words of the song, and she and FINNEAS made sure of that. He played an upright piano while she stood at a microphone, wearing an oversize black tweed jacket, long straight skirt and Mary Janes, and gave an emotional performance, with her eyes closed.
As the platform the siblings stood on rotated slowly, the pink backdrop behind them opened up to reveal an entire orchestra, raised on a platform high above them, playing along. The performance earned a standing ovation, and Billie and FINNEAS embraced at the end.
If Billie and FINNEAS win Best Original Song, they’ll be the only people to have won two Oscars before the age of 30. They previously won the Best Original Song trophy for their James Bond theme, “No Time to Die.”
Da’Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting Actress at the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday night.
She won for her role as Mary Lamb, the head cook at a boy’s boarding school, in Alexander Payne’s film The Holdovers. Her co-star Paul Giamatti escorted her to the stage, where she gave a tear-filled acceptance speech.
“For so long I’ve wanted to be different, and now I’m thankful to be myself,” Randolph said.
Randolph was nominated alongside Emily Blunt, Danielle Brooks, America Ferrera and Jodie Foster.
Five previous winners took to the stage to announce this year’s nominees. Lupita Nyong’o, who won the award for her role in 12 Years a Slave at the ceremony in 2014, announced Randolph.
Randolph ends her awards season run with a full sweep – winning best supporting actress at the Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAs.
Jimmy Kimmel returned to host the Oscars for a fourth time Sunday night, kicking off the show with a monologue that poked fun of everything from the writers and actors strike, the length of the nominated films and more.
The success of Barbie was a major portion of the monologue, particularly Greta Gerwig’s lack of a Best Director nomination. When he noted that most people thought she should deserved to get a nod, she got a round of applause, at which point Kimmel shot back, “I know you’re clapping but you’re the ones who didn’t vote for her by the way. Don’t act like you had nothing to do with this.”
Robert Downey Jr.‘s past addiction problems were also at the center of some of the jokes, with Kimmel joking the night was “the highest point in Robert Downey Jr.’s long and illustrious career,” before adding, “one of the highest points.”
And while Kimmel largely steered clear of political jokes, he got at least one in.
When talking about Emma Stone’s Poor Things character he cracked, “Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child, like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday night,” referring to Alabama senator Katie Britt.
He also called out the length of many of this year’s nominated films, mentioning that the average length of the top 10 movies was two hours and 23 minutes. Speaking of Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon in particular he noted, “in the time it takes you to watch it you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders yourself.”
As is tradition, before Hollywood biggest night comes the winners list the stars don’t want to be on: The Golden Raspberry Awards.
The “winners” of the 44th Annual Razzie Awards have been announced, and Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey led the pack with five, including Worst Picture, Worst Remake, and Worst Screen Couple for Pooh & Piglet.
The fourth Expendables film took two Razzies.
Sylvester Stallone earned his 38th nomination and 12th Razzie win for the action film, with Megan Fox winning one of two Razzies this year for her supporting turn in the four-quel.
To note, the pair hosting the reveal, viral comedic personalities The Mean Gays aka Aaron Goldenberg and Jake Jonez,repeatedly mispronounced the official title Expend4bles as “Expend-FOURD-ables,” among other attempts.
They also noted some Razzie “snubs,” including Ezra Miller and Ezra Miller as Worst Screen Couple for playing two versions of himself in The Flash.
Here’s the full list of this year’s worst in cinema, according to The Razzies:
WORST PICTURE Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
WORST ACTOR Jon Voight – Mercy
WORST ACTRESS Megan Fox – Johnny & Clyde
WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Megan Fox – Expend4bles
WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR Sylvester Stallone – Expend4ables
WORST SCREEN COUPLE Pooh & Piglet as Blood-Thirsty Slasher – Killers in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
WORST REMAKE, RIP-OFF or SEQUEL Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
WORST DIRECTOR Rhys Frake-Waterfield – Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
SCREENPLAY Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey – Rhys Frake-Waterfield
RAZZIE REDEEMER AWARD 1998 Nominee and current SAG/AFTRA President Fran Drescher, for her brilliant shepherding of the actors’ guild through a prolonged 2023 strike with a successful conclusion.
The fourth Kung Fu Panda filmflew into theaters Thursday night with a respectable $3.8 million in sneak previews, Deadline is reporting.
That number puts the Universal/DreamWorks Animation offering ahead of animated film debuts, including the threequel How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which earned $3 million in sneaks back in 2019, as well as the $2.5 million opening of Disney/Pixar’s Elemental in June 2023, according to the trade.
The movie starring the voices of Jack Black, Oscar winners Viola Davis, Dustin Hoffman and Ke Huy Quan, and Emmy winner Bryan Cranston has been “Certified Fresh” on the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with an Audience Score of 80%; its Critics Score is a 70%.
Deadline predicts Panda will top the box office this weekend, with an estimated take of more than $50 million.
Vanessa Hudgens has a few words for those who comment about her body — and women’s bodies in general.
The High School Musical alum, 35, opened up in the March 6 episode of the She Pivots podcast about being the subject of pregnancy rumors across social media and how that made her feel.
“I literally just had a run-in with the public taking control over their opinion of me in a way that was disrespectful,” Hudgens said, recalling how her social media posts from her bachelorette getaway in October garnered comments theorizing that she was expecting.
“And I was like, ‘That is so rude,'” she continued. “I’m sorry I don’t wear Spanx every day and, like, am a real woman and have a real body.”
Hudgens said she didn’t let the discourse ruin what she called “one of the happiest times of my life” and instead wants to use it as a refresher for people to know “simple rules for being a good person.”
“One of them is don’t make assumptions … in all aspects of life, but especially over other women’s bodies,” she explained.
Hudgens said women “deal with so much with other people trying to control our bodies” and hopes this moment reminds everyone to “be a little more mindful.”
The Spring Breakers actress married husband Cole Tucker in December. During the She Pivots episode, she noted that there’s “nothing wrong about being pregnant, obviously” and said she “can’t wait for the day.”
Hudgens will next be seen Sunday evening on ABC opposite Julianne Hough co-hosting The Oscars Red Carpet Show, which kicks off at 6:30 p.m. ET.
