Entertainment

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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Jamie Lee Curtis won Best Supporting Actress Sunday night at the 95th Academy Awards.

The 64-year-old actress earned the accolade for her role as Deirdre Beaubeirdre in the critically acclaimed movie Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Curtis wasted no time making note of the many people it took to get her to this point. 

“I know it looks like I’m standing up here by myself but I am not, I am hundreds of people. I’m hundreds of people,” she began.

The actress went on to thank her team, family, and her supporters, stating, “To all of the people who have supported the genre movies that I’ve made for all these years, the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, we just won an Oscar together!”

As she became visibly emotional and choked back tears, Curtis concluded, “And my mother and my father were both nominated for Oscars in different categories — I just won an Oscar.”

Fellow nominees for the Best Supporting Actress were Angela Bassett for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Hong Chau for The Whale, Kerry Condon for The Banshees of Inisherin and Stephanie Hsu for Everything Everywhere All at Once.

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Ke Huy Quan continued his winning ways at Sunday night’s Oscars, nabbing Best Supporting Actor for his role of Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

“My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp and somehow I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage,” Quan tearfully shared in his acceptance speech. “They say stories like this only happen in the movies I cannot believe it’s happening to me. This, this is the American dream.”

After thanking members of his family, including his wife who he said “month after month, year after year for 20 years told me that one day my time will come.” He added, “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.”

The win comes after Quan, who got his big screen debut playing Short Round in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, already took home the Golden Globe and SAG Award for the role.

With his win, Quan became the first Vietnam-born actor to win the Oscar for an acting performance. He’s also now the first actor to win an Oscar for portraying a Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese-speaking character.

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Host Jimmy Kimmel brought the funny with his opening monologue to kick off the 95th Annual Academy Awards Sunday night.

Before getting to the winners, Kimmel opened up the show parachuting down from the ceiling like a scene out of one of the night’s nominated films Top Gun: Maverick. 

The late night talk show host wasted no time getting to his jokes, poking fun at the latest weight loss craze that seems to be sweeping Hollywood — Ozempic, an injectable prescription drug. 

“Everybody looks so great,” he began. “When I look around this room, I can’t help but wonder, is Ozempic right for me?”

Kimmel also made a few lighthearted jokes aimed at some of the A-list nominees and attendees including Nicole Kidman, who is featured in a preview at AMC theaters before films play on the big screen.

“I am happy to see that Nicole Kidman has finally been released from that abandoned AMC — where she has been held captive for most two full years now,” he said. “Good to have you back, Nicole. And thank you for encouraging people who were already at the movie theater to go to the movie theater. “

Austin Butler, a first-time nominee, also got a shout-out, with Kimmel making note of Butler’s Elvis accent that seems to be sticking around. “He was so convincing as Elvis, still is,” he joked. 

He also addressed last year’s slap between Will Smith and Chris Rock, stating that “the Academy has a crisis team in place.”

“If anything unpredictable or violent happens during the ceremony, just do what you did last year. Nothing. Sit there and do absolutely nothing,” he advised. “Maybe even give the assailant a hug.”

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