How This Year’s Best Picture Oscar Nominees Fight the Power

In an awards season dominated by Oscars rules discussion and the multiversal “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the night is finally here. And guess what? Everything went just about as expected.

Michelle Yeoh’s mother couldn’t be prouder at her history-making win at the Oscars.

The soft pink and beige background on the red carpet of this year’s Oscars ceremony echoed the generally much more mellow tone of the evening than we have been used to in the recent past. If last year’s event was one of the most disjointed and chaotic in years, the 2023 evening hosted by Jimmy Kimmel was reassuringly smooth sailing, starting with a (for my money) genuinely funny and charming opening set of jokes.

Fans’ hearts were melting.

In at least one universe, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a Best Picture winner!

Katie Reul editor Winning best picture at the Academy Awards, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” capped off a ground-breaking awards season and became the most-awarded best picture winner since 2008’s “Slumdog Millionaire.” “Everything Everywhere” took home seven Oscars on Sunday night, including best picture, director, original screenplay, lead actress, supporting actress, supporting actor and editing. At the 2009 Oscars, Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” scored eight awards, including best picture, director, adapted screenplay, cinematography, editing, score, original song and sound mixing. Before “Everything Everywhere,” the closest a best picture winner has gotten to topping that number was the 2010 ceremony, when “The Hurt Locker” won six Oscars.

Meredith Woerner Deputy Editor, Variety.com Brendan Fraser, the ’90s heartthrob who made a career comeback with his awards season run for “The Whale,” won the Oscar for best actor. An emotional Fraser got on stage and exclaimed, “so this is what the multiverse looks like!” He then continued down a nautical-themed speech thanking his cast, crew and family. “I’m grateful to Darren Aronofsky for throwing me a creative lifeline and hauling me aboard the good ship ‘The Whale,'” Fraser said. “That was written by Samuel D. Hunter who is our lighthouse. Gentleman, you laid your whale-sized hearts bare so that we could see into your souls like no one else could do. It is my honor to be named alongside you in this category. I want to tell you that only whales can swim at the depth of talent of Hong Chau [fellow nominee].”

Everything Everywhere All at Once is the big winner of the night!

To delight to her millions of fans around the globe, Michelle Yeoh is now an Oscar winner. The legendary star of Hong Kong action films was honored with the Best Actress Academy Award for her role in The Daniels’ “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Yeoh also made history as the first Southeast Asian woman to win the Best Actress Oscar.

Some in the industry might be irked that the Oscars and SXSW are colliding on the same weekend this year, however, it’s a win-win for both tonight: For a year ago, A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once blasted off here in Austin, TX as the festival’s opening night film. The movie becomes the first world premiere to debut at SXSW and win Oscar’s Best Picture.

It’s crowning achievement almost inevitable for weeks, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” was named Best Picture at the 95th Academy Awards. Directed, written and produced by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who also twon Oscars earlier in the telecast, the film also makes history as A24 Films second Best Picture winner in just 12 years.

Kerry Condon is a bright light at the 2023 Academy Awards!

Hong Chau is a vision in a sleek pink dress on the red carpet at the 2023 Oscars.

The Academy doesn’t always get it right, according to the critics.

Hollywood Reporter survey found that a majority would like to go back and change their 1977 votes for “Rocky” to “All the President’s Men.” And looking back at 1999, if they had to do it all over again, they’d give the gold to war epic “Saving Private Ryan” instead of the largely-forgotten “Shakespeare in Love.” But there have been a lot more recipients of Hollywood’s highest honor that have fallen out of favor — and sometimes in epic fashion. Here are 11 examples of Best Picture winners that probably wouldn’t win the award in 2023 — that is, if they were even green-lighted in the first place.

in the words of Wrap reviewer Robert Abele, “swirls sci-fi, metaphysics, martial arts, slapstick, star power, and pop culture shout-outs into the type of experience that one can imagine the late exhibition gimmick impresario William Castle — he who notoriously wired theater seats so they buzzed — responding with, ‘Yeah, this doesn’t need my help.’”What it did not seem to be back then was any kind of awards movie, except maybe if the Film Independent Spirit Awards wanted to get crazy. The 94th Oscars hadn’t even taken place at that point – but if anybody had dared suggest that at the 95th Oscars in 366 days, “Everything Everywhere” would pick up a passel of awards, including Best Picture, they would have been dismissed as a visitor from one of the wildest corners of the multiverse through which Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang travels.You think a world where people have hot dogs for fingers is weird? Well, how about one in which a movie with hot-dog fingers and dildo battles wins Best Picture? But it turns out that we might just be living in a universe where 9,579 film professionals in the Academy can come to the consensus that “Everything Everywhere” is the best movie of 2022.

The Oscars is the greatest promotional event ever created for movies, and this year there’s a lot worth promoting. The 2022 crop of Best Picture nominees offer something for everyone, from action-packed blockbusters like Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water to the obligatory musical biopic featuring a standout lead performance to more challenging fare like Tár and Everything Everywhere All At Once.

“Top Gun: Maverick” is soaring to new heights.

The Academy Awards are nearly upon us.