JeffTheAlpaca

I wonder why they did not show Samuel L. Jackson getting the honory Oscar and Michael J. Fox getting the humanitarian award but they have time to show a shitty Little Mermaid trailer?

Those categories use to be a big deal and you would see the old legends like Peter O' Toole finally getting a Oscar.

Decker

They stopped giving out those on Oscar night years ago. If cuts had to be made somewhere I would rather cut those than the feature film awards like last year when Dune won like 6 Oscars but almost none during the Telecast. That said, they really do need to relegate the Short awards to during the Red Carpet ceremony or something -- Nobody has seen those and nobody cares.

And Samuel L Jackson won his honorary Oscar over a year ago.

JeffTheAlpaca

They missed a chance for a epic moment with a Samuel L Jackson speech laced with profanities

It would have been a poweful momen to see Michael J. Fox getting a moment with everbody standing in applause and and take out the short film category or some other awards that don't need to be televised.

whotony

Shortly after the Oscar show ended I saw a T Mobile add that has Travolta showing up at Zack Braff and Donald Faison’s fake tv homes to promote t mobile and they all sang the Olivia Duet together and Travolta wasn’t all teary eyed then.

GoldenJCJ

A cool little Goonies tidbit I heard about Ke Huy Quan. He thanked Jeff Cohen (Chunk in The Goonies) during his acceptance speech. I assumed they were just friends, which they are, but Cohen, who’s an Entertainment lawyer, apparently brokered the deal for Quan to star in EEAaO.

GuessWho

Disney owns ABC, so...

Decker

And that was an ad, not part of the telecast, except for the intro by Melissa McCarthy and Halle Bailey.

Decker

That was a Super Bowl ad.

Brian T

Nice to see Yeoh give shout-outs to Malaysia (and her mom!) and Hong Kong. Hopefully it corrects the notion that some people still have that she's just "from China", like it's some catch-all. Hope this might also turn more people on to her early films, to see what a powerhouse she was right out of the gate. Thought I heard the voiceover mention her lack of formal martial arts training as she was walking to the stage. Truth be told, the vast majority of people who've done martial arts scenes in Hong Kong have little to no formal martial arts training. That's testament to why the HK choreographers were so highly regarded and their styles eventually absorbed into Hollywood around the same time Yeoh was.

rocket1312

That and the fact that they doubled up on all of the awards so there were literally half as many presenters as you'd see in other years.

And I'll stand with those who think the shorts categories need to be shown the door. Not only does no one care, but it's almost a different medium. They stick out like a sore thumb. No disrespect to the people involved, but if they had cut those and replaced them with one good comedy bit or some other kind of "celebrate the movies" presentation, it would have made for a much better show.

GoldenJCJ

^ True. I didn’t consider that but I did notice them doubling up on presenter duties. I’m all for it. It seemed to streamline the process a bit and probably helped keep the show under 4 hours. Although, a piece of advice would be to get more Brad Pitts, Leo DiCaprios, and Tom Hanks’ to present those awards and fewer Eva Longorias, Mindy Kalings, and Cara Delevingnes. It felt like they had more TV personalities than movie stars presenting.

I’m also totally for more “why we love the movies” moments. Those are my favorite parts of the Oscars, when done right. Personally I’d avoid comedy bits. They’re almost always cringey and just waste time. The Q&A bit they did last night while they were setting up Rihanna’s stage was painful and the worst part of the show, despite being necessary to give them time to set the stage.

DJariya

Michelle Yeoh’s Mom and Niece’s reactions at their watch party

rocket1312

Doubling up the awards maybe felt like it streamlined the show, but it still ran 3:40, which puts it about equal with last year and makes it one of the longer shows of the last 20 years. I don't think we've have a 4 hour show since 2002, which was the longest ever.

GoldenJCJ

Angela Bassett not being the most gracious loser. You can see she doesn’t clap when Jamie Lee Curtis wins and as Curtis is walking up to accept her award, you can see Bassett isn’t even standing up.

rocket1312

In a few years I think we're going to look back and wonder what the Academy was thinking giving the award to Curtis. She probably wasn't even the best supporting actress performance in her own movie. I honestly believe this was a Hollywood rebuke of Marvel more than anything. For months we've been hearing that Bassett was going to be the first person to win for a Marvel movie and it's like the Academy collectively said "Not on our watch!"

It probably didn't help that Wakanda Forever just wasn't that good. EEAAO was a juggernaut and once that snowball started rolling, no one was going to get in its way.

windom

Where is Jack Nicholson? The Oscars really aren't the same since he stopped attending. Didn't see Leo there either.

Paff

Yeah, I've never really been blown away by the "Michelle Yeoh has no formal martial arts training" factoid, because as also mentioned she does have ballet training, and modern Chinese wushu is much more of a dance than an actual fighting style. I studied it for a few years, even won a few competitions, but believe me, if I break out any of my kung fu in a real fight I'm gonna get my ass kicked. Hard.

Ash Ketchum

Donnie Yen, her co-star from BUTTERFLY AND SWORD (1993) and WING CHUN (1994), appeared on the stage last night also, when he introduced the Best Song performance from EEAAO. I wish someone had pointed out the connection between Yeoh and Yen.

TomOpus

I know people get nervous and forget names but I was surprised Ke Huy Quan didn't thank Steven since Temple of Doom was his first movie.

GoldenJCJ

I can’t remember which awards show it was (maybe Golden Globes?) but Quan gave an acceptance speech a month or two ago where he thanked Spielberg and mentioned that exactly. He thanked him for giving him his first role in Temple of Doom. I imagine actors who take home a ton of awards for one movie, and have to give acceptance speeches to the same group of people over and over, probably want to mix it up a bit so they’re not saying the same thing multiple times.

GoldenJCJ

It really hasn’t. I think Nicholson’s days of attending these things are long over. I think I heard he was suffering from dementia. He doesn’t even attend Lakers games anymore.

HN

Didn't see applause but she does stand eventually

Paff

You could very well be right (that Curtis' win was the Academy thumbing their nose at Marvel), but there's also no doubt that the Academy follows trends and patterns in their selections. Like there was a long pattern of them giving statues to actors who portray a well known person like Ray Charles, June Carter Cash, Truman Capote, or Freddie Mercury. Their acting performance is often little more than a 2-hour impersonation. It's why I wouldn't have been terribly surprised if Austin Butler had won last night.

Likewise, there's also the trend of a beloved actor that primarily makes crowd pleasing but shallow popcorn movies finally in a "serious" role. See Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon. They realize it might be the only time they can give that actor a statue so they do.

Lastly, there's also a tendency to make actors wait a little for their Oscar. Pay their dues, so to speak. It's the only reason I can think of that explains Saorise Ronan still not having an Oscar. "She's young, there's plenty of time". That may be why Curtis won as opposed to Stephanie Hsu, who had much more screen time and much more emotional requirements for her part in the same movie. But I'll also bet that Hsu never gets another nomination, although I'd love to be wrong about that.

Decker

Look what you did, Academy voters :

GoldenJCJ

^ I think it’s a safe bet that none of the actors involved in EEAaO will ever get another Oscar nomination again.