OscarsOscars‘Anora’ completed its awards season resurgence with a dominant showing at the 97th Academy Awards, yet we can’t stop thinking about some … choice musical performances
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By Miles SurreyMarch 3, 6:24 am UTC • 6 min
A long and unpredictable awards season finally came to a close with the 97th Academy Awards. (There’s no rest for the Wicked franchise, however, with a sequel arriving this fall that’ll be eager to compete in 2026.) Amid a telecast that ran longer than The Brutalist, Sean Baker had a historic evening, and Emilia Pérez had an Oscars to forget. For all that and more, check out The Ringer’s winners and losers from Sunday night’s ceremony.
As a longtime Conan-head, I was hoping the comedian would bring some of his old late-night flair to his first Academy Awards hosting gig. Within minutes, Conan delivered, parodying The Substance by emerging out of Demi Moore’s body in a suit and tie before his opening monologue. What followed was classic Conan: a mix of light ribbing of the nominees and heaps of self-deprecation. (“A Complete Unknown, A Real Pain, Nosferatu—these are just some of the names I was called on the red carpet.”) There was also a song-and-dance number (following Conan’s promise that he wouldn’t waste our time) that featured a Dune sandworm and a dude in a Deadpool costume: an amusing bit that turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if we’re going to go over time at the Oscars, I want Coco at the wheel.
Leading up to the Oscars, Anora seemed like the front-runner for Best Picture, but then Conclave picked up wins at the BAFTAs and Screen Actors Guild Awards. You could imagine a world where Conclave—a solid, middlebrow drama that feels like it was teleported from the ’90s—edged out a movie tackling a subject like sex work. But with five wins, including Best Picture, Anora didn’t just have a big night: Sean Baker made history along the way. With wins in Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, Baker became the first person to win four Oscars for the same film. (A couple clarifications: Walt Disney did win four Oscars in 1953, but they were for different movies; Bong Joon-ho, meanwhile, did win four Oscars for Parasite in 2020, but Best International Feature is credited to the country it was made in. A stupid technicality but a real one nevertheless.)
Across his acceptance speeches, Baker made pleas for supporting independent cinema and the theatrical experience, adding to the feel-good factor throughout the night. As I’m writing this, I’m sure Baker and his team—including Mikey Madison, who upset Demi Moore to win Best Actress—are partying as hard as the son of a Russian oligarch.
When the Oscar nominations were announced in January, Emilia Pérez was one nomination away from tying the record for the most all time. At that point, it felt like a matter of when, not if, Emilia Pérez would become the worst Best Picture winner since Crash. But after Karla Sofía Gascón’s offensive social media posts were resurfaced by journalist Sarah Hagi, Emilia Pérez became less of a front-runner than the awkward pariah of awards season. Even Best International Feature, once a near lock, ended up going to I’m Still Here, illustrating just how badly Emilia Pérez’s Oscar chances had nose-dived. Of course, Emilia Pérez had two things going for it that even a scandal couldn’t tarnish: a worthy supporting performance from Zoe Saldaña—a well-liked actress finally getting her due after headlining some of the highest-grossing movies of all time—and multiple nominations for Best Original Song.
And so Emilia Pérez came away with two Oscars, but even then, the film managed to overstay its welcome. After Mick Jagger(!) presented the Best Original Song Oscar to Clément Ducol, Camille, and Jacques Audiard for “El Mal,” Camille started singing(!!) until the trio was, mercifully, played off by the orchestra. The viewers at home received a serious case of secondhand cringe; fellow Best Original Song nominee Diane Warren, after losing the award for the 16th time, must be wondering what she has to do to win if these folks are getting an Oscar ahead of her.
While Anora was the night’s biggest winner, the ceremony managed to show a bit of love to many of the Best Picture nominees. In fact, half the Best Picture lineup managed to win at least two Oscars: Anora (five), The Brutalist (three), Dune: Part Two (two), Emilia Pérez (two), and Wicked (two). If there’s one Best Picture contender that might come away dissatisfied, it’s Conclave, which had momentum to play spoiler in several categories but only picked up a win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Not all of these movies are my cup of tea—[cough cough] Wicked—but taken together, it shows how the Oscars are capable of celebrating films of all shapes and sizes.
The Best Animated Feature category has long been dominated by heavyweight animation studios like Disney and Pixar, the latter of which has been folded into the House of Mouse—so much so that DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot would’ve been seen as a nice change of pace. But the real underdog of the race was Flow, a Latvian indie film made over five and a half years with an open-source 3D modeling program. Flow isn’t just an endearing success story; it’s a genuine artistic achievement that tells a compelling story of animals banding together after being displaced by a flood, with no traditional dialogue (the cat meows, the dogs bark, etc.). It’s only fitting that, in a year in which Anora triumphed, Flow became the little indie that could and won Best Animated Feature. To my fellow cat owners of the world: Give your feline friends a snuggle tonight to celebrate.
There was technically a reason for the Academy Awards to celebrate the James Bond franchise: Longtime stewards Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were awarded an honorary Oscar at the Governor Awards this past November. But between Amazon’s recent acquisition of the Bond IP and the Academy already celebrating the franchise two years ago on its 60th anniversary, a musical interlude combining several Bond themes was … strange to witness. It was particularly confusing when the whole thing led off wordlessly with Margaret Qualley seductively staring into the camera—on my life, I thought for a second she was being revealed as the newest 007. (This is the first and last time I’ll ever question the presence of Margaret Qualley on my screen.)
If Amazon taking over the franchise ends up being as bad as some fans fear, this might not be remembered as a Bond tribute, but a eulogy.
Best Documentary Feature went to No Other Land, a harrowing account of the destruction of Palestinian homes in the southern West Bank from directors Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor. In an acceptance speech from Adra and Abraham—a Palestinian and Israeli, respectively—the duo implored for a peaceful resolution to the Gaza conflict. “We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control,” Abraham said. “There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people.” Considering No Other Land has yet to receive American distribution—and that The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer faced backlash last year for addressing the conflict in his acceptance speech—the documentary’s warm reception from attendees was a (small) step in the right direction for the industry.
If you’re going to livestream Hollywood’s biggest night—an event watched by tens of millions of people in the United States alone—you want everything to go off without a hitch. That was, uh, not the case with Hulu. The streamer got off to a terrible start, with technical difficulties interrupting the beginning of the Oscar telecast. Not great, but there was plenty of time to make a recovery—especially when the ceremony was nearly four hours long. But then [deep breath] Hulu prematurely ended the livestream before Best Actress and Best Picture were handed out. A really tough beat for Hulu, and if the Academy is feeling petty, they might think twice about renewing their broadcasting partnership with Disney and ABC once the contract expires in 2028.
Miles writes about television, film, and whatever your dad is interested in. He is based in Brooklyn.
