The 98th annual Academy Awards were held Sunday, March 15th in the heart of Los Angeles, California with Conan O’Brien as host for the second time. The biggest winner of the night was the action-laced crime thriller "One Battle After Another" which received six awards from its 13 nominations. But even though "One Battle After Another" won the categories of Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, let’s not forget the other big film of this Oscar night, "Sinners," the bold period drama/musical/vampire horror explosion. "Sinners" won four categories and received 16 nominations from a (possible) total of 18 categories.
"Sinners" received more Academy Award nominations this year than any other film in Academy history. That is not something to glaze over or forget. This film has evidently made a significant splash in cinematic history (both critically and commercially). This record of 16 nominations broke the previous record of 14 nominations which three different films have received ("All About Eve" in 1951, "Titanic" in 1998, and "La La Land" in 2017). Even though we’re approaching the centennial year of this Hollywood institution, exciting milestones still happened at the Oscars this year.
The Academy Awards introduced the new category of Best Casting this year, acknowledging the extensive, behind-the-scenes work of casting directors who sit through auditions, coordinate with talent agencies, and sometimes spend months searching for the right performer to fill the right role. Best Casting is the first new competitive category added since the Best Animated Feature Film category was added to the Oscars in 2001. The winner of Best Casting was Cassandra Kulukundis for "One Battle After Another."
The winner for Best Cinematography was Autumn Durald Arkapaw for "Sinners." She’s the first female to ever win this category and the first Black person to win this category. She’s also only the third Black person even nominated in this category.
In international breakthroughs, Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for "Hamnet" (no surprise) making her the first Irish actress to win this category. The quiet, articulate, family drama from Norway, "Sentimental Value" won Best International Feature Film. After seven Norwegian films being nominated previously in this category, "Sentimental Value" is the first one to ever win.
I was shocked when I learned this milestone, decades in the making for Norway, especially since Norway has had wonderful films nominated in the past that I've loved. Some of these films include "The Worst Person in the World" (2021), "Kon-Tiki" (2012), and "Pathfinder" (1987).
In the Best Original Song category, most winners have been in the English language. That tradition did not change this year, but the winning song “Golden” is the first Kpop song to win this category. “Golden” is sung by a trio of Asian American women and is from the popular animated film "KPop Demon Hunters" which also won Best Animated Feature. “Golden” honors the first Korean-American person to ever win in this category.
No film sweeped the ceremony, no envelopes were mixed up, and nobody was overtly political. In general, this year’s ceremony was ordinary with only a few surprises. One of the surprises being a tie in the Best Live Action Short Film category which was awarded to the films "The Singers" and "Two People Exchanging Saliva." (That title sounds fun. Doesn’t it?) Ties are rare at the Oscars, happening only six times before this year. The most famous tie is probably from 1969 when Barbra Streisand and Katherine Hepburn both won for Best Actress in their respective films. The most recent tie was in 2013 when the films "Skyfall" and "Zero Dark Thirty" won for Best Sound Editing.
With the two biggest contenders of the night being "Sinners" and "One Battle After Another," these films, and the Oscars as a whole, clearly reflect the current racial and social climate of the country with the ceremony’s primary focus on two politically charged, large-scale, and exuberantly violent films.
