This year marks the 97th anniversary of the Oscar awards. Last Sunday the highly anticipated ceremony took place with names like Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Doja Cat, Lisa, Queen Latifah, and Raye all having outstanding musical performances.
Personally, my favorite had to have been Ariana Grande’s rendition of “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, which is very fitting for the star after her highly nominated film Wicked was released in November of 2024. She wore a red dress inspired by Dorothy’s slippers in The Wizard of Oz, even having the heel of the shoe on her back.
Although the Wicked stars Grande and Erivo both had amazing performances, unfortunately their film didn’t receive as many awards as anticipated. Despite being nominated for 10 categories, Wicked went home with 2 awards: Best Costume Design (Paul Tazewell) and Best Production Design (Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales.) Cynthia Erivo who was shooting for an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) tonight, unfortunately fell short of her goal when Mikey Madison, star of Anora took home the Oscar for best actress.
Speaking of Anora, this film won big this year. Despite only being nominated for 6 categories, Anora won 5 Oscars including the highly anticipated Best Picture award. For those who are curious, Anora is a romantic comedy about an exotic dancer in Brooklyn who ends up marrying the son of a Russian oligarch. This film has overwhelmingly positive reviews and can be watched on Prime Video.
As usual, there is always some controversy surrounding the Oscars, whether it be about snubs or jokes made. This year, the most memorable moments were definitely in the acceptance speeches. When Emilia Pérez won for best original song, they decided to break out into song and sing for the audience in their acceptance speech, which created a very hard-to-watch moment that has been cemented into my mind ever since. Adrien Brody, who won best actor for his role in The Brutalist, spoke for over 5 and a half minutes straight, setting a new world record for the longest acceptance speech.
However, when speaking about the Oscars we have to mention the Academy as a whole. Throughout the years, the academy has frequently been criticized for their lack of diversity. This year is no different. For many years, people have been calling for the Academy to diversify their voting pool. Slowly but surely, they are starting to have more women and people of color voters. However, the voting pool is still overwhelmingly old white men.
Simply expanding the number of nominees can allow for more diversity in the academy; however, they seem stuck on having 5 per category.
For me, the Oscars this year were mediocre. A lot of people I was rooting for (Wicked and The Substance) did not walk away with many awards. Despite the beautiful musical performances this year, it was still not one of my favorites.
