“Everything” and “Nothing new in the West” dominate the Oscar

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis won supporting actor awards for the indie hit “Everything Everywhere All at Once” on Sunday at the 95th Annual Los Angeles Academy Awards, where the host Jimmy Kimmel has promised a “no frills” evening as Hollywood reunites for a ceremony that will attempt to cap off one of the most infamous moments in Oscar history.

Quan, who began his acting career as a child, capped his remarkable return to filmmaking with the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Adored for his roles as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “Goonies”, he almost gave up acting before being cast in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”.

His triumph, one of the most anticipated of the evening, was, despite what was anticipated, one of the most emotional moments. The audience, including his childhood director on “Temple of Doom,” Steven Spielberg, joined in a standing ovation for Quan, who held back tears.

“Mom, I just won an Oscar!” said Quan, whose family fled Vietnam during the war when he was a child.

“They say stories like this only happen in movies. I can’t believe this is happening,” Quan said. “It’s the American dream.”

Minutes later, Quan’s co-star Jamie Lee Curtis won Best Supporting Actress. His win, in one of the most competitive categories of the year, robbed comic book fans of a win. Had ‘Black Panther: Wakanda’s Angela Bassett won, she would have been the first actress to win an Oscar for a Marvel movie.

The statuette made history for Curtis, who won his first Oscar and called himself a “nepo baby” (or person favored by nepotism) when he won the Screen Actors Guild Awards at the screen. She’s a rare Oscar winner whose parents were Oscar nominees, which she touched on fondly during her speech. His father Tony Curtis was nominated for “The Defiant Ones” (“Fugitives”) in 1959 and his mother Janet Leigh was nominated in 1961 for “Psycho” (“Psycho”). Curtis thanked the “hundreds” of people who led her to win.

The near-consecutive wins for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” seemed like a sign of what could be to come for the rest of the night. The film, which was nominated in 11 categories, is the best picture shortlist favorite.

La epopeya de la Primera Guerra Mundial hablada en lengua alemana “Im Westen nichts Neues” (“Sin novedad en el frente”), the main candidate of Netflix este año, se llevó cuatro premios mientras la academia colmaba de honores a esta desgarradora película contra War. It won in the Cinematography, Production Design, Original Score, and International Feature categories, beating “Argentina, 1985”, which had strong support in Latin America, in the latter category.

The first prize of the evening went to Guillermo del Toro, for his animated film “The Pinocchio of Guillermo del Toro”. This is the third Oscar for the Mexican filmmaker, who previously won Oscars for Best Direction and Best Picture for ‘The Shape of Water’ in 2018.

Although Bassett lost the supporting actress award, Ruth E. Carter won the costume design award for ‘Wakanda Forever’, four years after becoming the first black designer to win an Oscar for ‘Black Panther. “. This award made Carter the first black woman to win two Oscars.

“Thank you to the Academy for recognizing the superhero who is a black woman,” Carter said. “She endures, she loves, she overcomes, she is every woman in this movie.”

Carter dedicated the award to her mother, who she said died last week at the age of 101.

The ceremony, broadcast live on ABC and TNT, began in traditional fashion, with a montage of the year’s films in which Kimmel appeared in a stand of “Top Gun: Maverick”) and a lengthy monologue. Kimmel, who is hosting for the third time, did not immediately comment on Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock at the ceremony last year.

But after a series of jokes, including one which mentioned that two ‘Encino Man’ stars, Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser, had been nominated, Kimmel pointed out that there were many Irish actors nominated for the Oscars, “this which means the odds of another stage fight, they just went really high.”

The comedian opened up about the incident last year, after which Smith won Best Actor. He said that if anyone tries to commit an act of violence this year: “He’ll get the Best Actor Oscar and be allowed to give a 19-minute speech.”

But Kimmel added that anyone who wants to get smart this year will have to go through a formidable battalion of bodyguards, including Michael B. Jordan, Michelle Yeoh, Steven Spielberg and his show’s “security guard”, Guillermo Rodriguez.

The producers revamped some aspects of the Oscars. For the first time in six decades, the carpet is champagne and not red. And streaming is set to be more interactive than ever.

But the academy is still trying to recover after several years of the pandemic and its television broadcast’s audience problems, it also expects a calmer gala than last year. He even created a crisis management team to help better respond to surprises. The academy called its response to Smith’s actions last year “inadequate”.

The Oscars will attempt to regain some of their luster. One thing works in their favor: the ranking of the best films of this year is filled with blockbusters. Viewership ratings tend to increase when nominees are more popular, which certainly applies to “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” and, to a lesser extent, “Elvis” and ” Everything Everywhere All at Once”.

___

Jake Coyle is on Twitter as http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

___

Journalist Lindsey Bahr contributed to this report.