A timeline of the best action from the show
From host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening jibes to ‘The Shape of Water’s’ triumph
Sunday’s Oscars telecast clocked in at just under four hours. For this critic, here’s how the show broke down, minute by minute. 5:03 p.m. Jimmy Kimmel kicks things off with an acknowledgment of last year’s epic envelope snafu: “This year, when you hear your name called, do not get up right away.”
5:12 p.m. In a “Price Is Right”-style giveaway, Kimmel offers a free jet ski to the winner who gives the shortest speech. A not-so-subtle way of saying “Hurry up, ski-daddle.”
5:16 p.m. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Sam Rockwell wins supporting actor for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” I love it when the winners acknowledge the other nominees by name, as Rockwell did with so much class. (Yes, he had the names written down, but still.)
5:33 p.m. Costume designer Mark Bridges wins for “Phantom Thread.” I don’t think there will be a more deserved win this evening, but I’m hoping to be proved wrong.
6:01 p.m. “Dunkirk” scores a double win for sound editing and sound mixing, suggesting a possible surge in the technical categories, similar to what Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” pulled off seven years ago.
6:10 p.m. And here come the nominees for production design, which means another garish visual reminder of that liveaction “Beauty and the Beast” thing from last year. Fortunately, a much better beauty-and-the-beast movie wins: “The Shape of Water.”
6:23 p.m. No luck for “Loveless” in the foreign-language film category, but happily, it goes to my next favorite of the bunch, “A Fantastic Woman.” The gifted Chilean director Sebastián Lelio takes the stage with Daniela Vega, who plays the movie’s title role about a transgender woman whose way of life is threatened when she loses her partner, and her costar Francisco Reyes.
6:30 p.m. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Allison Janney wins supporting actress for “I, Tonya.”
6:41 p.m. Disney/Pixar’s “Coco” wins the animated feature Oscar, and it takes nothing away from it to say that I wish more voters had seen “The Breadwinner.”
6:52 p.m. And the visual effects award goes to “Blade Runner 2049.” Does this bode well for the film’s cinematographer, perpetual Oscars bridesmaid Roger Deakins? 6:57 p.m. Lee Smith nabs the editing prize for finessing the time-hopping World War II thriller “Dunkirk” into a lean, mean 106 minutes. Imagine the wonders he could work with this broadcast.
7:05 p.m. Kimmel, Gal Gadot, Lupita Nyong’o, Margot Robbie, Mark Hamill, Guillermo del Toro and others head to the multiplex next door — and interrupt a preview screening of “A Wrinkle in Time” — to surprise an audience of moviegoers. Must we really have one of these smarmy, faux-populist mingling-with-the-masses stunts every year? As others have pointed out, if these folks gave a hoot about the
Oscars, they’d probably be at home watching.
7:25 p.m. Deep respect to Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra and Salma Hayek, all of whom came forward to share their brutal stories of sexual harassment and/or abuse by Harvey Weinstein in recent months, and who now take the stage to highlight the #TimesUp movement.
7:32 p.m. A standing ovation for 89year-old James Ivory, a three-time director nominee, who wins his first Oscar, for adapting the “Call Me by Your Name” screenplay. He pays moving tribute to his late, great longtime partners, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Ismail Merchant.
7:36 p.m. Another standing ovation, this time for the original screenplay winner, Jordan Peele for “Get Out.” It’s glorious to see this year’s winning screenwriters get such raucous applause, and for entirely different reasons: one for a truly grand career, another for a startling new voice. 7:49 p.m. As we all expected but almost didn’t dare to hope, legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins wins his first Oscar in 14 nominations, for “Blade Runner 2049.”
8:14 p.m. Nobody would expect a speaker as boisterous and effusive as Guillermo del Toro to compete for the jet ski, but he gives a relatively terse speech, albeit one filled with emotion. Acknowledging his friends and fellow winners Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, he pays tribute to his immigrant experience and the boundary-shattering power of the medium: “The greatest thing art does, and our industry does, is erase the lines in the sand.”
8:24 p.m. To absolutely no one’s surprise (sensing a pattern?), Gary Oldman wins lead actor for “Darkest Hour.” He takes the advice that J.K. Simmons gave a few years ago and thanks his mother.
8:30 p.m. Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence — or, as I like to think of them, “Silver Lambings Playbook” — arrive to present the award for lead actress. Foster’s on crutches, setting up a Meryl Streep/Tonya Harding joke that gets a somewhat guilty-looking laugh from “I, Tonya” nominee Margot Robbie.
8:34 p.m. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Frances McDormand wins lead actress for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” And in a moment that will surely go down in the Oscars history books, she quite literally brings every female nominee in the room to her feet.
8:47 p.m. Del Toro retakes the stage, this time with his cast and crew in tow, as “The Shape of Water” wins best picture. After last year’s shocking surprises and a series of splits between picture and director, a lot of industry observers were predicting an upset by “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “Get Out,” “Lady Bird” or “Dunkirk.”
But it didn’t happen this year. “The Shape of Water,” the nomination leader with 13 and the favorite of the producers and directors guild, was the obvious choice all along.
While it wasn’t my favorite of the nominees, there’s something about this outcome that feels curiously right.