With ‘I’m Just Ken,’ Ryan Gosling brings down the Mojo Dojo Casa House
When the smoke cleared after Sunday night’s Oscars show, “Oppenheimer” pulled seven wins out of its 13 Oscar nominations — and I pulled eight losses out of my 23 predictions.
More on my poor showing later. Let’s start with the biggest upset of the night.
Long before host Jimmy Kimmel told his first joke, the categories of best picture, supporting actress, supporting actor, and actor were practically set in stone. And the stone proved correct: Cillian Murphy took actor for “Oppenheimer,” his co-star Robert Downey Jr. got supporting actor, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph capped her streak of awards wins for “The Holdovers” with the big golden boy named (as one story goes) Oscar because it reminded Bette Davis of her then-husband Oscar’s booty.
Best actress was the only wild-card; despite the odds favoring Lily Gladstone for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” there were hints of an upset by Emma Stone (for “Poor Things”) or Sandra Hüller (for “Anatomy of a Fall”). Even I questioned if I should have predicted Stone.
In the end, the Oscar didn’t go to the favorite, but to the actor who co-starred in 2008’s “The Favourite.” Stone’s second win, for a film directed by her “Favourite” helmer, Yorgos Lanthimos, put her in the unenviable position of being the upcoming subject of 8 million thinkpieces lambasting the Academy for passing up a chance to make history with its first win for a Native American actor in this category.
Stone’s “La La Land” co-star, Ryan “Hey Girl” Gosling, brought down the Mojo Dojo Casa House (and brought in guitarist Slash) with his killer performance of the Oscar-nominated “Barbie” song “I’m Just Ken.” It was the highlight of the evening, complete with choreography, appearances by the other Kens, and an impromptu sing-along with director Greta Gerwig and Stereotypical Barbie herself, Margot Robbie.
The musical number was as raucous and memorable as Robin Williams’s unforgettable take on “Blame Canada” at the 2000 Oscars. Williams put in all that work, knocking a superior song out of the box, and then the Academy turned around and gave the Oscar to Phil Collins’s schmaltzy “Tarzan” theme, “You’ll Be in My Heart.”
Sunday night, history repeated itself, as this year’s Oscar went to the other song from “Barbie,” “What Was I Made For?” This marked the second win for Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell. With this win, Eilish becomes the youngest person ever to win two Oscars, both for weepy, wispy songs from the Sarah McLachlan school of songwriting. The Barbie song triumphed over the Ken song, providing the only win of the night for the biggest film of 2023.
“Poor Things” won best costume design and best production design, the two Oscars “Barbie” had a good shot of winning. The steampunk visions and super-ruffled attire of its characters were apparently more palatable than the flawless re-creation of a doll’s universe. I really can’t complain about Oscar’s choices here, though I would have voted for “Barbie.”
However, I can kvetch about the Oscars’ continuously bad treatment of the In Memoriam segment. Because the camera focused on the dancers onstage, I could barely read the names of those who left us. Even worse, we got the “here’s everybody else” screen that was just a bunch of microscopic names crammed together. ABC should be ashamed.
I can also grumble about the evening’s worst win, Wes Anderson’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” taking best live-action short. This category was going to garner the worst outcome for me regardless, as I’d predicted the even more dreadful “Red, White and Blue” to win.
Considering I was wrong about all three of my shorts predictions, I maybe should officially retire from writing critic’s notebooks on the Oscar-nominated shorts packages. It was all for naught, a suitable punishment for a cocky critic. Other highlights:
Al Pacino broke protocol by not bothering to read the best picture nominees; he simply blurted out that the winner was “Oppenheimer.” This followed a Kimmel joke about the “La La Land”/“Moonlight” best picture debacle from 2017, so I immediately yelled out “check Pacino’s envelope!” Pacino was right, by the way.
The speeches by directors Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”) and Mstyslav Chernov (“20 Days in Mariupol”) brought a sobering dose of reality to the proceedings by focusing on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Chernov said he may be the first director on the Oscars stage to wish he’d never made his film.
Acceptance speeches by Robert Downey Jr. and Da’Vine Joy Randolph were also high points. RDJ thanked his stylist, his lawyer, and “his terrible childhood.” Randolph spoke to many of us who have been the only Black person in the room; her heartfelt comments brought tears to the eyes of her co-star (and fellow Yale alum) Paul Giamatti.
John Cena pretended to be naked in the night’s funniest bit, an homage to the 50th anniversary of the Oscars show streaker. Even funnier was the absurd right-wing response on Twitter to Cena’s faux nudity.
Kimmel’s opening monologue was terrible, as were most of his jokes. But his sharp response to criticisms by a certain GOP presidential nominee (“isn’t it past your jail time?”) ensured that he won the night no matter how unfunny the rest of his shenanigans.
Also winning the night was my pal Danny, who beat me 17-15 in our Oscars pool contest. I did worse than last year, but so did he. “This lousy outcome is nothing to brag about,” he texted me.
“But make sure you tell the readers that I won.”