[Cali Panthers Fan]

I had to finish the show on recording today, so apologies for the late response.

I've watched a lot of Oscars shows, and I think that was probably one of the best produced shows in the last couple of decades. Flowed well, good stage production, good writers, and I even enjoyed the ego-fest of having previous winners talk up each nominee for acting. It's fun to hear great actors talk about other great actors, and to have them all on stage at the same time saying "welcome to the club" to the winner. I think it's a nice touch of star power, so I can overlook the cringe factor.

It felt like they got most of these awards right. I have a real soft spot for Paul Giammatti, so I'm a little sad he didn't win, but it's hard not to give the award to Cillian Murphy. He's been one of my favorite actors for a long while, and was richly deserving of his award.

I personally didn't find Robert Downey Jr. to be all that exceptional in Oppenheimer, and definitely not worthy of an award. It may not be a popular opinion, but I thought that was one of the top 2 or 3 performances of Robert DeNiro's career, but of course he's had his awards already, and that's where this becomes political. I would have preferred Mark Ruffalo's scoundrel over Downey as well, but it may just be a personal preference thing.

As much as I loved Lily Gladstone's work, it's obvious to me that Stone deserved her award. That performance is really hard to pull off and be believable. Making that insane world and character accessible to the audience, while still maintaining much of the weirdness, was truly incredible. I don't think it would have been fair to overlook her, even though she's been celebrated before.

Best director and picture for Nolan and Thomas was long overdue. This is where there is a slight political way that people vote if the films are relatively close in quality. Not that Oppenheimer wasn't deserving, but Nolan had waited a long time to get his award (nominated 8 times!) and finally was granted one. Yorgos Lanthimos could have easily won for Poor Things had it not been for Nolan's patient waiting.

As far as the nominated films go, I'd have to rank them in this order, partly based on quality, and partly on personal preference. If you haven't seen any of these I would watch them in this order (note: I have yet to see Zone of Interest or Past Lives, so I can't rank them):

-The Holdovers
-Oppenheimer
-Killers of the Flower Moon
-Poor Things
-Anatomy of a Fall
-American Fiction
-Barbie
-Maestro

I had considered the Oscars to be dying for the last few years, especially as audience interest waned, but I think this is the year it returned to form. It helps that the films that were nominated and won were mostly films that everyone went out to see. I hope that trend of great big revenue films that are also award worthy continues.