Oscar’s night of many stars — and one big “Battle” against “Sinners”

Michael B. Jordan (“Sinners”) and Jessie Buckley (“Hamnet”) receive their Oscars.

Carol J. Bream

Night Vision

All in all, it was a good Oscars, with sharp staging, terrific musical numbers and some surprise winners paraded before a global audience of one billion.

“One Battle After Another” reaped six golden statues, the most for a single film at the 98th Academy Awards, but main rival “Sinners” was close behind with four.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s revolution comedy and Ryan Coogler’s vampire noir each took some of the major prizes during a long and hard-fought evening: “OBAA” won best picture, director, adapted screenplay, achievement in casting, supporting actor (Sean Penn) and film editing; “Sinners” took best original screenplay, best actor (Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers Smoke and Stack), cinematography and original score.

Penn’s supporting win for playing a villainous military strongman in “OBAA” and Jessie Buckley’s best actress gold for her starring role as the grieving mother of “Hamnet” were widely expected. Penn opted not to show up at L.A.’s Dolby Theatre to claim his prize, his third career Oscar, but Buckley, the first Irish woman to win the big award, gave a moving speech dedicated to “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.”

The hit tune “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters” won best original song and the animated feature won in its category, two of the easier calls in a ceremony filled with unexpected outcomes.

During the ceremony itself, it took a while for the speeches to get political, despite a bit of coaxing from returning show host Conan O’Brien in his opening monologue.

But even when big issues were broached, among them the U.S. war on Iran and continuing Israel-Gaza hostilities, most were pointed yet subtle — except for Javier Bardem’s big lapel sign “No a la guerra” and button with the Handala, a well-known symbol of Palestinian identity and resistance.

Surprises:

• An Oscar tie in a short contest: Award presenter Kumail Nanjiani, announcing a rare Oscar tie for the winners of live-action short category, remarked on the irony that a presentation for short films would take longer than other categories. He asked the audience to give both films a chance to be celebrated: “The Singers,” a barroom symphony featuring actors who had never acted before, and “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” a queer saga aimed at women, according to its creators. O’Brien joked the tie had just ruined 22 million Oscar pools!

• Amy Madigan’s 40-year wait ends: Four decades after her first Oscar nomination, for the marital drama “Twice in a Lifetime,” Madigan struck gold at age 75 in her second Oscar attempt, for playing an evil aunt in horror film “Weapons.” It wasn’t a complete shock, since she also won at the Actor Awards, but competition was stiff this year. Madigan’s proud husband Ed Harris, a four-time Oscar nominee, was there to cheer her on.

• History-making cinematography: “Sinners” win for best cinematography went to Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the first woman and woman of colour (Filipino African American-Creole) to win this prestigious award. She asked all the women in the room to stand up to be celebrated, to great applause.

• “Battle” taking casting honours: The inaugural Oscar for achievement in casting went to Cassandra Kulukundis, who assembled the actors for “One Battle after Another.” Many pundits had predicted a “Sinners” win here.

Another spousal pairing at the Oscars combined the present and past: “OBAA” writer-director Anderson is married to former “Saturday Night Live” player Maya Rudolph, who was featured as one of the stars of the 15th anniversary tribute to the hilarious comedy “Bridesmaids.” The salute brought Rudolph and four other stars of the 2011 hit film — Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne and Ellie Kemper — onstage for some merry banter.

Canadian talent was very much in the spotlight: Montreal’s Maggie Kang, the Korean-Canadian co-director of Seoul-set “KPop Demon Hunters,” exulted in the inclusivity the best animated feature award represented: “For those who look like me, I am so sorry it took us so long to see us in a movie like this.” Also celebrating was the Canuck team behind “The Girl Who Cried Pearls” which won best animated short (“celebrating people, not AI”) with the National Film Board of Canada getting a shout-out from the film’s creators, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski. Golden kudos went, too, to the production/costumes/makeup/hair design team behind Guillermo del Toro’s made-in-Toronto “Frankenstein.” They graciously spoke of the amazing artists from around the world who worked with them on the film.

Canadian actor Rachel McAdams presented part of a reworked and expanded In Memoriam section, focussing on recently departed women, particularly Diane Keaton but also the beloved Canadian comic Catherine O’Hara.

Former Oscars host Billy Crystal’s moving tribute to Rob and Michele Reiner, with the participation of a host of star collaborators in Reiner’s films, and Barbra Streisand’s to her co-star and close friend Robert Redford added to the power of the In Memoriam section.

As for O’Brien as the returning Oscars host, he was good again and loaded with zingers:

• “I’m honored to be the last human host of the Oscars.”

• “Last year, L.A. was burning but this time everything is going great.”

• “We have tight security to protect us from attacks from both the ballet and opera communities.” (That was a shot aimed at “Marty Supreme” star Timothée Chalamet, who put his foot in his mouth — and possibly torpedoed his best actor chances — when he recently said “no one cares” about ballet and opera.)

Jimmy Kimmel, another former Oscars host, showed up to present awards for long and short documentaries, taking a couple of jabs with even sharper edges than O’Brien’s. He joked about “a certain politician who would be furious that his wife’s doc hadn’t been nominated” and spoke a common belief about cowardly broadcasters when he observed: “There are some countries whose leaders don’t support free speech. I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS.”

The short documentary Oscar went to “All the Empty Rooms,” about the ongoing horror of school shootings, with the prize accepters including the mother of one of the young victims of a shooting. Her words were powerful, as were those — in Russian — by the schoolteacher title subject of long doc winner “Mr. Nobody against Putin,” who demanded that we “stop all these wars now” and that “people need to speak up now” against dictators who shoot citizens in the street. It was a not-so-veiled reference to recent events in the US.

“Sinners” and “KPop Demon Hunters” were the subjects of two huge musical production numbers, but the other three best original song nominees got only a few seconds during the presentation. The “Sinners” piece featured prima ballerina Misty Copeland. This was also a celebration of Black music and culture, and rapper Shaboozey joined the musical stars in the tribute.

The “KPop Demon Hunters” singers of the earworm “Golden” were accompanied in their extravaganza by amazing dancers that highlighted the Korean past and present references and realities of the film — the stars and voiceover artists are all Korean or Korean-American.

Joachim Trier’s family drama “Sentimental Value” won for best international feature film — a first for Norway — in a category with four other standouts: “The Secret Agent,” “Sirāt,” “It Was Just an Accident” (filmed in secret by a director who lives in exile after spending years in an Iranian prison) and “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”

The night’s funniest spoof showed the fictional Ventura Crossroads Lab — perhaps a joking reference to the Ace Ventura movies — transforming classic films into vertical one-minute micro-drama smartphone reels to cater to the short attention span of young people, as well as the opening and closing skits by O’Brien.

O’Brien’s opening and closing gags were both show highlights. The opener had him sporting the evil clown makeup of the witch from “Weapons” being chased by a gang of kids through various film sets and onto the Oscars stage. The closer showed him being informed that he would be the “host for life” of the Oscars before being shown his new office, where he was subjected to the same treatment as Sean Penn’s character in “One Battle After Another” — a gag that should have been preceded by a spoiler alert.

Interestingly, given the current fashion fascination, there were no “naked dresses” at the event (except maybe one on Nicole Kidman on the red carpet) but there were many absolute knockout gowns with sequins, feathers and diamond jewelry galore. It was a night of many stars who really knew how to shine.

(Carol J. Bream is a writer in Gatineau, Quebec.)