20 observations about Oscar night

Or: The year I watched the Academy Awards on my phone

I had a weird Oscar night on Sunday. 

About 20 minutes before the show started, a massive gust of wind caused a large tree in front of my house to fall into the street, knocking out power to our entire block (as of this writing, Monday morning, the power is still out.) This meant a night of dealing with all that, and I couldn’t watch the show on TV, although I did realize I could watch the telecast on my phone via Hulu Live and over 5G. 

And it’s not even the first time this has happened; I remember my cable being out on Oscar night in 2007, the night The Departed won.

So, while I was able to watch most of the Oscar telecast, there were lots of little details I’m sure I missed, and I wasn’t able to see half the names in the “In Memorium” segment, although I’m told this was a problem for people watched the show in more traditional ways.  For some reason, I also missed Wes Anderson’s first-ever Oscar win, although Wes Anderson missed it too.

Regarding the winners, there were no real surprises in the major categories, except for Emma Stone defeating Lily Gladstone for Best Actress, which I saw at least as a possibility.  Oppenheimer won the most, Poor Things the second most, and many movies won exactly one award, including Barbie. 

Twenty scattered observations about the night: