Conan, ‘Anora,’ and a mostly successful Oscar night

We know what a bad Oscar night looks like, and that isn’t what this was.

Last year, a couple of hours before the Oscars began, a giant tree fell outside my house, knocking out power to the whole neighborhood, and I had to watch the entire ceremony on my phone.

Nothing nearly as bad happened this year, although due to soccer coaching responsibilities, I started watching an hour late and was therefore behind for the whole ceremony and not able to do or follow my usual social media running commentary. I also had some trouble logging on to Hulu, although once it worked, it stayed working. I heard some other people weren’t so lucky.

So, what did I think of the show? I know what a bad Oscar show looks like- long, slow, pointless, with never-ending, deathly comedy bits, and the realization, often early on, that this particular host was a bad idea.

None of that happened on Sunday night. Conan O’Brien proved a more than capable host, with an above-average monologue and bits throughout the night that were suitably Conanesque (If he didn’t bring in a huge coterie of his old Late Night writers to work on the show, I’d be shocked.) “I Won’t Waste Time” and the Sandworm playing the piano was in the tradition of “Cactus Chef Playing We Didn’t Start the Fire on the Flute.” The different languages bit was similar to the old “Conan O’Brien Hates My Homeland” routine.

The show was completely lacking in that bit, a constant in Jimmy Kimmel’s Oscar shows, where there are 20 minutes of terrible crowd work.

"A movie about the Catholic church, but don't worry…” was probably my favorite joke of the whole night.

The show broke from tradition in leaving out the nominated songs, but having other, different musical numbers. This was a mixed bag; the Wizard of Oz/Wicked number at the beginning was first-rate, but the other numbers were overlong and somewhat head-scratching. I would have liked the James Bond tribute more if it had ended right after the Margaret Qualley dance number.

Also, they only did that “five different people praise the nominees” thing for a couple of categories, but I’d prefer to see it go away forever. It takes SO long.

Still, though, this is two years in a row of pretty good Oscar shows. Do they finally have this thing cracked?

As for the winners…

There were also not any real surprises in any of the major categories.

Ever since September, I've wanted to hear that The Brutalist music play as someone walks up to win an Oscar. Luckily, that happened three times, especially for Best Score, the category I felt strongest about the whole night.

The big winner, of course, was Anora, which won five awards, four of which entailed Sean Baker himself going up and accepting it. Anora was my second-favorite film of the year, and the Best Film choice for both Critics Choice and the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, so I can’t be too sad about it.

And yes, I’m happy for No Other Land. The freakout over it in the coming days is going to be insane, but I maintain that its critics should see it, because it’s virtually certain that almost none of them have. The critique I’ve seen so far is similar to after Jonathan Glazer’s speech last year: “Why did they give an acceptance speech expressing their views, and not expressing my views?” And once again, no- Gal Gadot was not supposed to present the Best Documentary award, nor did she “refuse” to. That was a Twitter joke last week that got out of control.