There was a lot of history made at the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday night (March 15) — industry-wide milestones and fun personal footnotes and more.
Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman (and first woman of color and first Filipina) to win an Oscar for cinematography.
“Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters became the first song in its genre to win the Oscar for original song.
Amy Madigan won her first Oscar 40 years after her first and only other previous nomination (for Twice in a Lifetime, a movie I was completely unaware existed).
Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler, fairly beloved figures in the industry, won their first Oscars within seconds of each other (and then PTA won his second and third Oscars, as One Battle After Another snagged several of the night’s biggest prizes).
The first Oscar for casting went to Cassandra Kulukundis for One Battle After Another, allowing Anderson’s longtime collaborator to make an aside about winning an Oscar before him (a trophy gap that lasted minutes, if that).
There was a tie for live action short — The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva — one of only three ties in Academy Awards history (and Barbra Streisand, winner in one of the previous ties, even made an appearance on the show).
There were sincere speeches and emotional speeches and good luck hearing any of it, because the telecast was as technically sloppy a show as any I can remember. I’ve heard some people’s feeds, or whatever, didn’t have the “This year’s Oscars took place in a tin can” audio that I got on ABC. But I also know that people in different locations and watching on different platforms had similar problems; something clearly went wrong, for an entire telecast of nearly four hours, without getting fixed.
The way I initially figured it, there was one faulty microphone. But there were regular audio bleeds from different sides of the theater, erratic muting of house mics, and the fact that announcer Matt Berry, apparently doing his job from London, was only occasionally audible at all. Even when Berry was audible, mind you, the decision was apparently made to have one of the funniest men alive do his job completely straight-faced. It wasn’t the worst idea, and Berry has a spectacular voice even in a business-as-usual context like this. But if you were relishing the prospect of distinctive name pronunciations or sardonic asides, that just was not what Berry was there for — though he gave one or two ad reads that were funny coming from his voice, like the reference to “The best Whopper you’ve ever tasted.” Or maybe he was making funnies left and right and they got lost in the mix.
If that had been the only technical problem, I would have shrugged and assumed that, in some way, the fault was mine. But there were regular confusing cutaways and reaction shots from people who weren’t even reacting. The directing of the telecast struggled to capture the clear thrill of either major musical performance, though the numbers from Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters were still entertaining — especially the climax of the Sinners number, when Misty Copeland dropped in for one of at least three direct or implied references to Timothée Chalamet’s ballet/opera comments.
And then there was whatever happened toward the end of the telecast, when Conan O’Brien came out, stood around confused, repeated “We’re almost there” several times and asked if the sound was on, adding “You never know.” Indeed. You never did.
Live TV is hard, but it doesn’t always look like as much of a chore as it did Sunday night.
It’s a pity that I was constantly distracted by the muffled, tinny sound, the confused direction and the strange pacing, because aspects of the show worked extremely well.
O’Brien, hosting for the second straight year, was very good, especially as the show progressed, remarking on things he found interesting or strange throughout the telecast, whether it was daring Baby “Grogu” Yoda to clap after the Mandalorian character’s cute-but-pointless bit with Kate Hudson or making sure the audience at home knew what Arkapaw had just accomplished. It was obvious when Arkapaw won that the crowd knew it was a notable achievement, but that doesn’t mean everybody at home did. O’Brien added value throughout, never vanishing from the telecast as lackluster hosts often do.
He was able to build momentum from a strong beginning, with a funny (if over-long) filmed bit in which Ashley Nicole Black accidentally did Conan’s makeup to resemble Aunt Gladys from Weapons and then triggered a rush of feral kids that took him through many of the year’s nominated films (but not If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, featuring Conan O’Brien).
O’Brien’s monologue was full of esoteric punchlines that didn’t have the audience rolling in the aisles, but amused me — points for the F1/cap-lock joke — and his attempt to go for sincerity discussing collaborative and often international aspects of filmmaking hit well. Evoking anything international in 2026 is automatically political, and it kicked off a show that was, indeed, fairly topical and pointed — especially compared to the completely whitewashed Golden Globes telecast in January.
You had O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel making multiple Trump jokes (without saying the word “Trump” a single time) and then a variety of political statements in speeches, some direct and overt — “No to war and free Palestine,” Javier Bardem said — and others a little more “subtle,” like the various parallels the team behind documentary winner Mr. Nobody Against Putin wanted to point out. This year was dominated by films that had revolutionary themes — especially big winners One Battle and Sinners — so in this endless awards season I’ve been more surprised by the nights that weren’t political than the ones that were.
But Conan was more interested in providing his typically absurdist touches, whether he was imagining what he’d do if he won an Oscar, accompanied by a musical cameo from Josh Groban, or closing the show with a filmed tribute to One Battle After Another, featuring Saturday Night Live icon Jim Downey. How many of the best picture nominees did Conan and the producers feel like they needed to shoot closing gags for? My hunch? Only Sinners and One Battle After Another, though I would love to know what they would have done in the event of an F1 victory.
So Conan was very good and I would assume the Academy will be quick to invite him back next year and perhaps every year until the telecast moves to YouTube, where nobody will care about technical glitches or, well, the Oscars.
Most of what was written for Conan in the telecast worked. Well, a lot of it worked. Some of it surely could have been trimmed, but I chuckled at the filmed segment about the production house doctoring classic movies to make them vertical and therefore more cell phone friendly. Could that have been cut entirely? Sure! See also the joke about how future telecasts on YouTube will be interrupted by Jane Lynch-fronted commercials. They could have released those segments on Monday as bonus features.
Most of what was written for everybody else was…a mixed bag. Even when things were funny, like the Bridesmaids reunion, which had an initial round of jokes, a pause, and then continued with an interminable thing where they each read notes from people in the audience, they tended to go on forever. And when they weren’t funny, like whatever was happening with Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, the results were painful.
I know I say the same thing every awards telecast, but it’s true: I would rather winners make their speeches than watch famous people try and fail to be funny. What happened with the KPop Demon Hunter winners for best song, first getting drowned out by music, then having the camera pull back and finally having the stage lights cut on them, was excruciating and rude.
Plus, it’s fine to celebrate anniversaries and orchestrate reunions if they’re going to be funny, like the Bridesmaids reunion was (until it ceased to be). But Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor failing to rekindle any of their Moulin Rouge! magic or Anna Wintour standing dead-eyed next to Anne Hathaway ate up time the show couldn’t spare.
The telecast got lucky that Sean Penn wasn’t there, allowing production to make up a little of the time from the live action short tie, but many things were running long throughout. The “In Memoriam” segment was allowed to go as long as it needed to, especially with the individual tributes to Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton and Robert Redford, and probably could have gone longer since Robert Duvall was more than worthy of his own standalone. Despite all the individual pieces of the tribute section, it was one of the few parts of the telecast that felt smooth.
I guess that, ultimately, our memories never cause us to look back at an award show and go, “That was seamless and well-organized.” We look back and remember the moments, wholly out of context of whatever mess came before or after. So I’ll remember Michael B. Jordan’s humility and Amy Madigan’s career-capping excitement and Autumn Durald Arkapaw asking all the women in the theater to stand and editing winner Andy Jurgensen saluting his Academy archivist aunt and Paul Thomas Anderson’s overall coronation and Conan’s general proficiency. That’ll do.
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