Surreal sci-fi film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” dominated the Oscars on Sunday, winning seven golden statuettes including best picture, Hollywood’s most coveted prize.
The unorthodox but beloved movie — which features multiple universes, sex toys and hot dog fingers — also won best director, best actress, best original screenplay, best editing, and both the best supporting actor and actress prizes.
Michelle Yeoh, who is Malaysian, becomes the first ever Asian woman to win best actress, for her portrayal of an exhausted Chinese laundromat owner embroiled in battle with an inter-dimensional supervillain — who happens to be her daughter.
“Thank you to the Academy, this is history in the making!” she said.
“Ladies, don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime,” added the 60-year-old, whose career began decades ago with martial arts films in Hong Kong.
Brendan Fraser won best actor for playing a morbidly obese teacher in “The Whale,” capping a remarkable career comeback.
Fraser was a major action star in the late 1990s with films like “The Mummy,” before largely disappearing from the public view.
“I started in this business 30 years ago, and things — they didn’t come easily to me,” he said.
He thanked director Darren Aronofsky for “throwing me a creative lifeline and hauling me aboard the good ship ‘The Whale.’”
American Dream
“Everything Everywhere,” comfortably the night’s biggest winner, is a word-of-mouth smash hit that has grossed $100 million at the global box office.
In a plot that is not easily described, Yeoh’s heroine Evelyn must harness the power of her alter egos living in parallel universes, which feature hot dogs as human fingers, talking rocks and giant dildos used as weapons.
The film, which features a predominantly Asian cast, was directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — two young filmmakers who were previously best known for an oddball comedy about a talking corpse.
Kwan thanked his “immigrant parents,” while his counterpart thanked his mother for never “squashing my creativity,” including when he had dressed in drag as a child.
“Which is a threat to nobody,” he added, to enormous cheers.
Vietnam-born Ke Huy Quan, 51, who was a major child star in the 1980s with “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “The Goonies,” completed a stunning comeback from decades in the Hollywood wilderness by winning best supporting actor.
“My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp. And somehow, I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage... this is the American Dream,” said Quan.
After the show, he came bounding into the backstage press room, shouting “Wow, wow, wow... Can you believe I’m holding one of these?”
He shared that “Indiana Jones” director Steven Spielberg had grabbed him and said: “You are now an Oscar winner!”
Best supporting actress Jamie Lee Curtis paid tribute to her parents Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, both Oscar-nominated actors who never won.
All Quiet’ makes noise
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” Netflix’s German-language World War I, finished the night in second place with four awards.
It won best international feature and best cinematography early in Sunday’s ceremony.
As the night progressed, it also gathered Oscars for best original score and best production design.
But it ultimately could not stop the “Everything Everywhere” juggernaut, and lost adapted screenplay to “Women Talking,” and best sound to “Top Gun: Maverick.”
Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun” sequel had been seen as another potential best picture contender, having helped bring audiences back to movie theatres after the pandemic.
While Cruise did not attend Sunday’s ceremony, the night began with a thunderous flyover by two US Navy jets, soaring at 345 mph over the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
Host Jimmy Kimmel was then lowered onto the stage, and he quickly launched into a monologue which laid into Will Smith’s infamous attack on Chris Rock at last year’s Oscars.
The specter of “The Slap” has hung over the Oscars since Smith assaulted Rock on stage for cracking a joke about his wife.
Smith was allowed to stay at the gala, and accept Hollywood’s top male acting prize soon after, but has since been banned from Academy events for a decade.
“If anyone in this theatre commits an act of violence at any point during the show — you will be awarded the Oscar for best actor, and permitted to give a 19-minute-long speech,” joked Kimmel.
Naatu Naatu
In the night’s other prizes, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” won best animated film, and “Avatar: The Way of Water” won best visual effects.
“Navalny” — about the imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny — won for best documentary.
Dozens of dancers brought a colourful, energetic performance of “Naatu Naatu,” the showstopper tune from Indian crowd-pleaser “RRR,” which won the Oscar for best original song.
Academy bosses hope that Oscars television ratings will pick up from recent years, calling in heavy hitters from the world of music to perform the other nominated songs.
A dressed-down Lady Gaga sang an emotional, heartfelt rendition of her song “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick.”
And Rihanna — draped in diamonds, including over her baby bump — sang “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which won for best costume design.
Lenny Kravitz performed the annual “In Memoriam” segment. — AFP
Mum and Malaysia celebrate Yeoh’s Oscar win
“Malaysia boleh!” cried Michelle Yeoh’s mother in a video chat with her daughter minutes after her historic Oscars win was announced — citing a popular slogan that loosely translates into “Malaysia can do it!”
“I’m very happy... I’m proud of my daughter. She is very hardworking,” Janet Yeoh told reporters after her daughter became the first Asian woman to win the Academy Award for best actress.
“I’ll call her to come back (to Malaysia) and celebrate very soon. Next month is my birthday.”
She and other relatives and friends of Yeoh’s were gathered at a live screening of the awards ceremony at a Kuala Lumpur cinema, where there were loud cheers, embraces and tears of joy the second the announcement was made.
“It was such a jaw-dropping moment,” Yeoh’s niece Vicki said.
“I was speechless, I cried. Everything was, it happened so quickly. We are so happy that she won, that our auntie won...
“We kept telling her: ‘You will win... You’re going to stand on stage with the golden man,” she said, referring to the Oscar statuette.
- ‘Pride of Asia’ -
The 60-year-old Malaysian actress won the award for her role in the sci-fi film “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, beating Cate Blanchett who had long been the favourite to win a third Oscar for “Tar”.
“Everything Everywhere” follows a Chinese immigrant laundromat owner locked in battle with an inter-dimensional supervillain — who happens to be her own daughter.
“As Malaysians, we are so, so proud of her... I always look up to her and she is my idol,” said Emily Ng, a Yeoh fan.
Another fan, Tan Ooi Hong said: “She is the pride not just for Malaysia, but she is the pride of Asia as well.”
The former Bond girl was born to Malaysian-Chinese parents in 1962 in the city of Ipoh, 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur.
She embraced dance as a child and specialised in ballet, which she studied in England.
On a vacation while visiting family, her mother entered her in the Miss Malaysia contest without consulting her.
“I agreed to go to shut her up,” Yeoh, who went on to win the beauty pageant, told a talk show.
A back injury made her give up her dancing career, but by the mid-1980s, she was using the body control she had learned in ballet to appear in action films alongside the likes of Jackie Chan.
Yeoh was awarded the title of “Tan Sri” by the Malaysian king in 2013, one of the country’s highest honorifics bestowed upon civilians.
Meanwhile in Hong Kong, where she worked for a decade before becoming a Hollywood star, Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Kevin Yeung congratulated Yeoh, calling her a “shining star with impressive achievements”.
“This is a testimony to the strong potential of Hong Kong’s talents and film industry,” he said.—AFP
FACTBOX Full list of winners at the 2023 Oscars
The 95th Academy Awards took place at a ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday and were broadcast live on ABC television. The following is the full list of 2023 Oscar winners:
BEST PICTURE
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
BEST ACTRESS Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
BEST ACTOR Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”
BEST DIRECTOR Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” BEST
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” Germany
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM “Navalny”
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” written by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY “Women Talking,” screenplay by Sarah Polley
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Volker Bertelmann
BEST ORIGINAL SONG “Naatu Naatu,” from “RRR,” music by M.M. Keeravaani; lyrics by Chandrabose
CINEMATOGRAPHY “All Quiet On The Western Front,” James Friend
VISUAL EFFECTS “Avatar: The Way of Water”
SOUND “Top Gun: Maverick”
FILM EDITING “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
PRODUCTION DESIGN “All Quiet On The Western Front”
COSTUME DESIGN “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Ruth Carter
MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING “The Whale”
DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM “The Elephant Whisperers”
SHORT FILM, LIVE ACTION “An Irish Goodbye”
SHORT FILM, ANIMATED “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”
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