The metaphysical multiverse comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once wrapped its hot dog fingers around Hollywood’s top prize Sunday, winning best picture at the 95th Academy Awards, along with awards for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Though worlds away from Oscar bait, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s anarchic ballet of everything bagels, googly-eyed rocks and one messy tax audit emerged as an improbable Academy Awards heavyweight.
The indie hit, A24’s second best-picture winner following Moonlight, won seven Oscars in all.
The German-language WWI epic All Quiet on the Western Front — Netflix’s top contender this year — took four awards as the academy heaped honours on the craft of the harrowing anti-war film.
It won for cinematography, production design, score and best international film.
Fifty years after The Godfather won at the Oscars, Everything Everywhere All at Once triumphed with a much different immigrant experience.
Its eccentric tale about a Chinese immigrant family – just the second feature by the Daniels, as the filmmaking duo is known – blended science fiction and alternate realities in the story of an ordinary woman and laundromat owner.
Everything Everywhere, released all the way back in March 2022, helped revive arthouse cinemas after two years of pandemic, racking up more than $US100 million in ticket sales.
And despite initially scant expectations of Oscar glory, Everything Everywhere All at Once toppled both blockbusters (Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water) and critical darlings (Tar, The Banshees of Inisherin).
Oscars champagne carpet arrivals
Yeoh became the first Asian woman to best actress, taking the award for her lauded performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
The 60-year-old Malaysian-born Yeoh won her first Oscar for a performance that relied as much on her comic and dramatic chops as it did her kung fu skills.
She’s the first best actress win for a non-white actress in 20 years.
“Ladies, don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re past your prime,” said Yeoh, who received a raucous standing ovation.
In winning best director, the Daniels — both 35 years old — won for just their second and decidedly un-Oscar bait feature.
They’re just the third directing pair to win the award, following Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (West Side Story) and Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men).
Scheinert dedicated the award “to the moms of the world”.
Best actor went to Brendan Fraser, culminating the former action star’s return to centre stage for his physical transformation as a 600-lb. reclusive professor in The Whale.
The best-actor race had been one of the closest contests of the night, but Fraser in the end edged Austin Butler.
“So this is what the multiverse looks like,” said a clearly moved Fraser, pointing to the Everything Everywhere All at Once crew.
The former child star Quan capped his own extraordinary comeback with the Oscar for best supporting actor for his performance in the indie hit Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Quan, beloved for his roles as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in Goonies, had all but given up acting before being cast in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
His win, among the most expected of the night, was nevertheless one of the ceremony’s most moving moments.
The audience — including his Temple of Doom director, Steven Spielberg — gave Quan a standing ovation as he fought back tears.
“Mum, I just won an Oscar!” said Quan, 51, whose family fled Vietnam in the war when he was a child.
“They say stories like this only happen in the movies. I can’t believe it’s happening.
“This is the American dream.”
Minutes later, Quan’s castmate Jamie Lee Curtis won for best supporting actress.
Her win, in one of the most competitive categories this year, denied a victory for comic-book fans.
Angela Bassett (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) would have been the first performer to win an Oscar for a Marvel movie.
It also made history for Curtis, a first-time winner who alluded to herself as “a Nepo baby” during her win at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
She’s the rare Oscar winner whose parents were both Oscar nominees, something she emotionally referenced in her speech.
Tony Curtis was nominated for The Defiant Ones in 1959 and Janet Leigh was nominated in 1961 for Psycho.
Curtis thanked “hundreds” of people who put her in that position.
Though Bassett missed on supporting actress, Ruth E. Carter won for the costume design of Wakanda Forever, four years after becoming the first Black designer to win an Oscar, for Black Panther.
This one makes Carter the first Black woman to win two Oscars.
“Thank you to the Academy for recognising the superhero that is a Black woman,” Carter said.
“She endures, she loves, she overcomes, she is every woman in this film.”
Carter dedicated the award to her mother, who she said died last week at 101.
The Oscar winners in all 23 categories were revealed live, unlike last year, when several award presentations were prerecorded in an effort to shorten the traditionally lengthy show.
“We have nominees from every corner of Dublin,” Kimmel said.
“Five Irish actors are nominated tonight, which means the odds of another fight on stage just went way up.”
Less than three minutes later, he was a little more direct: “We want you to have fun, we want you to feel safe, and most importantly, we want me to feel safe,” Kimmel said.
“So we have strict policies in place. If anyone in this theatre commits an act of violence at any point in this show, you will be awarded the Oscar for Best Actor and permitted to give a 19-minute long speech.”
Smith won his best actor Oscar not long after the slap.
THE NOMINEES AND WINNERS
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” – WINNER
“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On”
“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Brian Tyree Henry, “Causeway”
Judd Hirsch, “The Fabelmans”
Barry Keoghan, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – WINNER
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Angela Bassett, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – WINNER
Stephanie Hsu, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”
“A House Made of Splinters”
“An Irish Goodbye” – WINNER
“All Quiet on the Western Front” – WINNER
“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” – WINNER
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”
INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” Germany – WINNER
“Argentina, 1985,” Argentina
“The Quiet Girl,” Ireland
“The Elephant Whisperers” – WINNER
“How Do You Measure a Year?”
“The Martha Mitchell Effect”
“The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” – WINNER
“An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”
“All Quiet on the Western Front” – WINNER
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“All Quiet on the Western Front” – WINNER
“The Banshees of Inisherin”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water” – WINNER
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“The Banshees of Inisherin”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” – WINNER
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“Top Gun: Maverick” – WINNER
“Applause” from “Tell It like a Woman”
“Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick”
“Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” – WINNER
“This Is A Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“The Banshees of Inisherin”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” – WINNER
Martin McDonagh, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – WINNER
Steven Spielberg, “The Fabelmans”
Ruben Ostlund, “Triangle of Sadness”
Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inisherin”
Brendan Fraser, “The Whale” – WINNER
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Andrea Riseborough, “To Leslie”
Michelle Williams, “The Fabelmans”
Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – WINNER
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“The Banshees of Inisherin”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” – WINNER