And the Winners of the 2023 Academy Awards Are...

Congratulations to Everything Everywhere All at Once for winning Best Picture at the 95th Academy Awards tonight! In total, this quarky sci-fi/adventure flick took home 7 trophies...for Best Picture, Best Directing (for the Daniels), Best Actress (for Michelle Yeoh), Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (for Ke Huy Quan) and Best Supporting Actress (for Jamie Lee Curtis).

Germany's World War I epic All Quiet on the Western Front—which looked like it could've upset Everything Everywhere at the end considering all of the categories it won today—took home Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film, Best Original Score, Best Production Design and Best Cinematography, respectively.

Top Gun: Maverick, which received 6 nominations, won the Oscar for Best Sound Design. Avatar: The Way of Water surprisingly (just kidding) won the award for Best Visual Effects.

I was rooting for Lady Gaga to win Best Original Song for Top Gun: Maverick's Hold My Hand, but the Oscar for this category went to Naatu Naatu...a song from the Indian action-adventure drama, RRR.

And Brendan Fraser, who—along with Ke Huy Quan—appeared in the 1992 comedy flick Encino Man, won Best Actor for The Whale. The Whale also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

Tonight's ceremony was an eventful one...in a positive way, that is. History was made when Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan became the first two Asian actors to win Oscars in the same year!

Also, Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel managed to avoid getting slapped by an Academy Award nominee on-stage—unlike previous host Chris Rock last year. Google that if you are unaware of what I'm talking about...

Click here for the full list of Oscar winners. Congrats to all!

The 2023 Academy Award Nominations...

Congratulations to all of the movies, filmmakers and thespians who received an Oscar nomination this morning by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! The winners will be revealed during the 95th Academy Awards that will be televised March 12 on ABC TV.

As shown below, Everything Everywhere All at Once (which I saw at the theater last April and immensely enjoyed) leads the Best Picture pack with 11 nominations. Top Gun: Maverick—which I saw multiple times at the theater last year—is up for 6 trophies; it unfortunately isn't up for Best Cinematography but is amazingly up for Best Adapted Screenplay!

Most-Nominated Movies for the 95th Academy Awards:

Everything Everywhere All at Once - 11 nominations
All Quiet on the Western Front - 9 nominations
The Banshees of Inisherin - 9 nominations
Elvis - 8 nominations
The Fabelmans - 7 nominations
Tár - 6 nominations
Top Gun: Maverick - 6 nominations
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - 5 nominations

I didn't watch the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, but I do know that Ana de Armas is a very talented actress who was great in 2017's Blade Runner 2049 and 2019's Knives Out. Congrats to her for her Best Actress nomination!

Click here to see all of the nominees for this year's Academy Awards.

One actor who I hoped would get nominated was John Boyega for his role as a down-on-his-luck Marine veteran in last August's Breaking. I gave this dramatic crime thriller an enthusiastic review last summer, and I was hoping that the Academy would give this movie the kudos it deserves... Next time, Boyega.

And up for Best Visual Effects for 2022 is Top Gun: Maverick, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Batman (which should've also been nominated for Best Original Score), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Avatar: The Way of Water. Yes, James Cameron's sequel to the 2009 sci-fi epic will go home with the trophy.

Can't wait to watch the Oscars on March 12!

Movie Review: THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING...

Earlier today, I watched George Miller's fantasy romance drama Three Thousand Years of Longing at AMC theaters.

The trailer made Three Thousand Years look like it would be as quirky as the very eccentric and enjoyable Everything Everywhere All at Once, but this film fell short of expectations.

Tilda Swinton (who I kept picturing with a bald head during the movie, after she portrayed the Ancient One in Marvel's Doctor Strange and Avengers: Endgame) played Alithea—a divorced London scholar who traveled to Istanbul to give a speech about mythology until a series of events led her to stumbling upon a bottle carrying the Djinn, portrayed by Idris Elba.

Some critics refer to Three Thousand Years as 'Aladdin for adults'...which is true. But I don't recall Aladdin—either the 1992 animated classic or the 2019 live-action remake—being bogged down by so much dialogue. Of course, how else are you gonna explain three millenia worth of events that got the Djinn to where he was in modern-day Turkey?

One thing that I admire about Three Thousand Years is that it's the first film I've personally seen in the pandemic era which acknowledged that the pandemic exists. Scores of people wore face masks while Alithea gave her seminar inside a packed auditorium early on in the film, while Alithea herself was shown wearing a mask while seated inside a public bus taking her back home in the movie's final act. Good for her!

Though this begs the question: Why didn't Alithea use one of her three wishes to end the pandemic? I'm sure that asking the Djinn to rid this world of the coronavirus (but not the existing illnesses) didn't violate his rule of not wishing for all suffering to end. But that's just me.

When all is said and done, I'll stick to watching the animated or live-action version of Aladdin if I wanted to be entertained by a genie granting three wishes to a solitary but headstrong individual. Happy Labor Day to my fellow Yanks!

Movie Review: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE...

I watched the sci-fi/adventure flick Everything Everywhere All at Once at AMC theaters several hours ago, and needless to say, it deserves to be hugely recognized by the Academy Awards next year...like Parasite was in 2020!

Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis were absolutely fantastic in this film—with them sharing the funniest moments in this movie. Three words: Hot dog hands!

And you know that Everything Everywhere All at Once is a very special flick when director/writers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert featured a very insightful scene where Michelle Yeoh (as Evelyn Wang) and Stephanie Hsu (as Evelyn's daughter Joy) have a deep conversation about existentialism and the universe...while literally being two rocks sitting on a cliff in a desert. You need to watch this flick to see how great this scene is.

Everything Everywhere All at Once also had very cool action sequences that you would expect in a Michelle Yeoh movie. It's The Matrix, a Marvel film (with all the recent multiverse stuff) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon all rolled into one.

As mentioned earlier, Everything Everywhere All at Once should receive some nominations at the Oscars next year—at least for Best Editing and maybe Best Original Screenplay.

And welcome back to the acting world, Ke Huy Quan! You may remember him as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, as well as Data in The Goonies. Carry on.