The 2023 Oscar ceremony was... actually good? What? Yeah, I'm shocked too. Especially after last year's disaster (even if the slap did not happen, the 2022 ceremony was awful!).
Jimmy Kimmel surprisingly did a half-decent job at hosting with minimal filler and a pretty solid opener, even if there still was some cringe jokes in the ceremony, especially the cringeworthy "Malala" moment, but there was a lot less bad jokes than usual.
Not a fan of them presenting a trailer for The Little Mermaid in the middle of the ceremony.
As for the winners, most of them were fantastic! I'm so happy with most of the wins. Especially all but one of Everything Everywhere All at Once's wins, Brendan Fraser (The Whale) winning Actor, Top Gun winning Sound, and Avatar: The Way of Water winning VFX, and Naatu Naatu (from RRR) winning Song. These wins were all phenomenal and monumental!
The wins I'm not happy with are Jamie Lee Curtis' winning Supporting Actress over Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), Pinocchio winning Animated Feature over Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Navalny winning Documentary Feature over... any of the other nominees, and All Quiet on the Western Front winning Production Deisgn and Score over Babylon.
The rest of the wins, including Black Panther: Wakanda Forever winning Costume Design, All Quiet on the Western Front winning Cinematography and International Feature, and The Whale winning Makeup/Hairstyling, were all good wins.
Most of the speeches were great too! Ke Huy Quan, Brendan Fraser, and Michelle Yeoh's speeches were especially fantastic and legitimately uplifting!
Honestly, a good ceremony. One of the very few I've seen. The only one I've seen on par with this is the 2020 ceremony where Parasite swept, and that one did have more cringe in the ceremony (especially the Cats reference... yuck).
