Oscars Live Blog 2025

11: 24 PM Getting back to the In Memoriam section:

I first remember seeing Maggie Smith in California Suite, a 1978 movie. That’s some fifty years ago.  That’s a dang long time to be giving good performances in all sorts of movies.

Dabney Coleman - Nine to Five. Classic.

Dick Pope was the primary cinematographer for Mike Leigh, and had a forty year career.  Any time you can bring it for that long, any time in this job you can have a relationship with a director where the director wants to use you over and over and over again over a very long period of time…

Marshall Brickman worked on several of the best Woody Allen films.  And his own movie Simon isn’t all that good, but the trip into Manhattan to see that movie over holiday break in 1980 is one of the keynote days in my coming of age as someone who really, really, really loved going to the movies.  A movie at Cinema One, a movie at the Loews Astor Plaza with mind-blowing six track 70mm sound.  A great day. Marshall Brickman’s Simon is part of one of the two most important days in my teenage years in bringing me to today, and you never forget something like that.

Robert Laemmle - part of the family that still runs the Laemmle theatres in LA. There was a good documentary, Only in Theatres, that came out a couple of years ago about the Laemmle family. They’re a royal family in exhibition.

Teri Garr - the in memoriam showed her “I am a professional actress” line from Tootsie. That, Close Encounters - she’s a part of two great test-of-time movies.

Robert Towne - one of the greatest screenwriters in Hollywood history.  Credited for the screenplay for The Firm.  Fuck Chinatown.  Good movie to see once.  The Firm is a movie to see over and over and over and over and over again.

Lynda Obst - one of the most important woman in C Suite Hollywood from when there weren’t very many.

Donald Sutherland - do I have to say why?  Nobody in Hollywood history could’ve done a better line reading of “that’s like a duck making a lateral move to a l’orange.” There are so many great Donald Sutherland movies, but this one from Disclosure sticks with me the most.

Albert Ruddy - important producer.

Colin Childers  - part of the “you’ll believe a man can fly” visual effects team on Superman: The Movie

Louis Gossett, Jr. - to have even one role that lasts forever like his in An Officer and a Gentleman. 

Jon Landau. He produced Titanic. It’d be very hard for me to run JABberwocky without a Brady McReynolds to keep on top of the fun stuff.  James Cameron doesn’t make Titanic the way he makes Titanic without having a Jon Landau around.

Shelley Duvall. The Shining.

James Earl Jones. If I teamed up with James Earl Jones, I too could rule an Empire.  You don’t need any knowledge of the force.  You just need to team up with James Earl Jones.

10:50 PM - and to back up for Best Actress, Demi Moore was a sentimental favorite, but the two best performances I saw in that category were Mikey Madison’s and Fernanda Torres’ so I feel bad for Demi Moore, but, also, a great performance won,.

10:47 PM Anora! https://boxd.it/E2uXs if you check out my final ranking for 2025, you’ll see Anora in the #3 position after one film that had no chance of winning because it had no chance and one that had no chance of winning because it wasn’t nominated, so i reckon Anora counts as my first choice.  Congrats to all! And, yes, it’s a very very New York kind of movie, filmed on location in Brooklyn and all the better for having done so.  

10:39 PM - the first somewhat stunner of the night - Mikey Madison in Anora over Demi Moore in The Substance.

10:35 PM - About Schmidt, Adaptation, The Quiet American, Gangs of New York - Jack Nicholson, Nicholas Cage, Michael Caine, Daniel Day Lewis - the competition the last time Adrien Brody won an Oscar.  Only time will tell, but I think this evening that the field was a lot better this time than last.  Not a single movie on that list that I’d drag myself to.

10:33 PM - I cannot complain that Sean Baker is urging films to be made for and shown in movie theatres.

10:31 PM - It’s an Anora night, overall. With a Director win for Baker, the Best Picture is coming in ten or fifteen minutes.

10:22 PM - Adrien Brody was not my first choice or my second choice in Best Actor, but he isn’t a bad choice. I wanted to say I’m happier to see him winning tonight than when he won for The Pianist, but I’m looking at the other nominees that year and there isn’t a single performance that I remember in any way twenty years later.  Twenty years from now, will I think less of Timothee Chalamet or Sebastian Stan for their Oscar nominated roles this year?

10:08 PM - Having so much fun tonight. Lots of great nominees, lots of great winners, spread all around. We’re heading into the home stretch, and so far not a single Oscar that’s gone to something that has me wanting to be someplace else than watching that movie win an award for that thing.  The score for The Brutalist is one of those that helps to drag the movie across the finish line.  In some other wold the score from The Count of Monte Cristo would also have been nominated, and would have made this another of the multiple categories with richly deserving nominees.  But there are no Oscar nominations for The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Brutalist was the hands down best contender for Best Score.

9:59 PM - Much as I admire - jealously admire - the Netflix marketing machine that gets boatloads of Oscar nominations for meh-at-best movies like Emilia Perez, I don’t like most of the movies.  But I’m Still Here - that got spontaneous applause at the end of the showing I went to, applause which I joined in on. It’s a great performance by Fernanda Torres in a remarkably controlled bit of directing by Walter Salles.  Missing, 1982 - it’s the first time I can remember seeing a movie of the general type represented by I’m Still Here. Totalitarian regime, someone missing, people caught up in it all.  But I’m Still Here transcends that genre, in some ways almost by ignoring the hole of the person who’s missing and focusing entirely on the getting on with things by the missing person’s wife.  Not that she isn’t searching and hoping and looking and doing what she can, but the missing doesn’t define the character. It’s the doing, the present, and Fernanda Torres embodies that at every instance in a perfectly modulated, perfectly calibrated performance.  I’m Still Here is a great movie. See it.

9:57 PM - So glad that I’m Still Here won for International Feature over Emilia Perez.

9:54 PM - Hardware for The Brutalist. I am partial to Dune movies in these categories, but Cinematography is a perfectly fine victory for The Brutalist, and the little snippet of the score as the winner takes to the stage is  good reminder that I’m kind of rooting for The Brutalist for Best Score, as well.

9:46 PM. I’ll fill in with more later on, but there are some quickly typed names from the In Memoriam section which have some special bit of resonance for me: Maggie Smith, Dabney Coleman, Dick Pope, Marshall Brickman, Robert Laemmle, Teri Garr, “I am a professional actress” from Tootsie, Robert Towne, Lynda Obst, Donald Sutherland, Albert Ruddy, Colin Childers, Louis Gossett, Jr, Jon Landau, Shelley Duvall, James Earl Jones, 

9:38 PM - just seven awards to go!  And if anyone thinks the Oscars go on for a while, try the Lambda Literary Awards someday!

9:32 PM - Just to mention, two of my favorite movies to watch again and again and again are Superman: The Movie, and The Firm. Couldn’t be more different from one another, but one thing they both have; Gene Hackman.  And the movies aren’t great in spite of or without regard to the fact that they have Gene Hackman.  He isn’t the only great thing about either movie, but he’s damn sure one of the many great things in each of those movies. One sign of greatness is when no one can agree on the thing you’re great for, kind of like how I think of Norman Jewison for Fiddler and someone else, it’s Jesus Christ Superstar. And the critics are talking about Gene Hackman in Bonnie & Clyde, or The Conversation, or The French Connection.  And there’s a lot of Hoosiers going around the past several days, and there’s someone talking about The Poseidon Adventure, and somewhere else it’s The Royal Tenenbaums. Gene Hackman was great.

9:30 PM - Daily Double! - Dune: Part Two winds for Best Visual Effects

9:28 PM - Phew! Not a shutout for Dune: Part Two. Wins, deservedly, for Best Sound.

9::26 PM - Nice touch, Miles Teller saying “worked on two movies that took home this very award.”

9:24 PM - Saving some of the most cutting jokes for the firefights to have to deliver.

9:21 PM - I quite hate the way the Best Picture winners are being presented, coming out of the commercial breaks, without any introduction to tell you it’s time to get back from the refrigerator, and done by some anonymous narrator voice that sounds like it’s an American Express commercial. And nothing in the way of clips from the movies, but it’s the moments from the movies that make the movies.

9:14 PM - Didn’t see any of the documentary feature nominees this year. 

9:10 PM - Is it just me, or does Conan appear to be having actual fun doing the hosting?

9:07 PM - I kind of miss the brief halcyon period when Twitter would’ve been full of Oscar commenting from various and sundry, near and far.  Now - well, I just told my sister that I’m typing away on the blog, no idea if anyone’s reading, just like someone writing away on their first novel not certain whom it is for.

9:04 PM - gotta get the song performance in!

8:59 PM - I love Mick Jagger’s interpretation of black tie.  He can carry it off. I cannot.

8:58 PM - the Editing win for Anora is another strong indication that it’ll be taking home the top prize.

8:57 PM - Supporting Actress speech by Zoe Saldana excellent.

8:56 PM - I would’ve loved if Dune: Part 2 had won for Production Design.

8:44 PM - And the Variety marathoners got some breakfast at Ess-a-Bagel!  Probably the other location in Manhattan, which is closer to the theatre.  But now I’m feeling super good about my choice of Ess-a-Bagel for my pre-Oscar dinner.

8:40 PM - a great quote from the Variety article on the Best Picture marathon: “ Rubin: I couldn’t help but laugh when I overheard the woman next to me say, “I’m so excited; I haven’t watched ‘Dune 2’ in three months.”

8:34 PM - the tribute was seriously well produced.  Not familiar with the singers, but the vibe was both very much the right vibe and also not all like a Maurice Binder title sequence.  And I kind of don’t mind that the nominated songs aren’t being performed. In any given year some of those songs are just not that interesting, but five numbers are gong to eat up fifteen minutes of run time. I’d rather the producers of the show get to choose something good to show, even if any given year the choices might be poorly made, at least there’s some curation to the effort.

8:32 PM - James Bond tunes are always an all time high.  Perfect when all you need is paid distraction for an hour or two.

8:18 PM - And to back up a bit to Original Screenplay - so Anora didn’t hold up to a second viewing in a Best Picture kind of way, which means that I’d want to go watch it a third time.  But it holds up quite nicely on the first viewing.  It has surprises in it, it has tasty lines, and it has a great ending. The ending, I can’t praise enough.  It’s not uncommon for a good movie not to know how to end, and then to become less good as a result,  I think that happened with The Substance, which is a good movie that goes full into body horror at the end because it doesn’t quite know what that ending might be.  But Anora, the first time around when I was able to be surprised, I had a general idea of where the ending might go, helped in considerable part by the Oscar-nominated and Oscar-worthy performance by Yuri Borisov.  But I hadn’t ever considered the exact specific ending as it happened on the screen, and when it happened, I sat there thinking how absolutely perfect it was. Perfect.  And I liked A Real Pain, and The Brutalist, and September 5, but the ending of Anora is a perfect ending like the opening of La La Land is perfect opening.

8:12 PM - the reading of the nominees for Adapted Screenplay went on forever because I had fond feelings for only two of the nominees. And I shan’t complain that the Oscar goes to Conclave, which is one of the two. A Complete Unknown being the other. 

8:08 PM - I enjoyed all five of the Original Screenplay movies. Anora winning greatly increases its Best Picture chances, that no one wanted to do a consolation prize sort of thing for one of the other excellently script movies.

8:05 PM - A couple reporters from Variety did the AMC Best Picture marathon.  9 movies, 24+ hours. I spread the movies out over a full year. https://variety.com/2025/film/features/oscar-best-picture-marathon-1236323867/

7:57 PM - I love how the Costume Design category is being presented.

7:43 PM - Wild Robot coasted on knowledge of the source material, and Flow had to do something similar building an entire world all on its own. Has a good score, as well. A bit of an underdog without big studio dollars behind, and wins in a category dominated by the Dreamworks and Disneys and etc. of the animation world.

7:42 PM - I didn’t love any of the animated movies, but I was for sure rooting for Flow.

7:34 PM - but I can’t say enough about how Guy Pearce comes storming into the frame in The Brutalist. Jeremy Strong is magnificent in The Apprentice, which should be more widely seen. My framing - it’s the Faust story. Forget about today and think about the Faust story, and Strong is the most tempting of the devils you can ever imagine, shockingly direct and somehow utterly alluring in the bluntness of his blackness. And then you get to the end and see the look all over his face as he realizes that the student has overtaken the pupil, that the devil has a new disciple.  Brilliant work. Yuri Borisov has a really quiet role to play in Anora, one that works in its subtleties.  And I don’t think Edward Norton has his best role in A Complete Unknown, but I’ve been a huge fan of his from the moment he stormed on to the screen in the 1990s,  Such a great category.

7:34 PM - Is it better or worse to be sitting in the audience as a finalist for an award you know you have a near zero chance of winning, or where you think you might and then don’t?

7:29 PM - But it’s a category full of excellent performances. Edward Norton, Guy Pearce, Yuri Borisov and Jeremy Strong are all good, or great. I have a hard time choosing a favorite.

7:28 PM - Everyone expects Kieran Culkin to win Supporting Actor.

7:26 PM - Conan’s monologue worked for me.  It kept touch with a love of cinema, finding laughs without feeling a need to distance itself or belittle the work. There might have been some sharper laughs if it had, but it had laughs enough.

7:07 PM - and by the time they get to the Wicked stuff I’m tuned out.  It’s just an awful opening,

7:05 PM - I mean, if I wanted to hear this tonight I’d have gotten tickets to someone at a cabaret in New York City.

7:04 PM - I cannot think of a less interesting opening than to have someone mournfully singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

6:46 PM - Goldie Hawn and Timothée Chalamet wearing similar shades of yellow.  Did they coordinate?

6:38 PM - by pre-Oscar dinner is from Ess-a-Bagel, holding court on 3rd Ave for so long that I could go there in my Scott Meredith days, but not so long that I can’t remember what eatery was in the space before it was Ess-a-Bagel and what my go to dish was when I didn’t have much money to spend buying lunch.  The desserts this year are from Buttercup Bakery, a short walk from the bale place.

6:36 PM - interesting tidbit in Peter DeBruge’s Variety review of the Oscar-nominated Short Films - the program has earned more box office $$ than Nickel Boys. https://variety.com/2025/film/reviews/2025-oscar-nominated-short-films-live-action-review-1236324513/

 6:22 PM - My iPad is set up and ready, and I’m getting set up and ready, for my annual Oscars live blog. You can check out my preview post at https://bilmblog500.blogspot.com/2025/02/oscars-preview-2024.html and you can also find me on https://letterboxd.com/jabbermaster/ for my movie ratings and reviews year round.