Oscars 2023 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' bags seven titles; Michelle Yeoh, Brendan Fraser win
Everything Everywhere All At Once bagged seven awards, including Best Picture, at the Oscar Awards 2023. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis all won acting honours, while the filmmaking duo known as the Daniels—Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert—won for both direction and original screenplay.
ON A WINNING NOTE
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 ORIGINAL SONG Naatu Naatu, from RRR, music by M.M. Keeravaani and lyrics by Chandrabose
DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM The Elephant Whisperers
Yeoh became the first Asian woman to bag the Best Actress award for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The 60-year-old Malaysian, 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. Hers is 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’.
Top honours
The Best Actor award was bagged by 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 Everything Everywhere All at Once. “Mom, I just won an Oscar!” said Quan, 51, whose family fled Vietnam in the war when he was a child.
Minutes later, Quan’s cast-mate Jamie Lee Curtis won the award for Best Supporting Actress. 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.
The German-language WWI epic All Quiet on the Western Front—Netflix’s top contender this year— bagged four awards. It won for cinematography, production design, score and best international film.
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.
Neither Tom Cruise, whose Top Gun: Maverick was vying for Best Picture award, nor James Cameron, director of best-picture nominee Avatar: The Way of Water, were present at the ceremony. — AP
