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You are here: Home / TV & Movies / Movies / Oscars Open Thread: Might Be “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once’s” to Lose

Oscars Open Thread: Might Be “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once’s” to Lose

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Followed by Jamie Lee Curtis.

This is for anyone who wants to discuss the show or bash the show, makes no difference to me. I’m only watching because of some heart favorites this year, including Brendan Fraiser and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once – and if you haven’t seen it, I’ve seen it three times and recommend it highly.

I’m listening while making dinner for the crew.

 

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  1. 1.

    Gwangung

    All my Asian American peers are kinda losing it tonight…..and why not? Ke’s story is OUR story, right down to the total lack of imagination (among other things) towards casting Asian actors.

  4. 4.

    Shana

    Singing Happy Birthday to the actor from Irish Goodbye was the sweetest thing.

    We saw all the nominated shorts yesterday, happy this one won and hope that The Boy The Mole The Fox and The Horse doesn’t win for animated short. Visually lovely but what a sappy treacly story.

  5. 5.

    Roger MacGuffin

    Everything Everywhere All at Once and Top Gun: Maverick are both super-sized putrid steaming piles of excrement.  Peter Bradshaw put it best when he described Everything Everywhere All at Once as “a formless splurge of Nothing Nowhere Over a Long Period of Time”

     

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Everything Everywhere… was among the choices on the plane when l flew last summer.

    Shut it off after maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Purposeless balderdash which I found personally unappealing to da max. YMMV.

  8. 8.

    eclare

    I haven’t seen the movies nominated, I may have to try Everything…just out of curiosity.  I lasted about ten minutes into Elvis, but Baz is not my style, and Tom Hanks was ridiculous.

    And Lady Gaga won the red (beige) carpet.

  10. 10.

    Citizen Alan

    @soapdish: I was just about to comment that brendan fraser in that picture looks more like drew carrie than drew carey does now.

  11. 11.

    Layer8Problem

    I and my partner are not watching the Oscars because we never watch the Oscars.  I hope however everyone watching enjoys it immensely and that any lame acceptance speeches are short and that the Irving Thalberg Award goes to the nicest and most deserving person in all Hollywood.

  12. 12.

    prostratedragon

    I’ve only seen two nominees this year: Everything … and Argentina 1985. Though I havn’t seen the competition and have seen these only once, they both look like credible winners to me. Congratulations to Mr. Quan!

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    Don’t watch it either.

    People already gearing up to tomorrow bitch about who was left out of the memorial reel.

  15. 15.

    Gwangung

    @kindness: EEAAO was pretty much in my wheelhouse as a multiverse story. Gulped down the story like candy and was delighted that they didn’t hold back and went for the fences with their choices.

  16. 16.

    zhena gogolia

    I haven’t seen anything. I was about to watch Tár, but it had mysteriously disappeared from HBO by the time I got around to it.

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    I find awards shows tedious and the Oscars especially so. My only interest in it this year is finding out afterwards if Michelle Yeoh became the first Malaysian to win an Oscar.

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    @Gwangung:

    EEAAO was pretty much in my wheelhouse as a multiverse story. Gulped down the story like candy and was delighted that they didn’t hold back and went for the fences with their choices.

    I think that in some ways EEAAO was possible because the various Marvel and Sony Spiderman movies made mainstream audiences comfortable with the idea of a multiverse.

    I haven’t seen it yet, but am looking forward to it. I am rooting for Michelle Yeoh because I have admired her work for a long time.

    The only nominated film I saw all year was Top Gun: Maverick. Loved Jennifer Connelly. The movie was just OK, but it was well made.

  26. 26.

    Nelle

    The only movie I saw was Women Talking.  It is excellent and doesn’t have a chance of winning.  I’m startled it was nominated and hope that brings in a bigger audience.  Not watching the show, though.  I got a new book!

  28. 28.

    Redshift

    Jamie Lee Curtis’ speech was great, especially the shout out to the massive audience of genre movie fans who have been with her all along.

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    Not watching as usual, but I am rooting for Yeoh to win for her performance in EEAAO, which was astounding. I wouldn’t be mad if Blanchett won for Tár. Both were awesome, but I give the edge to Yeoh because…damn! I read that Jamie Lee Curtis won best supporting for EEAAO — good! She earned it!

  31. 31.

    Mike in NC

    We watched ‘Everything Everywhere…’ last weekend and it was nuts but fascinating. Jamie Lee was awesome in it.

  32. 32.

    Gwangung

    @Brachiator: Yeah, I think that’s very true. EEAAO wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the box, and probably not the critical praise without the Spider-Man movies….and to a lesser extent, all the Marvel movies introducing fantastic concepts….

  35. 35.

    JMG

    @Brachiator: Top Gun: Maverick the only one I saw, too. It was objectively terrible (ripping off the whole mission from Star Wars!) but enjoyable for almost every predictable minute.

  38. 38.

    eclare

    @Gwangung:   That’s my hesitation about EEAAO, I haven’t seen the Spider Man movies or any of the superhero movies except the first Iron Man, just not my thing.

  39. 39.

    Gwangung

    @eclare: If it’s not your thing, there’s a good chance you won’t enjoy it. The movie isn’t making allowances for the more mundane minded audiences; it centers an audience that knows and is comfortable with wild concepts and puts pedal to the medal, and makes everyone else pick it up as they go along.

  40. 40.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Asians sweeping Oscars, black quarterbacks in the Super Bowl, women piloting F-35s – welcome to Biden’s America

  42. 42.

    mapaghimagsik

    To me, EEAAO was a multiverse movie that wasn’t a multiverse movie. I loved it.

  44. 44.

    citizen dave

    I watched EEAAO with no expectations, and really loved it.  Great story excellently-acted and directed, etc., and really touching.  I watch absolutely zero Marvel/superhero movies, and am still just fine with how the multiverses were used in the movie.  Now Christopher Nolan’s Inception, don’t get me started.  What Peter Bradshaw (who I just learned about who he is right now) said about EEAAO, I would apply to Inception.  All of our mileage certainly does vary  :)

    Assuming Michelle Yeoh wins, it will be the first movie to win 3 actor awards since…1976, Network.

    Like eclare I watched about 10 minutes of Elvis before bailing.  It was ridiculously bad, especially the two leads.  Hey, Hanks won a Razzie for it last night!

    Saw Baz Lurhman on the red carpet tonight and understand more why I can’t fathom his musicals.

  45. 45.

    Jay

    @JMG:

    saw Top Gun, Maverick on a free Paramount stream, s’okay, but then I learned it was financed in a large part by a Russian Ogliarch/ sanctioned Putin Fluffer,

    Glad it got $0 from me.

  47. 47.

    Brachiator

    @TaMara:

    This is very cool. I used to watch video clips of Indian movies on channel 18 in Los Angeles. Great to see this production on national TV.

  48. 48.

    CaseyL

    The best Oscar viewings I’ve ever had were the (rare) times I was at a party where everyone was a movie nut, and we’d all watch the telecast with eager anticipation and lots of snark.

    Haven’t watched the award show in its entirety for, well, years.  The glory of the internet means I can see just the parts I really want to.  It also means I can follow in real-time via the live bloggers.

    I’ve been wanting to see EEAAO since I first saw the trailer, but not enough to actually go to a theater.  Waiting for it to stream on one of the services I subscribe to.

  49. 49.

    delphinium

    @citizen dave: I’m 1 of the probably 5 people who actually liked Baz’s Moulin Rouge. But I enjoy over-the-top musicals, and would watch Ewan McGregor read a phone book. Though I get his style isn’t for everyone-haven’t seen Elvis.

  50. 50.

    Alison Rose

    I don’t watch movies but I like watching the Oscars just to see how often they show their asses. Case in point: giving the award for makeup to fatphobic bullshit.

    So jazzed for Jamie Lee Curtis, though. An icon and a badass and a total babe

    ETA do gotta give a thumbs-up to Hugh Grant for giving us probably the first use of the word scrotum at the Oscars though

  52. 52.

    prostratedragon

    @schrodingers_cat:  Was that the lady in the stunning dress who introduced the song?  Oh, to look like that for a night!

    (I’m reminded of a cute story about Cary Grant. He was attending some show for which a friend had left tickets. The agent didn’t have anything for Mr. Leach, so the suggestion, try “Cary Grant.” The best the flustered agent could do was blurt out, “But you didn’t look like Cary Grant.” To which he replied, “Nobody does.”)

  56. 56.

    Matt McIrvin

    @eclare: While EEAAO is wild, gonzo science-fiction film, it’s not a superhero movie in any real sense. It is extremely funny, which is one way to get audiences to accept the bizarre premise, and has elements of martial-arts cinema though that’s not its primary focus either. It ultimately becomes a touching story about family and the need for kindness and acceptance in a tough world, which may or may not be your thing as well.

  58. 58.

    Gvg

    Huh, I have known multiverse stories for…I don’t know, at least 30 years. I never thought of the Spider-Man movies as introducing anyone to the concept of multiverses. I think it was some Heinlan stories but I quickly found he wasn’t the first, it went back further, and yeah both DC and Marvel wrote about it  a lot in the 70’s if not earlier. I think writers in other countries did it too but I am only mono lingual. I didn’t think most people hadn’t already encountered the concept.

  59. 59.

    eclare

    @Matt McIrvin:   I like movies about kindness and acceptance, and so many people have raved about it that I will check it out.  Plus I love Jamie Lee Curtis.

  61. 61.

    prostratedragon

    @Matt McIrvin:  Who among us hasn’t found themselves on the threshold of the multiverse when faced with even just one of Evelyn’s predicaments.

  62. 62.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @lol chikinburd: Politics play a big role at the Academy. Jamie Lee Curtis was excellent, but part of it was essentially a life-time achievement award — it’s the first Oscar she’s ever won.

    Likewise, Ke Hue Quan was clearly a sentimental favorite. Not dismissing his performance either, but the “kid actor, leaves acting, has a second chance decades later” is total bait to Academy members.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gvg: The concept is old hat to science-fiction and superhero comics fans. DC Comics started messing around with it in the 60s as a way of bringing back old versions of their current heroes.

    But I recall that when Back to the Future 2 came out, some film critics were baffled by the plot and did not get that the middle section of the movie took place in 1985 in an altered timeline, even though the movie stops for a while at that point so Doc Brown can literally draw us a diagram of the plot so far.

    Really, they ought to have gotten the basic idea from It’s A Wonderful Life.

  65. 65.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @eclare: Definitely not a superhero movie in any conventional sense. Nor really a sci-fi movie either, nor a martial arts movie. Though it has elements of all of them.

    It’s over the top bonkers, like nothing you’ve probably seen, but as @Matt McIrvin: it’s ultimately a story about family and redemption.

  66. 66.

    Gwangung

    @lol chikinburd: Yeah, this was an Old Hollywood vote. Stephanie did a great job, who wasn’t nearly as recognized as she should have been (and to think, I first knew her as an off-Broadway production)

    (Oh, I also have another connection…an acquaintance of mine did the dub of Michelle Yeoh’s voice as the Cantonese opera singer, and she was out of her mind going to tonight’s show live).

    @Sister Golden Bear: Oh, yeah. Ke Huy Quan’s win was totally locked in as a story Hollywood is a sucker for (notwithstanding the fact that Ke was locked out of Hollywood by the lack of parts for Asian actors and the utter blindness of casting people to the worth of an actor they threw away for over three decades).

  70. 70.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I wish Oscar was brave enough to let the hilarious and unconventional  Aubrey Plaza host.

  72. 72.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @TaMara: Have no idea why I’m watching as I only saw a couple of the shorts but I did see the Naatu Naatu performance and it was fantastic!

  76. 76.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    Jamie Lee Curtis was excellent, but part of it was essentially a life-time achievement award —

    I had the same thought, Hollywood royalty, becoming increasingly beloved over the last few years, and Oscar voters do seem to love it when a glamorous actor plays frumpy

  77. 77.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I commented weeks ago that we had to shut off Everything movie halfway through because it was so ridiculous.  Many people commented that the 2nd half improved so we watched the latter half the next night.  Still stupid.  That movie sucks.

  80. 80.

    The Up and Up

    @NotMax:
    My brother and his friends forced themselves to complete it.
    The rest of us later viewed as a friend who taught Intro to Film at a community college raved “Everything ..” was the best thing he had ever seen. The instructor was known around campus for having awarded an “A” to a student who created a montage. “James Joyce is actually interpretive dance,” the student began. And then they gyrated on stage.
    I agree with my brother that someone could make a whole sequel just on Jamie Lee Curtis’s Deirdre Beaubeirdre. That would be entertainment.

  81. 81.

    Brachiator

    @prostratedragon:

    (I’m reminded of a cute story about Cary Grant. He was attending some show for which a friend had left tickets. The agent didn’t have anything for Mr. Leach, so the suggestion, try “Cary Grant.” The best the flustered agent could do was blurt out, “But you didn’t look like Cary Grant.” To which he replied, “Nobody does.”)

    Years ago a coworker saw Grant sitting in a baby blue Rolls Royce. He looked enough like Cary Grant to make her nearly faint.

  82. 82.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Cocaine Bear – people in the theatre were laughing so hard they were snorting

  89. 89.

    The Up and Up

    @Sister Golden Bear:
    That reminds me of Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) bemoaning his lack of Oscar prospects in Bowfinger. He tells his agent to go find the script for “Buck the Wonder Slave.”

  96. 96.

    Gwangung

    The Daniels drag the GOP in the best way possible. And THAT will get universal acceptance here.

  102. 102.

    Dan B

    Where’s Amir?  Michelle Yeoh is from KL – Kuala Lumpur!!  Wow!!!

    And Schroedingers Cat.  Winners from India too!

  103. 103.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I’ve seen all three incarnations of All Quiet on the Western Front and the 1979 version is the best, hands down.

  109. 109.

    C Stars

    I saw EEAAO twice in the theater–once with a group of people who loved it and once with a group who really didn’t get it/didn’t like it (the fact that I went twice will tell you which camp I am in). I think the same reason the second group didn’t like it is the very reason why I am so happy and surprised that the Academy went all in on it. It’s a different kind of story and told in a different way and that is so refreshing. The Oscars really are insufferably cheesy and establishment but EEAAO’s victory is a good sign that things are changing.

  110. 110.

    Yutsano

    @Fair Economist: ​Count me in the I enjoyed Moulin Rouge as a bit of a camp fest but still overall quite fun. I will admit that singing is more her spouse’s gig but Nicole did just fine in the singing department.​​
     

    EDIT: FYWP.

  112. 112.

    Gwangung

    FINALLY.

    There are now more Asian women who have won Oscars for playing Asian characters than white women who’ve won for playing Asian characters.

  114. 114.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    I really need to see Everything Everywhere All At Once. The Many Worlds premise sounds pretty cool

  116. 116.

    Fair Economist

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I just saw EEAAO last night and liked it. And I generally don’t like movies anymore.

    One thing that I think may have counted in it doing so well is the enormous amount of work that must have gone into the “multiverse” shots – scenes where some of the characters appear in dozens of different scenes within seconds. I was frequently thinking “how did they DO that?” And the Academy likes technical filmmaking prowess.

  117. 117.

    NotMax

    @Gvg

    Yup. For DC, Earth-2 was introduced in Flash #123 back in 1961 and the universes grew like Topsy on steroids ever since..

  118. 118.

    cain

    @prostratedragon: ​
     
    See the movie Om Shanti Om on Netflix for her debut in Indian cinema. It’s a great movie and easy entertainment. It pokes fun at itself and at Indian cinema.

  120. 120.

    prostratedragon

    @cain:  Thanks, will check it out.  From my limited exposure to Indian movies I have the impression that they’re often briskly tongue-in-cheek.

  123. 123.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Been decades since I paid attention to the Oscars. I think the last time was when the Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King swept the awards. Very glad that EEAAO did so well. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, & am a fan of Michelle Yeoh.

    On a side node, Top Gun: Maverick as a Best Picture nominee? Come on! I get the nostalgia factor. As a  FOB immigrant to the US in 1990, very young, male & high on testosterone, I discovered original Top Gun & was obsessed w/ it through high school. I enjoyed Maverick for the nostalgia factor, but Best Picture?

  124. 124.

    Msb

    Very happy with most of the wins, and really want to see EEAAO and Women Talking.
    still pretty mad that a white actress’s powerful white friends got her nominated, and not Viola Davis for The Woman King or especially Danielle Deadwyler for Till.

  125. 125.

    Jeffg166

    The library had the DVD of Everything Everywhere at Once. No idea when the movie was in theatrical release. Got it because it had been nominated. Had no idea what it was about. Really liked it.

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