Entertainment
Inside the Governors Ball, where stars got their Oscars engraved and snacked on chicken nuggets with caviar
The highlight of the Governors Ball, the first stop of the night for many winners after the Oscars, is the stage where victors get their Oscars engraved.
Or if you didn’t win, there was still plenty to savor Sunday night, including buffet stations bursting with sliders, spring rolls and short rib bao buns.
An escalator ride up from the Dolby Theatre (guests wearing gowns were warned to scoop up their dresses), the ballroom was bursting with 12,500 flowers — including blush roses, otherworldly anthurium and bright orchids.
Spotted on the engraving stage at the back of the ballroom: Maggie Kang, co-writer and co-director of “KPop Demon Hunters,” who won the Oscar for animated feature; Kate Hawley, winner for costume design on “Frankenstein”; Joachim Trier, director of “Sentimental Value,” which won international feature; and Autumn Durald Arkapaw of “Sinners,” who made history as the first female cinematographer to win an Oscar.
Looking ecstatic and dazed, Arkapaw, who’s also the first Black director of photography to win an Oscar, ascended the platform to get her statue engraved beside her young son. With shoulder-length brown hair, the boy stayed close to his mother on the night of her historic win as fans and photographers swarmed them both. At one point, Arkapaw rushed off the engraving platform to retrieve her phone from an assistant to document the moment.
The engravings were broadcast on a screen at the back of the ballroom for those on the far ends of the packed hall. A scrum of photographers captured the winners with their new hardware.
As she descended the stage stairs back into the crowd, Kang exclaimed “yay” while holding her gleaming statuette. She took pictures with fans who thanked her. During her acceptance speech she dedicated her win “to all the fans who got us here and for all of those who look like me.”
“Incredible. It’s a really good end to award season,” Kang said after showing off her emblazoned Oscar.
“Sinners” director Ryan Coogler emerged from behind a golden curtain to have his Oscar engraved as the entire room moved in a collective rush toward him.
Lead actor and actress winners Michael B Jordan of “Sinners” and Jessie Buckley of “Hamnet” appeared together on the engaging stage. As Buckley’s statue was being worked on, she stopped to beam at Jordan who stood facing the press with a proud grin on his face, his statue hoisted in the air.
As Paul Thomas Anderson, whose “One Battle After Another” took home six awards, got his statue engraved, his partner Maya Rudolph watched from the side. In his speech after winning best picture, he had encouraged the crowd to celebrate with a martini.
Throughout the evening, including the pre-Oscars reception, nearly 20,000 glasses of specialty cocktails, Champagne and other libations were poured. At the ball, servers carrying trays of smoked salmon and caviar on an Oscar-shaped cracker and chicken nuggets with caviar squeezed through the crowd. About 30 pounds of caviar was served throughout the night.
For about an hour after the show, the Governors Ball is the hottest party. But after that, guests move on to a variety of more exclusive parties hosted by individual studios, and, of course, the coveted Vanity Fair party, which is being hosted for the first time at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and is not allowing outside media.
The Governors Ball, the official Oscars afterparty, was bursting with 12,500 flowers.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Paul Thomas Anderson and Jessie Buckley share a sweet moment at the Governors Ball.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
It was one Oscar after another for Paul Thomas Anderson.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Michael B. Jordan brought his sister Jamila Jordan-Theus as his plus-one at the Governors Ball.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Maggie Kang examines her Oscar at the Governors Ball.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Paul Thomas Anderson holds his Oscars for best adapted screenplay, best director and best picture for One Battle After Another.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
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Mike Coppola/Getty Images
As Sunday’s Oscars ceremony approached, it seemed to be shaping up to be a showdown between the vampires and the revolutionaries, between Sinners and One Battle After Another. In the end, One Battle After Another won both best picture and best director, but it was a very good night for Sinners, too, including an original screenplay award for writer and director Ryan Coogler.
There were some surprises over the course of the evening, including a rare tie in the live action short category, a remembrance of Robert Redford that included Barbra Streisand singing a bit of “The Way We Were,” and Jimmy Kimmel stepping in just long enough to make some pointed comments about media censorship. But let’s go over some of the major takeaways.
A celebrated director gets his Oscar.
Paul Thomas Anderson won best director for One Battle After Another after three previous nominations for There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza. Anderson had already won several major Oscar precursor awards this year, including top directing prizes at the BAFTAs and from the Directors Guild of America, so he was the odds-on favorite. The other nominees in the category were relative newcomers: Ryan Coogler, Josh Safdie and Joachim Trier were all first-time directing nominees; Chloé Zhao was nominated (and won) for Nomadland at the ceremony in 2021.
Michael B. Jordan won a rare acting award for a genre movie.
Michael B. Jordan won best actor for his portrayal of twin brothers in Sinners.
Brianna Bryson/Getty Images
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Brianna Bryson/Getty Images
Sinners is a drama, but it’s also very much a genre film. It’s horror. It’s vampires. Those are not the kinds of films that most often win Oscars for actors. But Jordan, with his first nomination, won over performers from much more traditionally awards-friendly films. Three of those actors (Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet and Ethan Hawke) already had multiple acting nominations before this year.
The last actor to win for a genre film might have been Joaquin Phoenix for Joker, since that was technically a comic-book movie, but that one did away with most of its genre trappings and pressed itself into a dramatic mold, which Sinners emphatically does not. Before that, while definitions of genre aren’t bright lines, you might have to go all the way back to … Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, if you consider that horror? Maybe even further? At any rate, it’s a great win for an actor who has been beloved at least since The Wire almost 25 years ago, who’s been doing rich and varied work ever since. His victory is also a win for his lengthy and fruitful collaboration with Ryan Coogler in Sinners, but also in Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther.
Amy Madigan, the award-winning straight-up monster.
Amy Madigan won best supporting actress for her performance in Weapons.
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Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
(We don’t mean Amy Madigan the person, of course.) Madigan won best supporting actress for her deeply unsettling and entirely singular performance as Aunt Gladys in Weapons, which is even more fully a horror movie than Sinners. While the nominated cast members from Sinners — Jordan, Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Mosaku — play regular people who are swept into an unreal situation, Madigan is playing, essentially, the boogeyman (boogeywoman?). It’s thrilling to see the Academy recognize a performance that is as weird and funny and scary as just the last few minutes of what Madigan does in Zach Cregger’s terrifying story of a town that sees a whole classroom full of its children disappear.
The casting Oscar makes its debut.
Cassandra Kulukundis won the Academy’s first award for achievement in casting for her work on One Battle After Another.
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Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
This was the first year that there was an Oscar for casting, which is very much overdue — there have been casting Emmys for ages. It was easy to argue for any of the nominated casting directors. Marty Supreme and The Secret Agent both deploy nontraditional actors in some roles, Sinners and One Battle both use a wide variety of well-known and well-regarded stars in interesting ways, and Hamnet places most of the weight of an enormously heavy story on the shoulders of just a couple of performers, including best actress winner Jessie Buckley.
Cassandra Kulukundis, who won for One Battle After Another, not only has been working with Paul Thomas Anderson for ages, but she also worked on casting (get this) for both The Brutalist and Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. But all the nominees have tremendous resumes. Francine Maisler, who was nominated for Sinners, was the credited casting director for Arrival, Creed, Baby Driver, Widows, and Challengers! Honestly, the biggest problem in the category was that everybody couldn’t win.
A first in the cinematography category.
Autumn Durald Arkapaw accepts the award for best cinematography for Sinners.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
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Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who won best cinematography for her work on Sinners, was only the fourth woman, and the first woman of color, to be nominated in the category. She becomes the first woman to win. Sinners is a sumptuously, inventively, beautifully shot film, and the cinematography is one of the core crafts that makes it so effective.
Movie Reviews
‘Plantman & Blondie: A Dress Up Gang Film’ Review: Sketch Material Stretched to Laugh-Free Feature Length
In case you’re wondering about the title of the new feature comedy receiving its world premiere at SXSW, be advised that The Dress Up Gang is an alt-comedy troupe that has attracted a following for their videos and television series. They’ve now parlayed their popularity into their first feature film directed, written by and starring its members. The result is Plantman & Blondie: A Dress Up Gang Film, which is about as wacky as its moniker suggests.
Full disclosure: I was previously unaware of the troupe, although several of its members — such as Frankie Quinones, Cory Loykasek and Kirk Fox — are familiar from such television shows as What We Do in the Shadows, Physical and Jury Duty, respectively. What I do know is that this sort of offbeat comic material, best suited for short videos and sketches, can be very difficult to pull off in a feature-length film, as the recent The Napa Boys proved. Humor is of course subjective, but what this effort mostly seems to indicate is that the Dress Up Gang’s brand of comedy is an acquired taste.
Plantman & Blondie: A Dress Up Gang Film
The Bottom Line Maybe you had to be there.
Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Narrative Feature Competition)
Cast: Cory Loykasek, Donny Divanian, Frankie Quiñones, Kate Berlant, Blake Anderson, DeMorge Brown, Kirk Fox, Brent Weinbach, Jamar Neighbors, Christian Duguay, Kevin Camia
Director: Robb Boardman
Screenwriters: Robb Boardman, Cory Loykasek, Donny Divanian, Frankie Quiñones
1 hour 36 minutes
The shaggy dog story involves the main characters of Cory (Loykasek), a work-at-home employee for a small-time parking lot company in Los Angeles, and Donny (Donny Divanian), a cyclist who chides him for leaving the wan fiddle leaf plant he’s just purchased in his car during a heat spell. Their nicknames stem from the fact that Cory is, well, blonde, and Donny is a neighborhood vigilante obsessed with protecting neglected houseplants.
Their paths cross again when Cory accidentally hits Donny’s bicycle with his car and, as penance, agrees to drive him around town for a week to do errands. In the process, Cory becomes aware of his passenger’s extracurricular activities, which include breaking into people’s homes and rescuing plants he deems at risk.
Listen, comedy films have been constructed around flimsier premises. But those premises are usually, you know, funny, which this one really isn’t. Nor is the supporting character of Fox, played by Kirk Fox (making up original names doesn’t seem to be in the troupe’s wheelhouse), Cory’s ex-con friend who brags, “I used to teach tennis to Pablo Escobar,” and whose frequent words of advice always include film references. “I don’t like it,” Fox says about Cory serving as Donny’s chauffeur for a week. “You saw Collateral?”
Nor is the running gag of people constantly complimenting Cory on his gecko t-shirt. Nor is the scene in which Cory trips on mushrooms on Hollywood Boulevard (which is probably true of half the people walking there). Nor is the sight of Donny wielding a Super Soaker as a weapon. Nor is the subplot in which Donny’s victims, one of whom makes his living as a “water sommelier” (and yes, I know they exist), band together as the “Next Door Boys” to get to the bottom of the neighborhood’s plant thefts.
Featuring so many plugs for Chick-fil-A that one hopes the producers got a good product-placement fee or at least free catering for the film shoot, Plantman & Blondie might have been amusing enough as a brief sketch, although frankly even that’s doubtful. Stretched out to feature length, it drags unmercifully, with its laughs-per-minute ratio in negative numbers.
The performers, who also include such non-Dress Up Gang members as Kevin Nealon and Kate Berlant, are clearly talented. But their film has the feel of an improv exercise badly in need of further development.
If April is the cruelest month, per T.S. Eliot, the Oscars surely must be the cruelest (and longest) season. Other awards shows push their way into the queue for moments of borrowed red carpet glory, but the Academy Awards are what the buildup is all about and the one people remember.
Thankfully, the countdown can now be measured in hours and minutes rather than months, with the 98th Academy Awards slated to start Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. Conan O’Brien is back to host the awards for the second straight year.
Best picture is expected to come down to “Sinners,” which broke the record for most nominations with 16, and “One Battle After Another,” with 13. Paul Thomas Anderson and “One Battle” have dominated the precursor awards, but Ryan Coogler and “Sinners” have gained momentum in recent weeks. The films also expect to vie in the newly added and long-anticipated casting category.
Last year’s acting winners, Adrien Brody (“The Brutalist”), Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”), Mikey Madison (“Anora”) and Zoe Saldaña (“Emilia Pérez”), will return to the Oscars stage to present.
Other announced presenters include Javier Bardem, Chris Evans, Chase Infiniti, Demi Moore, Kumail Nanjiani, Maya Rudolph, Will Arnett, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Hathaway, Paul Mescal, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rose Byrne, Nicole Kidman, Jimmy Kimmel, Delroy Lindo, Ewan McGregor, Wagner Moura, Pedro Pascal, Bill Pullman, Lewis Pullman, Channing Tatum and Sigourney Weaver.
The 2026 Oscars will air on ABC, and those with cable subscriptions can also watch the show by logging in to the ABC app or abc.com. The telecast will stream live on Hulu, YouTube TV, AT&T TV and FuboTV. Internationally, the ceremony will be broadcast in more than 200 territories.
Beginning in 2029, the show will stream exclusively on YouTube.
Follow along live as we wait to hear the words “And the Oscar goes to … ”
Best picture
“Bugonia”
“F1”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“The Secret Agent”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams”
Actress in a leading role
Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”
Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
Kate Hudson, “Song Sung Blue”
Renate Reinsve, “Sentimental Value”
Emma Stone, “Bugonia”
Actor in a leading role
Timothée Chalamet, “Marty Supreme”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “One Battle After Another”
Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon”
Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”
Wagner Moura, “The Secret Agent”
Actress in a supporting role
Elle Fanning, “Sentimental Value”
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, “Sentimental Value”
Amy Madigan, “Weapons”
Wunmi Mosaku, “Sinners”
Teyana Taylor, “One Battle After Another”
Actor in a supporting role
Benicio del Toro, “One Battle After Another”
Jacob Elordi, “Frankenstein”
Delroy Lindo, “Sinners”
Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”
Stellan Skarsgård, “Sentimental Value”
Directing
Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme”
Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”
Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
Adapted screenplay
“Bugonia,” Will Tracy
“Frankenstein,” Guillermo del Toro
“Hamnet,” Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell
“One Battle After Another,” Paul Thomas Anderson
“Train Dreams,” Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar
Original screenplay
“Blue Moon,” Robert Kaplow
“It Was Just an Accident,” Jafar Panahi
“Marty Supreme,” Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein
“Sentimental Value,” Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt
“Sinners,” Ryan Coogler
Documentary feature
“The Alabama Solution”
“Come See Me in the Good Light”
“Cutting Through Rocks”
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin”
“The Perfect Neighbor”
Documentary short
“All the Empty Rooms”
“Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud”
“Children No More: ‘Were and Are Gone’”
“The Devil Is Busy”
“Perfectly a Strangeness”
Animated feature
“Arco”
“Elio”
“KPop Demon Hunters”
“Little Amélie or the Character of Rain”
“Zootopia 2”
Animated short
“Butterfly”
“Forevergreen”
“The Girl Who Cried Pearls”
“Retirement Plan”
“The Three Sisters”
Cinematography
“Frankenstein,” Dan Laustsen
“Marty Supreme,” Darius Khondji
“One Battle After Another,” Michael Bauman
“Sinners,” Autumn Durald Arkapaw
“Train Dreams,” Adolpho Veloso
Costume design
“Avatar: Fire and Ash,” Deborah L. Scott
“Frankenstein,” Kate Hawley
“Hamnet,” Malgosia Turzanska
“Marty Supreme,” Miyako Bellizzi
“Sinners,” Ruth E. Carter
Film editing
“F1,” Stephen Mirrione
“Marty Supreme,” Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
“One Battle After Another,” Andy Jurgensen
“Sentimental Value,” Olivier Bugge Coutté
“Sinners,” Michael P. Shawver
International feature
“It Was Just an Accident” (France)
“The Secret Agent” (Brazil)
“Sentimental Value” (Norway)
“Sirāt” (Spain)
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia)
Live-action short
“Butcher’s Stain”
“A Friend of Dorothy”
“Jane Austen’s Period Drama”
“The Singers”
“Two People Exchanging Saliva”
Makeup and hairstyling
“Frankenstein,” Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey
“Kokuho,” Kyoko Toyokawa, Naomi Hibino and Tadashi Nishimatsu
“Sinners,” Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine and Shunika Terry
“The Smashing Machine,” Kazu Hiro, Glen Griffin and Bjoern Rehbein
“The Ugly Stepsister,” Thomas Foldberg and Anne Cathrine Sauerberg
Original score
“Bugonia,” Jerskin Fendrix
“Frankenstein,” Alexandre Desplat
“Hamnet,” Max Richter
“One Battle After Another,” Jonny Greenwood
“Sinners,” Ludwig Göransson
Original song
“Dear Me” from “Diane Warren: Relentless”
“Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters”
“I Lied to You” from “Sinners”
“Sweet Dreams of Joy” from “Viva Verdi!”
“Train Dreams” from “Train Dreams”
Production design
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
Sound
“F1”
“Frankenstein”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
“Sirāt”
Visual Effects
“Avatar: Fire and Ash”
“F1”
“Jurassic World Rebirth”
“The Lost Bus”
“Sinners”
Casting
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“The Secret Agent”
“Sinners”
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