Throwing out the prize of a jet ski and a lakeside vacation for the shortest speech, Jimmy Kimmel hosted the 90th Oscars Awards Ceremony. The luxurious prize mentioned above was given to the costume designer of A Phantom Thread, Mark Bridges, who won it with a thirty-six second speech and took it off into the sunset with Helen Mirren at his side.

The major awards for the night, Best Actor, Actress, and Picture, went to three different films: Gary Oldman of Darkest Hour, Frances McDormand of Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri, and The Shape of Water.

Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue starting off the night was good and he later on dragged celebrities of the likes of Mark Hamill, Gal Galdot, and Armie Hammer to the Chinese Man’s Theater across the street to distribute snacks to people seeing “A Wrinkle in Time”.
Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph garnered laughs from their talk of hurting feet and plenty of white people backstage (a joke that was a throwback to the complaints a few years ago that the Oscars were too white).

Sam Rockwell won Best Supporting Actor for Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri while Allison Janney won Best Supporting Actress for I, Tonya; it was her first nomination and first win. After Gary Oldman’s win, Darkest Hour also took home the award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Besides winning Best Picture, The Shape of Water also won the Best Original Score, Best Directing, and Best Production Design. Dunkirk won Best Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing. Call Me By Your Name won Best Adapted Screenplay.
Many of the original songs up for the nomination were performed. Two such songs, Remember Me from Coco and This Is Me from The Greatest Showman, stood out. Even though Coco ended up winning Best Original Song and Best Animated Feature film, many applauded Keala Settle’s performance of “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman soundtrack for reflecting the themes that took hold of the show such as diversity, empowerment, and inclusion. Kobe Bryant also took home an Oscar for his animated short film, Dear Basketball.
There were many firsts this year at the Oscars and a couple small political statements. The winner of the Best Actress award, Frances McDormand of Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri, delivered a powerful speech and asked all the female nominees of every category to stand. Jordan Peele ended up making history by winning the award for Original Screenplay for the film Get Out. A Chilean film “A Fantastic Woman”, featuring a transgender actress, won the award for Best Foreign Language Film. After being nominated fourteen times, cinematographer Roger Deakins finally won an Oscar for his cinematography work on Blade Runner 2049; the film also won Best Visual Effects. Lupita Nyong’o and Kumail Nanjiani both made political statements during the night, talking about how they were both born in places other than the United States (Nyong’o from Mexico and Nanjiani from Pakistan) and encouraging others to support Dreamers (or people who are in the United States because of DACA); they mentioned that dreams are the “foundation of Hollywood” and stated that they stood with all dreamers.

To avoid another fiasco like last year’s Oscars, the Academy put in several safeguards such as making sure presenters have the correct envelope before going on stage, preventing people working backstage from using social media during the show, and placing a large, gold, bold type on each envelope proclaiming the category it is for.
In the end, the 90th Oscars was a lot less of a fiasco than the 89th was but had a lot more inclusivity, diversity, and empowerment from those who broke records to those who stood up to celebrate the magic of Hollywood.