Green Book and Olivia Colman Cause a Surprising Upset – Great

This crazy Oscar season is finally over, and I’m thanking God for it. My freshman year with Cultured Vultures on predicting the Oscars ended in a cluster with only 14 of the 24 categories being correctly predicted by me, but I will have a more detailed follow-up on that coming later this week.

For now, the big headlines are Green Book bunking its controversies and winning for Best Picture, Actor in a Supporting Role, and Original Screenplay. We all (I would think) had Mahershala Ali winning for his role as Don Shirley in the film, but Picture and Screenplay were long-shots.

As far as multiple wins goes, only three other films walked away with multiple wins: Roma, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Black Panther. Bo Rap won the most Oscars of the night with 4: Actor in a Leading Role, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, and Film Editing. Clearly the fact that Bryan Singer was the credited director on the film did not stop voters from marking it down in these categories. It actually went four for five, which is a really good show for the film.

Roma’s three wins were all for Alfonso Cuaron, who picked up Best Director, Best Cinematography, and accepted the award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film’s chances for Best Picture were dashed at the end, showing that voters aren’t quite ready yet to accept a Netflix film in the top category.

And then there’s Black Panther, which I had slated for zero wins, pulling up three: Best Original Score, Best Costume Design, and Best Production Design. This turned out to be a pretty good result for Marvel’s first big hit at the Oscars.

Otherwise in the top categories, the ground-shattering upset of the night was in Best Actress, where we saw Glenn Close go down hard and Olivia Colman win for her performance in The Favourite. There have been arguments all through the season of Colman’s placement in Actress as undeserving or category-fraud, saying Emma Stone’s role was the lead and Olivia and co-star Rachel Weisz were more fitting in supporting, but the Academy likes what they like, and Olivia pulled off a win that puts Glenn Close in the 0/7 crowd of losing actors. Only Geraldine Page knows what that felt like, and she won on her eighth and final nomination. Maybe the same will be true for Glenn.

Supporting Actress worked out, though, for Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk. Her lack of nominations at the Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA turned out to be insignificant, and her win marked the sole win for the film as well. Also one other note: every best picture nominee went home with at least one award tonight. The others were BlacKkKlansman (Adapted Screenplay), Vice (Makeup and Hairstyling), and A Star is Born (Song). Olivia’s win was the only one for her film.

Here are the winners in all 24 categories:

Best Picture – Green Book
Best Director – Alfonso Cuaron, Roma
Best Actor – Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Actress – Olivia Colman, The Favourite
Best Supporting Actor – Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Best Supporting Actress – Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Best Original Screenplay – Green Book
Best Adapted Screenplay – BlacKkKlansman
Best Animated Feature – Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best Documentary Feature – Free Solo
Best Foreign Language Film – Roma
Best Cinematography – Roma
Best Film Editing – Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Costume Design – Black Panther
Best Production Design – Black Panther
Best Makeup and Hairstyling – Vice
Best Original Score – Black Panther
Best Original Song – “Shallow” from A Star is Born
Best Sound Mixing – Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Sound Editing – Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Visual Effects – First Man
Best Live Action Short – Skin
Best Documentary Short – Period. End of Sentence
Best Animated Short – Bao

Once again, I will be back later this week with a detailed follow-up of how the show went down and where I went wrong in my predictions.