Before I get back to Sunday night: I have been quoted in a Variety piece on Bob Iger — the interview was done on Friday — and I was waiting for it to go live before sitting down to finalize this. It’s up now — you can read it here.
Okay, on to the Oscars. (For previous years, see 2025 Academy Awards).
The pre-show film montage was quite good — the kind of thing that, done right, puts you in exactly the right mood. I think the first time I saw an opening like that was during one of Billy Crystal‘s hosting runs, and it’s become one of my favorite parts of the broadcast when they bother to do it well. This year they did.
Conan O’Brien was back for a second year, which already tells you the Academy was happy with how 2025 went. He came out in full costume as Aunt Gladys from Weapons — Amy Madigan‘s character — which was a committed choice, I’ll give him that. The monologue itself was pretty mild. Deliberately so, I suspect. Not a lot of sharp edges. It felt like that was the right call.
The whole season had been set up as a two-film race: Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another (recall One Birthday After Another) against Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners. One about faded leftist revolutionaries on the run; the other a vampire epic that’s really about American racial history. On paper, an unusual pair of frontrunners. In practice, it made for a genuinely interesting awards season.
One Battle After Another won Best Picture, which most people expected by the end. It ended up with six awards total — Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor for Sean Penn, Editing, and the new Casting prize. Sinners was no consolation story either: it took four, including Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan (extraordinary work playing twin brothers), Best Original Screenplay for Coogler, Best Score, and Best Cinematography.
Most of the other big awards went about as predicted. Weapons, KPop Demon Hunters, Hamnet — none of those felt like surprises by the time the night rolled around. I was quietly hoping The Secret Agent might upset Sentimental Value for Best International Feature, but that didn’t happen. Norway took it, their first Oscar in the category. (Brazil has been nominated six times and won once for I’m Still Here (2024) by Walter Salles.)
F1 winning Best Sound made me happy. Racing films live or die by their sound design, and that one delivered. Glad the Academy recognized it.
Ryan Coogler winning Best Original Screenplay was another highlight. Sinners is a remarkable piece of writing — ambitious and strange and deeply felt — and even with One Battle After Another dominating the night, it was good to see Coogler’s work get its due.
The In Memoriam was genuinely moving this year. Billy Crystal spoke about Rob Reiner — recall A Few Good Movies (and Books) — and Barbra Streisand paid tribute to Robert Redford. Both were touching in ways the segment doesn’t always manage to be. No rush, no awkwardness. Just two people who clearly meant what they were saying. (And the new Best Casting award was presented well.)
The show started an hour earlier this year, and watching from Minneapolis, that turned out to help doubly! The Oscars have always required a certain commitment from anyone in the Eastern time zone (usually Pittsburgh or, for many years, Boston) — you’re not getting to bed at a reasonable hour no matter what.
Coda
A warm thank-you to everyone who came out for the (third annual) Kedia-Tayur Distinguished Lecture by Pawan Dhingra last Thursday. Here is the companion essay.
Dhingra — who has served as president of the SAADA board and is a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies — makes a genuinely useful argument: that the scholarship on South Asian Americans and the lived experience of South Asian Americans have been talking past each other for too long, and that there’s a better way to hold both the real achievements and the real constraints in the same frame.
Which brings me to what I’m thinking about next. I’m in the early stages of exploring a new philanthropic initiative focused on South Asian American representation in media — film and streaming in particular. It’s an area I keep coming back to. The community is large, accomplished, and has been part of the American story for generations. The screen doesn’t reflect that yet, not really — not in terms of the range and depth of stories being told, the filmmakers being supported, or the audiences being served. That gap feels like an opportunity, and one where thoughtful philanthropy could actually move things. And if this is something you care about, I’d genuinely like to hear from you.
I know you remember where you saw “One Battle After Another” and who said “I Know What You Did” that day and who knew what movie you saw. I saw it a day or 2 later. And I’m interested in your South Asian American representation in media initiative.