Oscars in Memoriam Segment

[silverscreenselect]

The Oscars were largely unsurprising with no real surprises in the major awards. I would have enjoyed seeing Stellan Skarsgard or Delroy Lindo winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but they'll have to be happy for the career nomination. There was a tie for Best Live Action Short Feature, which required presenter Kumail Nanjani to do some fancy quick talking. When he saw the winners, he said, "I'm not kidding. This is a tie." He then announced the first winner, and they came up to accapt the award. When they were done, he announced the second winner. This is the seventh tie in Oscar history, the first since Sound Editing in 2012.

They made some major changes for the better in the In Memoriam segment. Billy Crystal cam out and delivered a heartfelt tribute to Rob Reiner, following which about 20 costars from some of Reiner's best-known films appeared behind him. From there, they shifted to the traditional In Memoriam segment with pictures or short clips featuring each person. (To get more people in during the time available, they featured side-by-side head shots of some of the lesser-known behind-the-scenes people. When they got to Diane Keaton, they stopped the montage, and Rachel McAdams came out and delivered a similar tribute to Keaton. The montage resumed and ended with Robert Redford. At that point, Barbra Streisand came out and delivered the most emotional tribute of the evening, ending by singing a few bars from The Way We Were.

Overall, a very classy and original memoriam segment.

[MarkBarrett]

Yes, an improvement over last year. And the year before...

More names here: https://www.oscars.org/in-memoriam/2026

Some omissions I've seen online for the on-air segment:

James Van Der Beek, Eric Dane, and Malcolm Jamal-Warner even though they were more TV

Brigitte Bardot and Bud Cort were more movie-known but didn't make the cut.

June Lockhart is one I would have made sure made it as the movie work is good even though Lassie and Lost in Space are more iconic.

[Appa23]

The least classy move was playing over the Korean winner for Best Original Song. This likely is his one and only win. Maybe only do the Redford In Memorium or cut one of the presenter comedy pieces.

[silverscreenselect]

Because of my illness, I haven't seen a movie in a theater since the first week of February. However, I did see almost all the Oscar-nominated movies beforehand. I caught up on Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (which won three technical Oscars) after I got out of the hospital. The only movie I still want to see is the Brazilian film, The Secret Agent, which fortunately is available for streaming.

I wasn't too pleased with the adulation given One Battle After Another. It's a well-made movie, and Sean Penn gives an excellent performance, but it never worked for me as a whole. It was a movie to admire for specific scenes rather than one to enjoy. Sinners, which I saw twice in IMAX, should have won Best Picture and Director. It's an amazing film with a great score that envelopes you in the musical scenes. There are vampires, but it's not a horror movie; they are just part of the characters, like the rednecks who briefly cause trouble for the Michael B. Jordan twins. (The Irish dance number that the head vampire does, accompanied by several of the cast members he has already turned, is one of the film's best musical numbers.) I will probably watch One Battle After Another again to see if it appeals more to me the second time around; I will probably watch Sinners several more times in the future and enjoy it each time.

There's one thing I don't understand. The first Wicked movie received 10 Oscar nominations and won for Production Design and Costume Design. The two movies were filmed back-to-back with the same cast and crew. Yet Wicked: For Good did not get a single Oscar nomination. So either the voters felt that the technical work for the first half of the film was far superior to that in the second half or that in every single category, there were five other films this year that clearly outshined Wicked: For Good. Or more likely, because the second film got a more tepid critical and box office response, the voters just decided to ignore it completely.