The 93rd Annual Academy Awards have come and gone, with the awards being dished out at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles Sunday night.
Featured streaming services, (courtesy of Netbase)
In a year where movie theaters were shut down the majority of the time, it was a smaller cast of films and actors up for nominations in this year’s set of categories. Even more than last year, films debuting on streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video were taking up most of the nominations due to their easy accessibility and raising quality. At a time where streaming movies was needed due to outside circumstances, these services were able to deliver some high quality cinema to our screens this past year.
Nomadland director Chloe Zhao, (courtesy of USA Today)
The biggest winner of the 2021 Academy Awards was Chloe Zhao, whose Hulu smash hit Nomadland scored the win for Best Picture. It also landed lead actress Francis McDormand the award of Best Actress and Zhao herself the win in Best Director. Zhao became only the 2nd female filmmaker to win Best Director at the Academy’s, with the other being Kathryn Bigelow in 2010. She became the first female Asian director to win the award ever, just one year after Bong Joon Ho’s feat as first South Korean director to win Best Director. In addition, actress Yuh-jung Youn became the first Korean actress to win the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Minari.
The biggest shocker of the entire night came with the Academy’s final award, Best Actor. The favorite was the late Chadwick Boseman, who put forth one of the best performances of his career in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. However, the Academy decided to go with 83 year old Anthony Hopkins for his moving role in Amazon Video’s The Father. This win for Hopkins comes nearly 30 years after his first win as Best Actor when he played Hannibal Lector in the classic horror flick Silence of the Lambs.
Anthony Hopkins in The Father, (courtesy of the New York Times)
A recap of the rest of the awards are as follows:
Best Supporting Actor: Daniel Kaluuya, "Judas and the Black Messiah"
Animated Feature Film: "Soul"
Best Documentary Feature: "My Octopus Teacher"
Best Original Screenplay: Emerald Fennell for "Promising Young Woman"
Best Adapted Screenplay: Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton for "The Father"
Best International Feature Film: "Another Round," Denmark
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," Mia Neal, Jamika Wilson, and Sergio Lopez-Rivera
Best Costume Design: Ann Roth, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"
Achievement in Sound: "Sound of Metal," Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc, Carlos Cortes, Phillip Bladh
Live Action Short Film: "Two Distant Strangers," Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe
Animated Short Film: "If Anything Happens I Love You"
Best Documentary Short: "Colette"
Special Effects: "Tenet"
Cinematography: "Mank"
Film Editing: "Sound of Metal"
Original Score: "Soul"
Best Song: "Fight For You" from "Judas and the Black Messiah"