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The Highs, Lows, and Whoas of the 2025 Oscars
HIGH: Conan! LOW: The Hulu feed cutting out just as Best Actress was announced. WHOA: Who in the writers’ room really loves The Wiz?
But underneath that, O’Brien managed to take the job of cheerleading for the industry seriously, giving weight to the impact of the forest fires in Los Angeles, having speakers go long about the work of under-heralded craftspeople, and advocating, even in a tongue-in-cheek way, for the value of going to an actual movie theater. The ceremony began with imagery of Dorothy’s ruby slippers in The Wizard of O z and the sound of Judy Garland’s voice saying, “There’s no place like home,” a touch that thematically connected the clips to the outstanding live performance that followed. Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, two of the filmmakers behind the documentary about a collective of Palestinian villages in the West Bank ordered for eviction so that Israel could build a training base, won an Oscar despite their film not having American distribution.
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