Academy Awards (Oscars)

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      Yuh-Jung Youn Nabs Historic Oscar Win for 'Minari'

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      After the Korean actress Yuh-Jung Youn’s delightfully hilarious BAFTA acceptance speech earlier this month, the Academy gave the 73-years-young “Minari” grandmother the chance to deliver another Sunday night when it selected her as its best supporting actress. It is the first time a Korean actress has ever won an acting Oscar.“I don’t believe in competition, how can I win over Glenn Close?” Youn said in her acceptance speech. “Tonight, I have just a little bit luck, I think, maybe. I’m luckier than you. And also maybe it’s American hospitality for the Korean actor. I’m not sure. But anyway, thank you so much.”Youn triumphed as the grandmother in Lee Isaac Chung’s film about a family from South Korea who takes up farming near the Ozarks. The film is named for the leafy green vegetable popular in Korean cooking. Our critic A.O. Scott called it “in its circumspect, gentle way, moving and downright revelatory.” Scott classed Youn as a sly scene-stealer but noted that is “also true of her character, who infuses her daughter’s home with mischief, folk wisdom and mostly unspoken memories of war, poverty and other hardship.”She also thanked her two grown sons, who she said “make me go out and work. … This is the result, because mommy worked so hard.”This was Youn’s first nomination, and, until recent weeks, an invite to speechify on the film industry’s biggest stage was far from a sure thing. One of her biggest foes might have been the 74-year-old Glenn Close, who’s now been nominated eight times without a single statuette (can we give her an honorary Oscar yet?). But after Youn’s SAG Award win and smile-inducing BAFTA speech earlier this month that thanked British voters — whom she labeled “very snobbish” people — for selecting her, the race was hers to lose.She didn’t repeat her BAFTA roast, but she did offer a kindly zinger Sunday night.“As you know, I’m from Korea, and my name is Yuh-Jung Youn — most of European people call me Yuh Youn and some call me Yuh-Jung,” she said. “But tonight, you are all forgiven.” More

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      Tyler Perry Speaks Against Hate in Moving Oscars Speech

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      Special-achievement Oscars are seemingly straightforward. Film industry person gets gold-plated bronze dude for doing notable thing.Beneath the surface, however, more is usually going on than meets the eye.The academy sometimes uses them to right wrongs, as when Debbie Reynolds was awarded one in 2015. She was ostensibly recognized for founding a mental-health charity. But it was also a way for the academy to apologize for ignoring her pleas for help in preserving costumes from Hollywood’s golden age. She also never won a competitive Oscar despite appearing in films for seven decades.Since the #OscarsSoWhite debacles of 2015 and 2016, honorary Oscars have gone to Spike Lee, Cicely Tyson, Jackie Chan, the Indigenous actor Wes Studi and other people of color. Geena Davis was recognized in 2019 for her continuing effort to correct gender inequality in Hollywood.In selecting Tyler Perry to receive a special-achievement Oscar this year, the academy cited a “cultural influence extending far beyond his work as a filmmaker.” Some people saw the academy’s move as a corrective — a tacit apology for looking down its nose all those years at the lowbrow Madea and thus, Perry’s fan base.No matter. Perry spoke movingly in his speech on Sunday night, saying, “When I set out to help someone, it is my intention to do just that. I’m not trying to do anything other than meet somebody at their humanity.”He continued:“My mother taught me to refuse hate. She taught me to refuse blanket judgment. And in this time, and with all of the internet and social media and algorithms and everything that wants us to think a certain way, the 24-hour news cycle, it is my hope that all of us will teach our kids … just refuse hate. Don’t hate anybody.“I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican or because they are Black or white or LGBTQ. I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer. I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian. I would hope that we would refuse hate.“And I want to take this Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and dedicate it to anyone who wants to stand in the middle, no matter what’s around the walls. Stand in the middle, because that’s where healing happens. That’s where conversation happens. That’s where change happens. It happens in the middle So anyone who wants to meet me in the middle, to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment, and to help lift someone’s feet off the ground, this one is for you, too.“God bless you, and thank you, academy. I appreciate it, thank you.”Perry started his entertainment career as a playwright. Since ending his popular “Madea” film series in 2019, Perry has focused on making television shows like “Bruh,” “Sistahs” and “The Oval” for BET. He owns a studio in Atlanta. He is also developing a “Madea” prequel for Showtime called “Mabel” that is set in the 1970s. More

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      'Soul' Nabs Oscar, Continuing Pixar's Awards Season Dominance

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      “Soul,” the Pixar story of an aspiring jazz musician hovering between life and death, was named best animated feature, a win that was expected even though “Wolfwalkers,” a Celtic fantasy from the Irish studio Cartoon Saloon, had its partisans.“Soul,” directed by Pete Docter, had racked up wins all season long, continuing Pixar’s dominance at awards time. This is the studio’s 11th Oscar for best animated feature since the category was introduced in 2002.The movie is notable for a number of reasons: It’s Pixar’s first movie with a Black protagonist (the pianist and music teacher Joe, voiced by Jamie Foxx), and the creative team includes the company’s first Black co-director, Kemp Powers.Docter, accepting the Oscar, thanked music and art teachers, including his parents, and said: “You make the world a better place.”He added, “My wish for all of us tonight is that we could follow the example of jazz musicians: that wherever we are, whatever we have, we turn it into something beautiful.” More

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      'Nomadland' Takes Home Oscar for Best Picture

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      With a howl from its lead actress, “Nomadland,” a drama about itinerant workers in the American West, was named best picture. The story of widow, played by Frances McDormand, who hits the open road amid the recession in the American West, the movie had been sweeping up honors all awards season. In her speech accepting best picture, the star, who was also named best actress, gave a howl, but first urged audiences to “please watch our movie on the largest screen possible, and one day very, very soon, take everyone you know into a theater, shoulder to shoulder in that dark space, and watch every film that’s represented here tonight.”The film was directed by the Chinese-born filmmaker Chloé Zhao, who earlier in the evening was named best director. It is only the second movie from a female director to take Hollywood’s top trophy (the first was Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” in 2010). “Nomadland” is also the first best-picture winner directed by a woman of color. Accepting the award, Zhao thanked “all the people we met on the road,” and added, “Thank you for teaching us the power of resilience and hope and for reminding us what true kindness looks like.” More

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      2021 Oscar Winners: Complete List

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      The complete list of winners for the 93rd Academy Awards.[Follow our live coverage of the 2021 Oscars.]The Academy Awards look different this year: The red carpet has been hemmed, and the after-parties cut.The ceremony is being held almost two months later than usual, at an in-person event split between the Dolby Theater in Hollywood and Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. It’s an unusual setup in an unusual year, where many of the films were released during a time when movie theaters were largely closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.Nevertheless, this ceremony could make history. All four acting Oscars could go to people of color. If Chloé Zhao bags the directing award for “Nomadland,” she will become the first woman of color to win in that category, and the second woman ever to win there. (Kathryn Bigelow was the first, for “The Hurt Locker.”) A best actor win for Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”) would make Ahmed the first Muslim actor to win that category.Whatever happens, we will be following along live. See below for a full list of winners, which will be updated as the night goes on.Best Supporting ActorDaniel Kaluuya, “Judas and the Black Messiah”Original ScreenplayEmerald Fennell, “Promising Young Woman”Adapted ScreenplayChristopher Hampton and Florian Zeller, “The Father”International Feature“Another Round,” Denmark More

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      Behind ‘Strange Fruit,’ Billie Holiday’s Anti-Lynching Anthem

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      It helped make Holiday a star, but it was written by Abel Meeropol, a teacher in the Bronx. An Oscar nomination and a year of protests against racism have kept it in the conversation.When Billie Holiday first performed “Strange Fruit” in 1939, the song was so bold for the time that she could sing it only in certain places where it was safe to do so.The song likened the lynched bodies of Black people to “strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary music executive, hailed it as “a declaration of war” and “the beginning of the civil rights movement.”The song has garnered renewed attention since Andra Day was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for playing Holiday in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” The film, which debuted on Hulu in February, chronicles Holiday’s defiance in the face of the government’s efforts to suppress “Strange Fruit.” The Oscars air on Sunday evening.Holiday popularized the song, causing many to believe she was responsible for its chilling lyrics. That notion was reinforced by the 1972 film “Lady Sings the Blues,” which suggests that Holiday, played by Diana Ross, wrote the song after witnessing a lynching.In fact, the song was written by Abel Meeropol, a white Jewish schoolteacher in the Bronx.Mr. Meeropol was moved to write it after seeing a photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Ind., in 1930. The photograph, by Lawrence Beitler, shows two bodies hanging from a tree as a crowd of white people look on, some grinning. Thousands of copies of the photo were printed and sold, according to National Public Radio.Abel Meeropol wrote the music and lyrics to “Strange Fruit,” using the pseudonym Lewis Allen.Boston University LibraryMr. Meeropol, using the pseudonym Lewis Allen, did not write the song for Holiday. It was first published as a poem in the New York teachers’ union magazine in 1937.He was known for his communist views, and for adopting the two sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed after being convicted on espionage charges. Mr. Meeropol’s wife, Anne, sang “Strange Fruit,” as did several others, before Holiday performed it at Café Society, an integrated nightclub in New York City, in 1939.At the time, the song’s message — conveyed with lines like, “Pastoral scene of the gallant South, the bulging eyes and the twisted mouth” — was immensely controversial.Yet in the 21st century, “Strange Fruit” has lived on, sampled in the 2000 song “What’s Really Going On,” in which the singer Dwayne Wiggins recounts an episode of racial profiling at the hands of the police in Oakland, Calif.And in 2021, as the nation continues to reckon with a series of killings of unarmed Black people by the police — often captured in gruesome footage of Black men being shot or, in the case of George Floyd, knelt on by white officers — “Strange Fruit” has maintained its place in the national conversation about racism.The song “is going to be relevant until cops start getting convicted for murdering Black people,” Michael Meeropol, one of Abel Meeropol’s sons, told “CBS This Morning” before Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.“When that happens, maybe then ‘Strange Fruit’ will be a relic of a barbaric past,” he said. “But until then, it’s a mirror on a barbaric present.” More