Oppenheimer wins seven Oscars, while Emma Stone takes home her second

Louise Talbot
Mar 11, 2024, updated Mar 11, 2024

Naked John Cena presents best costume award

Source: X

British director Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer has scooped the pool at this year’s 96th Academy Awards, wining seven Oscars including best picture and director.

Nolan also wrote the screenplay for the film, a historical drama about the man behind the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and produced it with his wife Emma Thomas.

The film received 13 Oscar nominations, including a first Academy Award for Cillian Murphy – who played J Robert Oppenheimer, known as “the father of the atomic bomb” – and best supporting actor for Robert Downey Junior.

Emma Stone, 35, won best actress for her role as a woman revived from the dead in the dark comedy Poor Things. Her award came seven years after Stone won first Oscar in 2016 for the musical, La La Land.

She plays Bella Baxter, a woman who is reanimated after suicide by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe), in the Frankenstein-inspired Poor Things.

The Holdovers star Da’Vine Joy Randolph claimed her first Oscar in the best supporting actress category.

Britain’s The Zone of Interest, about a German officer’s family living next door to the Auschwitz extermination camp during WWII, collected the Oscar for best international feature film.

Hosted by late-night TV talk show comedian Jimmy Kimmel, Sunday’s glizty three-hour awards ceremony went off without a hitch, with all the awards read out as per the envelope (in the style of the infamous La La Land bungle) and no one taking a physical swipe at another actor (thanks, Will Smith).

There was a moment of controversy when 83-year-old Al Pacino, presenting the best picture nominees, skipped straight over the list and went directly to his envelope, declaring: “I see Oppenheimer.”

Kimmel complimented, and teased with good humour, many of the nominees and their films. He praised Barbie for remaking a “plastic doll nobody even liked anymore” into a feminist icon.

Before Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster, there was “a better chance of getting my wife to buy our daughter a pack of Marlboro Reds” than a Barbie, Kimmel said.

Kimmel said many of this year’s movies were too long, particularly Martin Scorsese’s 3½-hour epic Killers of the Flower Moon, which is about the murders of members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma.

“In the time it takes you to watch it, you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders,” he joked.

Ryan Gosling performs 'I'm Just Ken'

Source: X

Gosling brings the ‘Kenergy’

Ryan Gosling, who plays the Ken in the Gerwig-directed movie, brought the house down with his live rendition of I’m Just Ken.

“One of the most incredible Oscar musical performances I’ve ever seen,” wrote Variety‘s co-editor Ramin Setoodeh.

“People were screaming, cheering and gasping inside the Dolby.”

The appearance of Messi, the dog who plays a pivotal role in Anatomy of a Fall, in the audience caused a stir, as did his clapping (props for paws).

Downey Junior joked when he thanked his “veterinarian wife” Susan, who he said found him as a “snarly rescue pet” and “loved him back to life”, referencing his earlier acting career and issues with drug addiction and incarceration.

Tweet from @bbblanchett

Cena goes full Monty

Marking the 50th anniversary of a streaker interrupting proceedings on stage, professional wrestler and Ricky Stanicky actor John Cena worked with Kimmel in one of the night’s best set pieces to present the best costume design award.

Wearing nothing but sandals, Cena inched across the stage holding the winning envelope in front of him before a quick costume change allowed the winner’s name to be read out.

Poor Things won the statue, and picked up others for make-up and hairstyling and production design.

Margot Robbie swaps out her Barbie pink for black. Photo: Getty

The revenge dress?

While most Oscar watchers expected Robbie to wear a Barbie-inspired dress, as she has done throughout this awards season, the Australian-born actress and producer went for a black vintage gown from Versace’s fall-winter 2024 ready-to-wear collection.

Robbie’s surprise decision to don strapless black instead of pink was somewhat understate for the 33-year-old, leaving many asking if it was a “revenge dress” similar to the one the late Princess Diana wore after then-Prince Charles publicly admitted to cheating on her.

Robbie and Gerwig were both snubbed in the major acting and directing categories. But Barbie was nominated among the 10 best movies and was the biggest box office hit of 2023, after grossing more than $1.4 billion.

Al Pacino's Oscars blunder

Source: ABC TV