Going in with a stellar spread of nominations this year, science fiction won nine out of twenty-three categories.

Mostly by Everything Everywhere All at Once with seven but also one each for Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Brisbane stop motion film maker Lachlan Pendragon's An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It was nominated for but didn't win Best Animated Short Film.

Though to earn an Oscar nomination for a short film created as a research project for his university doctorate is impressive.

Winners follow.

Everything Everywhere All at Once:

• Best Picture
• Best Director - Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
• Best Actress - Michelle Yeoh
• Best Supporting Actor - Ke Huy Quan
• Best Supporting Actress - Jamie Lee Curtis
• Best Original Screenplay - Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
• Best Film Editing - Paul Rogers

Avatar: The Way of Water - Best Visual Effects (Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, and Daniel Barrett).

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - Best Costume Design (Ruth E. Carter).

Though she didn't win, Angela Bassett's performance in Wakanda Forever earned her the first ever Oscar acting nomination for a Marvel film.

Jamie Lee winning over Wakanda Forever's Angela Bassett who was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress?

We reckon the Academy made the right choice.

Wakanda Forever, despite having the same writers and director as the original, was an inferior film with uneven performances.

Angela stands out among the main cast as the only actor to nail all of their lines.

Great talent can rise above and elevate mediocre material and production.

On the other hand, some of her material is awful and even though she didn't write it, it's her delivering it and separating the two isn't easy.

We begrudge her none of her many nominations or wins (eg. Golden Globes and Critics Choice) for this role, but Jamie has the benefit of superior dialog.

Also the multiverse factor allowing her to play several very different characters in the space of a single film.

Some of those, like the hot-dog fingered lesbian, so wild and surreal, portrayed with such beautiful sincerity that you do want to give her a bit of a clap.

Which the Academy did.

It's also a double win for science-fiction because the next film which we'll see Jamie and also Cate Blanchett whose performance in Tar has garnered much critical praise this awards season is the adaptation of the Borderlands games.

Film adaptations of games have tended to be disappointing but their wins will make it easier to generate buzz and if it's good - fingers crossed - that could create more appetite for other game adaptations.

In addition to obviously being great for the Borderlands franchise whose two most recent games (Tiny Tina's Wonderlands and New Tales from the Borderlands) unfortunately didn't live up to earlier entries so they could use that shot in the arm.

During a backstage speech, Jamie took a question from Australian reporter Angela Bishop and remarked that her hairdresser, Sean James, is also from Australia.

So as a small sidenote, that's ozzie hair on the awards stage.

Interestingly she also touched on a topic we remarked on in relation to the Independent Spirit Awards - degendering categories, which those awards did this year.

As a mother of a trans daughter she supports inclusion but on the topic of improving women's representation at awards, halving the available amount of acting awards could work against that.

So she regards this as a "complicated question".

Everything Everywhere All at Once is available to stream now on Binge and Prime.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is streaming on Disney+.

Avatar: The Way of Water is in cinemas.

[ Main Image: 95th Academy Awards (backstage) - Jamie Lee Curtis. Credit: Variety via YouTube. ]

References

Variety (March 13, 2023). Jamie Lee Curtis Full Oscars Backstage Speech: "Don't Cancel Me!". YouTube.

Wikipedia. An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It. (viewed March 13, 2023)

Wikipedia. Lachlan Pendragon. (viewed March 13, 2023)

Wikipedia. 95th Academy Awards. (viewed March 13, 2023)