2026 Oscars Live-Blog: I'm Gabbing About Celeb Fashion, Sinners Vs. One Battle, And Conan O'Brien's Greatness

Demi Moore, Jessie Buckley And Odessa A'zion Look Fab Times 10

As it always goes, the Oscars red carpet is one of entertainment's most eye-catching spots of the year at any given point. There are plenty of gorgeous traditional looks to appreciate, to be sure, from Elle Fanning's self-described "angelic" look, with a 1903 Cartier necklace around her neck, to the ocean of black tuxes on display.

But I always appreciate outside-the-norm choices, and holy wowzers, Demi Moore's feather-forward look from Gucci is as gorgeous and unique as it gets.

I'm also digging Marty Supreme star Odessa A'zion's rhinestone-emblazoned look from Valentino. It's floral, it's fancy, and I'm fawning. Even if she didnt' score any noms for the movie, she's crushed the fashion game all awards season.

But hey, I don't need everything to be super-different. When it comes to pulling off simple-but-glorified looks, Best Actress nominee Jessie Buckley is a vision in pink and red from Chanel, which also supplied her choice jewelry.

Standing Os for all. Snap snap snap.

Hudson Williams And Chloe Zhao Are Stunning With All-Black Looks

Heated Rivalry's Hudson Williams is bringing all the heat and none of the rival tension on the red carpet. His top-to-bottom all-black approach is the kind of abyss that I'm sure plenty of fans would love to dive into. Even his watch is worthy of a zoom-in, snaked across his wrist like a pocketwatch.

Meanwhile, Best Director nominee Chloé Zhao showed up in a veiled dress that absolutely feels on theme for Hamnet's tragedy, if not necessarily the event celebrating the film's success. But still an exquisite look.

Nicole Kidman Is The White Swan To Demi Moore's Green/Black Swan

Another feathery look at the Oscars, with Nicole Kidman donning a dress from Chanel's Spring collection, with lavish jewelry to match. It looks like she might fly away if a strong wind gust hit the carpet, but probably with a soft enough landing.

Pedro Pascal, Kate Hudson And More Last-Minute Highlights

Pedro Pascal went all white up top, and with a clean-shaven face to boot.

Husband and wife Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra popped up on the red carpet looking every bit as fabulous as one would expect. I can only assume they'd just emerged from their personal Fountain of Youth before getting dressed.

Mother and daughter Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson also showed up dressed to impress.

And Wunmi Mosaku looks absolutely incredible with her shimmery baby bump.

Conan's Opening Monologue Does It All

After seeing the opening monologue give us Conan O'Brien as Gladys, the villainous haunt from Weapons, I'm not entirely convinced that it was actually Amy Madigan in the movie after all. Did anyone ever see O'Brien and Madigan in the same room together?

I like that they also animated him. Freaky stuff. Love that so many kids were filmed breaking through walls and windows.

Conan's is also taking light jabs at Timotheé "ballet-smearing" Chalamet, Netflix boss Ted Sarandos, and "movies that sound like off-brand lunchmeat," with respects to Hamnet and Bugonia. Healthcare jokes proved to be too real.

He summed F1 up as "the story of a race car driver who wins after deciding to go faster," and then announced the sequel Caps Lock. Might as well lock it up, because that's gonna be the best joke of the night. Keyboard humor is the best.

Lots of crowd love for Sinners, which is great to see and hear. Ryan Coogler looks dapper as hell, too.

Love Conan's shout-out to Rose Byrne for their shared movie If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, for which she's nominated for Best Actress.

Documentary shorts may have just gotten the biggest pop of the night. Unless something else happened that no one else was aware of that made people cheer that loudly for that long.

The phrase "At least we arrest our pedophiles" is presented here without comment.

Michael B. Jordan as a seat-filler for the entire room is a good one.

And gotta love this new Leo DiCaprio meme for the world to enjoy for the rest of time.

I'd wondered why Josh Groban was on-hand for the Oscars with only two Best Song performances set, but having him come out to sing Conan's graces as the King of all Oscar winners was a coup de grace to the entire opening monologue. Ten stars, or something.

WINNER: Best Actress In A Supporting Role - Amy Madigan (Weapons)

Wow wow wow. The first award of the night goes to a horror movie, with Madigan taking home the prize for a creep-tastic performance in Weapons. Blessed be the voters for this one.

Also, I dunno where Madigan would fit into the Black Swan sitch between Demi Moore and Nicole Kidman, but her look makes her worthy of joining the fight, as it were.

Jane Lynch Should Be In All YouTube Ads

Conan's jokes about YouTube taking over Oscar telecasts starting in 2029 was definitely good for proving Jane Lynch's ability to make even annoying YouTube ads worthy of attention. How many lumens is that flashlight putting out?!?

WINNER: Best Animated Feature - KPop Demon Hunters

To the surprise of perhaps the few people who were sleeping for the past year, Netflix's megahit KPop Demon Hunters took home the gold as the best animated feature. This movie's winning streak has been golden in all respects, pun not even intended.

WINNER: Best Animated Short Film - The Girl Who Cried Pearls

To anyone who's ever attempted to film anything involving puppets, The Girl Who Cried Pearls' win is worth championing. And as co-director Chris Lavis implied, the people who are married to the people attempting to make puppet films are also worthy of calling out.

Sinners' Musical Performance Is What All Oscar Performances Should Aspire To

Where to even start with this one. Sinners' signature track "I Lied To You" made for one of the coolest stage performances of any Oscars telecast, with so much talent involved, including Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith. But co-star Miles Caton arguably stole the whole shebang with his vocals. It soared, with 10 minutes' worth of performance and choreography packed into less than 4. That whole crew could come back out and do the exact same thing again each hour, and I'd be just as impressed.

Boo To Vertical-Format Movies

I don't even want to laugh at the idea of entertainment being made solely for vertical viewing. I can't. I'd rather laugh at the Timontheé Chalamet bum-drum joke, and I really don't want to laugh at that either.

WINNER: Best Costume Design - Frankenstein (Kate Hawley)

Thankfully this win wasn't overshadowed by Anne Hathaway and Anna Wintour's nominee-presenting gag, which was admittedly amusing.

Costume designer Kate Hawley gave a rousing speech, and as far as I can tell, she landed the night's first mishandled censoring, with a "sh-t" making it through the bleeps.

WINNER: Best Makeup and Hairstyling - Frankenstein (Cliona Furey, Jordan Samuel, Mike Hill)

Gotta love makeup artist and sculpture Mike Hill's initial panic over not being able to get his glasses out of his tux jacket. Anytime a Guillermo Del Toro movie is up for makeup awards, I always expect them to win.

Gripe Time: Matt Berry's Mic Isn't Loud Until He's Hyping Sponsors

Matt Berry has one of the best voices in all of entertainment, and I had high hopes for his effrorts, but so far, his dulcet tones have mostly been buried beneath the loud AF orchestra. And it's only pushed up in the mix when he's talking about Burger King. GIVE ME MORE BERRY, YOU MONSTERS. Ahem.

WINNER: Achievement In Casting - One Battle After Another (Cassandra Kulukundis)

It's not as if Paul Thomas Anderson ever works with disappointing casts, but Cassandra Kulukundis definitely deserves extra cred for putting together the gobsmacking lineup of award-mongering talent at the heart of One Battle After Another. If Anderson doesn't win Best Director, her speech might come back to haunt her.

Matt Berry Sighting!

All the love to this dude. GO WATCH TOAST OF LONDON!

WINNER: Best Live-Action Short Film - TIED: The Singers &

Presenter Kumail Nanjiani offered up quite a few good jokes as tweaks for full-length features to turn into shorts. Schindler's Post-It probably got my biggest laugh.

But the bigger surprise here was the Oscars' first pair of tied winners since 2013.

• Kumail Nanjiani: "Ironic that the Short Film Oscar is gonna take twice as long."

Congrats to all the winners here for this shocker of a turnout.

Not entirely sure what happened there in the middle when the camera cut to a giggling Conan O'Brien. It seems like they pulled the mic down and cut the lights mid-speech. Hopefully it wasn't intentional. Thankfully Conan commented on it after the fact, even if it didn't fully clear it up.

WINNER: Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Sean Penn (One Battle After Another)

No ground-shaking speeches from Sean Penn this evening, as he was not on hand for the ceremony, with presenter and past winner Kieran Culkin sharing the following:

• Kieran Culkin: "Sean Penn couldn't be here this evening, or didn't want to, so I'll be accepting the award on his behalf."

Conan O'Brien And Sterling K. Brown's Casablanca Is Sadly Too Real

This sketch about repeating exposition in movies for the sake of audience members glued to their phones isn't even a joke as much as it is entirely real. But still funny as hell. Sterling K. Brown continuing to "play" the piano with his hand movements after the music stopped playing may now go down as the low-key funniest moment of the night.

WINNER: Best Adapted Screenplay - Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)

Paul Thomas Anderson took home his fourth Oscar for adapting Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. Cassandra Kulukundis is cool to go about her night calmly now.

WINNER: Best Original Screenplay - Ryan Coogler (Sinners)

Big crowd pop for Ryan Coogler for landing his first Oscar win, and for a fun and humbled speech that, despite being for writing, still inspired him to call for his cast to stand up in the crowd.

Truly continuing up the night's rivalry with One Battle After Another. May the vampires win out!

Billy Crystal's Rob Reiner Tribute Brings Out The Stars

Billy Crystal's tribute to the legendary Rob Reiner was understandably as reverent and respectful as it should have been for such a stage. But when the full stage of actors from Reiners' biggest films took the stage, I could have sobbed puddles into my keyboard.

From left to right, it was Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Jerry O'Connell, Wil Wheaton, Fred Savage, Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Carol Kane, Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Keifer Sutherland, Demi Moore, Kevin Pollak, Kathy Bates, Annette Bening, John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga.

Tributes To Diane Keaton, Robert Redford And More Are Reminders Of How Crappy The Past Year Has Been

Rachel McAdams took the stage to pay heartfelt tribute to Catherine O'Hara and Diane Keaton between the tragically long list of other Hollywood legends that passed away in the last year.

Then to have Barbra Streisand come out for a lengthy tribute to Bob, er, Robert Redford that ends with her singing "The Way We Were." I mean, wow and what.

Sigourney Weaver Calling Kate Hudson A "B---h" Over Grogu Is The Most 2026 Thing To Happen Yet

Sigourney Weaver rocked it, even if the audience's reaction made it very awkward. Also, very manifest-y for Disney to have Grogu showing up at the Oscars.

WINNER: Best Production Design - Frankenstein

As it goes with all of Guillermo Del Toro's productions, the designwork is always award-worthy, and Frankenstein's gothic universe did not go unrewarded.

WINNER: Best Visual Effects - Avatar: Fire And Ash

Naturally, James Cameron's Avatar franchise brought in another visual effects Oscar. Gotta love that Sigourney Weaver was able to announce it. And the fact that Conan O'Brien brought up the fact that Grogu can't clap for this or any other award winners tonight. CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.

This Oscars Is NOT Winning Best Sound Design

I'm gonna need everyone who takes the stage to avoid screaming into the microphone, as the soundboard is not set up for that kind of gain.

Also, the music playing so loudly over Barbra Streisand's entire story about Redford was annoying. Just like how Matt Berry's vocals are buried.

We get it, the orchestra is good. But maybe not better than people's actual words? Just someone who likes words and information over here.

WINNER: Best Documentary Short Film - Children No More: "Were And Are Gone"

No doubt that this powerful documentary deserved the win, and that it was a category that Jimmy Kimmel felt on-brand to present the win to. Lots of tough watches in this category, as Conan alluded to earlier in the night.

WINNER: Best Documentary Feature Film - Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Another spot-on category for Kimmel to present, and David Borenstein's speech was as stirring as anything else said on the stage, and certainly tapped into the current state of censorship vs. talk shows.

• Co-Director David Borenstein: Mr Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose your country through small little acts of complicity. When we act complicity when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities. When we don't say anything when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it. We all face a moral choice, but luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.

Mr. Nobody is all of us.

Always Host The Oscars, Conan

Who else is selling this joke as good as Conan O'Brien can?

• "Brad Pitt and I are the exact same age. It's true. I was told this by my wife told with tears streaming down her face."

Nobody.

Bridesmaids Reunion Was Fun, I Guess?

Now that the Emmys has come closer to perfecting TV cast reunions as natural parts of ceremonies, the Oscars should find ways to do this with movie casts where it doesn't awkwardly give way to naming nominees.

WINNER: Best Original Score - Sinners (Ludwig Goransson)

The most musically pleasing movie of 2025 in my mind, as a Southern boy. Well-deserved as the second Oscar collab for Ludwig Goransson and Ryan Coogler, as the composer previously won for Black Panther. (And for Oppenheimer, but that was that Nolan fellow.)

WINNER: Best Sound - F1 (Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A. Rizzo and Juan Peralta)

Love that Gwendolyn Yates Whittle rattled off a swear of some kind while pulling out her speech, and that her speech was all about going to watch movies. PREACH IT.

WINNER: Best Film Editing - One Battle After Another (Andy Jurgensen)

This marks the first Oscar for editor Andy Jurgensen, who dedicated the award to his late Academy archivist aunt that inspired his love of film.

Best Editing winners tend to have an edge when it comes to Best Picture. Not always, but it's usually a good indicator. Just saying.

WINNER: Best Cinematography - Sinners (Autumn Durald Arkapaw)

Another first-time winner taking the stage, this time for Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who looked like a champ already with that embroidered jacket. And how adorable was Ryan Coogler running down the aisle carrying her son.

Importantly, this marks the first time a female has won the category for Best Cinematography, so it was a poignant and amazing request from her to have all of the women in the room to stand up. What a cool moment.

Huntrix Brings The Gold With A Flashy Performance For KPop Demon Hunters

As it went for Sinners' Best Song performance, this was another expansive, lavish, fully costumed number with a whole lot of bright and colorful elements packed into a short time slot. I think all of the lights blinking in the crowd represented the amount of times I've heard this song in the past year, too.

Hopefully this movie continues to inspire more fictional bands to exist in real life.

This Post About RDJ And Chris Evans

Just gonna put this out there, since I forgot to even talk about this mess.

WINNER: Best International Feature Film - Sentimental Value

Considering all the jokes made involving Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning tonight, it would have been soul-crushing if Sentimental Value didn't get the win here.

Joachim Trier gets props for the sentiment shared at the end of his speech, but I'd rather continue dodging most of the politics.

WINNER: Best Original Song - KPop Demon Hunters "Golden" (Music and Lyric by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo and Teddy Park)

Hard to deny this one, as much as I would have wanted another Sinners win here. "Golden" was one of the most ubiquitous songs in all of pop culture since it dropped. Similar to everything else involving this movie, amirite?

Congrats to all involved for landing the first Oscar for any K-pop song or artist.

WINNER: Best Director - Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)

With this win, One Battle After Another seemingly won the majority of the major awards over SInners.

The director delivered a fantastic moment after addressing the rest of the Best Director nominees and then saying:

• It's an honor to be nominated amongst you guys. There will always be some doubt in your heart that you deserve it, but there is no question at the pleasure of having it for myself."

WINNER: Best Actor - Michael B. Jordan (Sinners)

Hell yeah! Love both this win and everyone's reactions to it. This part of his speech speaks to how good of a dude he is.

• "I stand here because of the people that came before me, Sidney Poitier, Denzel, Washington, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker Will Smith and ta be up amongst those giants, amongst those greats, amongst my ancestors, amongst my guys: thank you, everybody in this room and everybody at home for supporting me over my career. I feel it. I know you guys want me to do well, and I want to do that because you guys bet on it. So thank you for keeping betting on me, and I'm gonna keep stepping up, and I'm gonna keep being the best version of myself I can be. So I just want to say thank you for everybody in this room that had something to do with my success."

Keep on keepin' on, MBJ!

WINNER: Best Actress - Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)

To the surprise of very few people, I have to think, Jessie Buckley continued her award-winning streak for her moving Hamnet performance as Anne Hathaway. This shout-out to her hubby Freddie Sorensen was a step up from Kieran Culkin's past awards-stage request to his wife for more children.

• "You're my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you."

A fantastic speech over all, and one that left the audience laughing and tearing up.

WINNER: Best Picture - One Battle After Another

Badda-bing, badda-bang, badda boom! No end-of-night wins for Sinners, as Paul Thomas Anderson's crowd-pleasing feature took home the biggest prize of the night.

Maybe the director's biggest struggle was making it to the stage with Teyana Taylor seemingly set on pulling him down before he made it to the stage.

Anderson also made amends for not thanking anyone in the cast when he won for Best Director. Whoopsy-daisy!

Jim Downey + Conan O'Brien = Best Post-Oscars Moment Yet

These guys really know how to push my buttons and tug on my heartstrings. SNL great Jim Downey showed up out of nowhere with a bit that seemingly referenced both his work in One Battle After Another and HBO's The Chair Company to offer Conan the job of hosting the Oscars forever. Which is exactly what I want!

And instead? They killed him, and apparently aim to replace him with Mr. Beast. There is no escaping the YouTube-ification of everything.

Thank You To Everyone!

That will do it for this evening's Oscars. All in all, it was a pretty fun night, without any over-long speeches or bizarre moments outside of Conan O'Brien's usual sense of humor. (The fact that Adrien Brody even made fun of his highly criticized speech from last year was another plus.) Let's give it up for what is probably the first Oscars to make 6-7 and aura jokes.

Thank you to everyone who has read along with me, and to those who read along after the fact! You're the real winners, though you'll have to pay for your own trophies in this case, too.

P.S. Live Those Dreams

What better way to end this night than with this heartwarming shot of Michael B. Jordan and his mom Donna Jordan right after his name was called.