The 2023 Oscars marked the 95th anniversary of the prestigious and rewarding event. 

After many months of waiting eagerly the 2023 Oscar nominees were announced on Jan. 24, by actors Riz Ahmed and Allison Williams at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California. 

This year’s Academy Awards had multiple blockbuster films as nominees for the category of Best Picture, like “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Triangle of Sadness,” and “Women Talking.” 

This year’s nominations were quite difficult to choose from , as many of these movies are quite impressive to watch from both a story point-of-view and a cinematography point-of-view , but the five most serious competitors are “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” 

Since all Academy Awards were decided by a ranked voting system that is also known as the “Preferential Ballot”, “The Banshees of Inisherin” originally had a very likely chance of winning. But, an unexpected turn of events happened and the award instead went to “Everything Everywhere All at Once”.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” had acquired 11 nominations this year, more than any other movie. It had nominations in many categories, like Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, and even Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan, according to movieweb.com. 

Interestingly enough, the nominees for Best Director were all directors of movies that had made it to the nomination for Best Picture. This year’s nominees for Best Director included Martin McDonagh for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Steven Spielberg for “The Fabelmans,” Todd Field for “Tár,” and Ruben Östlund for “Triangle of Sadness.”

The runner up who was predicted to win Best Director is acclaimed and well-known director Steven Spielberg for “The Fabelmans.” He was nominated for both the Critics Choice, and the Golden Globes, and ended up securing a win at the Golden Globe awards. 

Even so, the award for the Best Director Award in the end went to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

The nominees for the category of Best Actor were Austin Butler for “Elvis”, Colin Farrell for “The Banshees of Inisherin”, Brendan Fraser for “The Whale”, Paul Mescal for “After Sun”, and Bill Nighy for “Living”. 

Austin Butler gave an inspiring and critically acclaimed performance in his starring role of Elvis in the film “Elvis”, and the predictions told us this as well.  Butler was predicted to be ranked number one out of the five nominees. The second position belonged to Brendan Fraser, and the number three spot was taken by Colin Farrell, according to Variety.com. However, contrary to the predictions for Austin Butler, Brendan Fraser ended up taking the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

The nominees for the category of Best Actress include Cate Blanchett for “Tár,” Ana de Armas for “Blonde,” Andrea Riseborough for “To Leslie,” Michelle Williams for “The Fabelmans,” and Michelle Yeoh for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

Based on predictions, Ana de Armas took rank number three for her controversial performance in the film “Blonde” as the movie portrayed Marilyn Monroe in a very misogynistic and narrow way that mostly focused on her life’s trauma and not her career. Cate Blanchett took rank two with her eclectic performance in the film “Tár”, as one of the first ever female chief conductors of a major German orchestra. 

Rank one undoubtedly went to Michelle Yeoh, in her performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, who plays Evelyn Quan Wang. As predicted, Yeoh took home the award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She was the 11th woman to win over the age of 60, and was the first ever Best Actress Nominee who identifies as Asian, according to elle.com.