Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue on the 96th Academy Awards took its traditional digs at a lot of Hollywood’s most well-known faces, seemed again on the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, and even celebrated essentially the most well-known canine within the US proper now.
For Kimmel’s fourth time on the Oscars’ helm, having run the present in 20172018 and final yr, he kicked off his twelve 12-minute-plus speech by paying homage to Greta Gerwig and Barbie – lambasting the clapping viewers for not nominating Gerwig in one of the best director class within the course of.
“Don’t act like you had nothing to do with this,” he quipped.
After giving his verbal flowers to Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan and stars Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr, Kimmel took intention at Downey. Kimmel mentioned Downey, who’s nominated for greatest supporting actor, is at present at his “highest point”, or “one of his highest points” – in an apparent reference to Downey Jr’s previous historical past of drug use.
As the digicam panned to Downey Jr, he gestured to Kimmel to maneuver alongside.
Perhaps the star of Kimmel’s monologue was Messi, who iconically performed Snoop on this yr’s quintuple-nominee, Anatomy of a Fall. After exhibiting the canine fortunately seated within the viewers, Kimmel mentioned of Messi’s efficiency: “I haven’t seen a French actor eat vomit like that since Gerard Depardieu.”
Among different remarks about Robert de Niro, Jodie Foster, Bradley Cooper, and Steven Spielberg, Kimmel additionally squeezed in a politically prescient comment about Katie Britt, the 42-year-old senator from Alabama who gave the Republican response to president Joe Biden’s State of the Union handle final week.
On addressing Emma Stone’s position in greatest image nominee Poor Things, Kimmel joked: “Emma Stone played an adult lady with the brain of a child, kinda like the lady that gave the State of the Union rebuttal.”
The fruits of Kimmel’s speech was a a number of minute ode to the 148-day writers’ strike that took place over 5 months in 2023.
“We learned a lot while out on the picket lines,” Kimmel mentioned, noting the historic settlement that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) got here to.
He continued: “This long and difficult work stoppage taught us that this very strange town of ours – as pretentious and superficial as it can be at its heart is a union town. It’s not just a bunch of heavily Botoxed, Hailey Bieber-smoothie drinking, diabetes prescription abusing, gluten-sensitive nepo babies with perpetually shivering chihuahuas. This is a coalition of strong, hardworking mentally tough American labourers; women and men who would 100% for sure die if we even had to touch the handle of a shovel. But the reason we were able to make a deal is because of the people who rallied besides us. So, before we celebrate ourselves lets have a very well deserved round of applause for the people who work behind the scenes.”
Kimmel then introduced out those that are working behind the scenes of the 2024 Oscars because the viewers applauded and gave a standing ovation.
Sunday night’s broadcast is slated to see a panoply of big-name movie star presenters exterior of Kimmel, together with Dwayne Johnson, Jennifer Lawrence and Zendaya because the Academy makes an attempt to spice up viewers numbers for the Oscars telecast.
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