Conan O’Brien jokes about Ted Sarandos, Timothée Chalamet and ‘frightening times’ in Oscars monologue

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Host bobs and weaves through a number of third-rail topics in Academy Awards speech that’s at turns silly and sincere Oscars 2026 – follow the action live! The winners: the full list – updating live Conan O’Brien’s opening monologue at the 98th Academy Awards cheekily paid tribute to many nominated films – and then some – while acknowledging the tense US political situation and cracks at Timothée Chalamet, Amazon and US healthcare. After a snappily edited, old-school montage in which O’Brien, dressed as best supporting actress winner Amy Madigan ’s character in Weapons (“I look like Bette Davis with lupus,” he joked), stormed through each of the nominated films trailed by children à la Weapons, the second-time host bobbed and weaved through a number of pressing topics, from political divides to AI to Jeffrey Epstein. “I am Conan O’Brien, and I am honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards,” he quipped. “Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.” Continue read...
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Shirley review – Regina King rises above dutiful, by-the-numbers biopic

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The life and achievements of Shirley Chisholm, the groundbreaking Black politician, are told in a formulaic drama that boasts a winning central performance

For all its broad strokes, Shirley, the new Netflix biopic on trailblazing politician and erstwhile presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm, has a point. Some things are not subtle. The film opens with a visualizer of the House of Representatives in 1968: of the 435 members, only 11 were women, only five Black, and no Black women. Or to put it more starkly: in the official congressional class portrait on the steps of the Capitol, Chisholm (Regina King) is the only Black female face in a sea of grizzled white male visages. The Capitol dome in the background may look obviously CGI-ed, but the image is effective: Chisholm’s mere appearance in the halls of power was radical, her fight steeply uphill.

Said image is also fitting for Shirley, written and directed by John Ridley, which is insightful on Chisholm’s underappreciated significance as the first Black woman to run for president, even if it spells out the story of her groundbreaking 1972 campaign in block letters. For shortly after that portrait, King’s Shirley, speaking with what I have to assume is an accurately light West Indian lilt, proves her mettle in obvious terms by telling off an old white senator who mocks her equal paycheck and demanding a better committee assignment from the speaker of the House, after the freshman rep from Brooklyn gets stuck with agriculture. (Chisholm, neé St Hill, was raised between Bed-Stuy and Barbados, though her pre-politics background is so sparingly and choppily conveyed that you’ll have to consult Wikipedia.)

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