The director Sean Baker probably didn’t predict this outcome  while he was filming Anora, his latest small-budget indie project, in the snowy Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach—that a couple years later, he’d be accepting Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It was one of five prizes that his spiky indie dramedy collected on Hollywood’s biggest night. After a drawn-out awards season in which the biggest contenders seemed often in flux, Anora dominated at a fun if elongated Oscars ceremony.

As soon as Conan O’Brien strode onto the Oscars stage Sunday night, he looked like he belonged there. He was self-deprecating, telling the crowd to sit down before he continued, even though no one was standing. He found Demi Moore in the audience and greeted her with a grin; he had just played a pre-recorded clip of himself emerging out of her back as a nod to her work in the Best Picture-nominated body horror film The Substance.

The moment that Shane Gillis walked onto Saturday Night Live’s stage last night for his second hosting gig, he seemed to know the audience was not on his side.
Gillis arrived with history. In 2019, he was hired as a featured cast member but promptly fired after it came to light that he had used racist and homophobic slurs in his podcast. Instead of becoming a footnote in SNL history, Gillis transformed into a successful stand-up with a Netflix deal and a Bud Light ad campaign.

Hours after his election victory last Sunday, Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), said on national television that he would try to “achieve independence from the U.S.A. I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television program,” Merz continued, but “it is clear that the Americans … are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
American security guarantees have protected the Federal Republic of Germany since 1945.