Peter Howell: Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Quan’s big wins kick off the ‘Everything Everywhere’ Oscars 2023 love-in

The love-in for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” started early at the 95th Academy Awards Sunday night, as cast members Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis took the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

Quan’s win for playing the beleaguered husband in the surprise hit multiverse comedy and Oscar nominations leader was expected, based on precursor awards.

Curtis’ triumph for playing the film’s crabby tax accountant was a tougher win to predict, since she faced particularly stiff competition, including “Everything” castmate Stephanie Hsu and Angela Bassett of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Bassett had been favoured to win based on early victories in film guild awards.

But “Everything Everywhere” was getting stiff opposition from its main rival, Edward Berger’s German First World War epic “All Quiet on the Western Front.” It took four Oscars in the early going, for Best International Feature, as well as the trophies for production design, cinematography and original score.

Quan and Curtis’s acceptance speeches were equally emotional, a feeling that proved infectious inside Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. Even the presenters — last year’s Best Supporting Actor and Actress Troy Kotsur of “Coda” and Ariana DeBose of “West Side Story” — broke into tears as they broke the news.

“Omigod!” The Vietnam-born Quan said, exulting in the win for his first Oscar nomination and for his first film in 20 years. Now 51, he was a child actor in the 1980s films “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “The Goonies,” after his family fled war-torn Vietnam to live in America during the “Boat People” refugee crisis of the 1970s and 1980s.

“My mom is 84 years old and she’s at home watching. Mom, I just won an Oscar!” he said, with tears freely flowing.

“My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp. And somehow I ended up on Hollywood’s biggest stage … this is the American dream!”

Best Supporting Actress winner Curtis, 64, was also celebrating her first Oscar nomination and first win, after a decades-long career starring mostly in genre films, such as the horror franchise “Halloween.”

She, too, spoke fondly of family, her late actor parents Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.

“My mother and my father were both nominated for an Oscar in different categories. I just won an Oscar!” Curtis said, as she gazed lovingly up to the heavens.

She insisted on sharing the prize with the many castmates and crew who gave the low-budget “EEAAO” a particularly family feeling.

“I am hundreds of people … we just won an Oscar together!”

There was also Academy love for Toronto filmmaker Daniel Roher, for “Navalny,” his Best Documentary Feature winner about wrongly imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a thorn in the side of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Yet another first-time nominee and winner, Roher dedicated the award to Navalny and to all wrongly imprisoned people around the world.

“To the Navalny family, thank you for your courage. The world is with you,” Roher said.

Navalny’s wife Yulia was on the Dolby stage to help receive the Oscar.

“My husband is in prison just for telling the truth, for defending democracy,” she said.

“I am dreaming the day when he will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love.”

The victors for “The Whale” for Best Makeup and Hairstyling included another Canadian, Montreal makeup and prosthetics talent Adrien Morot.

There was much Canadian competition in the first prize of the evening, for Best Animated Feature.

“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” took the gold for co-directors del Toro Mark Gustafson.

Del Toro, considered an honorary Canadian for his strong Toronto ties, made an appeal to Hollywood to make more animated films.

But his win dashed the hopes of other animators with Canadian ties who were competing in the category: Toronto’s Domee Shi (“Turning Red”) and Ontario-raised Chris Williams (“The Sea Beast”).

On a night of much historical significance, Ruth E. Carter became the first African-American woman to win multiple Oscars, for taking Best Costume Design for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” She previously won for the first “Black Panther” movie.

There were signs that “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” with its leading 11 nominations, would be in a dogfight with war film “All Quiet on a Western Front,” which had nine noms. Many pundits predicted “All Quiet” could snatch Best Picture victory from “EEAAO.” The German film took the early prizes for Best International Feature and Best Cinematography.

The 95th Academy Awards began with some unfinished business from the 94th Academy Awards: last year’s notorious slap of comedian Chris Rock by stage-storming actor Will Smith.

Show host Jimmy Kimmell made light of “The Slap” and the weak initial response to it. Smith has since been slapped with a 10-year ban of attending or competing in the Oscars and there was a “crisis team” on hand at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre last night to prevent a repeat of the violence.

But last year Smith was allowed to accept his Best Actor prize for “King Richard” and also to give an acceptance speech, which didn’t go unnoticed by Kimmell.

“If anyone in this theatre commits an act of violence at any point during the show, you will be awarded the Oscar for Best Actor and permitted to give a 19-minute long speech,” he joked.

Prior to the Oscars show, Kimmell had riffed on how the Academy switched to a champagne carpet after decades of having stars watch the traditional red one.

“I think the decision to go with a champagne carpet rather than a red carpet shows just how confident we are that no blood will be shed,” he said.

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