And the Oscar for Best Take goes to…

Oh, Oscars. You’re either a trivial night celebrating our country’s worst ideals, or a magical ceremony in thrall to our angels. We hate you, we love you. We love to hate you. We love, especially, to have hot takes on the winners, the losers, the jokes, the under-loved, the overpraised, and the clothes.

I watched this year’s ceremony with a room full of opinionated creatives. But I learned if you want a real hot take, you need to find a professional. Here are ten of the best reads from Hollywood’s biggest evening, gathered from all over the internet and ranked by a one woman academy.

10. Of course we’d be nowhere on the literary internet without Joyce Carol “Sleepless” Oates.

Paul Thomas Anderson fully deserves this award two or three times over.
Sean Penn too, though not necessarily for cartoonish Lockjaw.
awards always seem arbitrary even when they are deserved since other deserving artists are passed by, whose work is as good if not better than… https://t.co/4QbRjyyQct

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) March 16, 2026

Last night our queen shared passionate Michael B. Jordan and PTA defenses, then tempered these with some scattershot disdain for awards as a concept, some musings on Dostoevsky, and a sharp-eyed anti-war analysis. All in an evening’s work!

9. Okay, now for an extremely cold take. Conservative journalist and professional pearl-clutcher John Podhoretz had a fairly unhinged read of Javier Bardem’s call for a Free Palestine, in which he seemed to conflate the actor with his most villainous character. But this all had the backlash effect of launching a very funny meme.

Remember Javier Bardem is Desi Arnaz. That was Ricky Ricardo saying ‘Free Palestine’

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— Todd in the Shadows (@shadowtodd.bsky.social) March 15, 2026 at 11:52 PM

Bardem wins this round, of course, but it’s two nice reminders. One—we’re all writers. And two, sometimes, every now and then, you can still get a good laugh on the internet. (My favorite? This one.)

8. N+1 film critic A.S. Hamrah published a lengthy Oscars blog yesterday.

My favorite observation in a sea of gems might be this line, on Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet: “Zhao is attempting to re-goblinize the Elizabethan with all of Buckley’s magick spells.” As good a Hamnet recap as any I’ve seen!

7. A lot of your favorite writers—Ashley Reese, Melissa Gira Grant—expressed some apt anguish that The Secret Agent didn’t sweep the day.

The hairy leg from The Secret Agent has arrived at the Oscars

— Rafa Sales Ross (@rafiews.com) March 15, 2026 at 6:21 PM

But film writer Rafa Sales Ross did the real lord’s work of hyping that under-seen masterpiece. This cheeky praise for the scene-stealing leg is hilarious promo.

6. The Critics at Large live blog was warm and warm-hearted, and featured the usual New Yorker suspects—Naomi Fry, Vinson Cunningham, and Alexandra Schwartz.

Cunningham, author of Great Expectations, gets my special props for identifying Ryan Coogler’s amazing accent. It is always good to hear “Oaklandese.”

5. Mark Harris, author of Mike Nichols: A Life and other Hollywood-centric stories, has a great take on why Timmy lost.

My why-Chalamet-lost analysis does not have to do with any personality issues or the ballet thing: People in and out of the industry started to fall in love with him because of the emotional connection he made to other actors in Call Me by Your Name, Lady Bird, and Little Women… >

— Mark Harris (@markharris.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 12:08 PM

The historian blames lil T’s shift from team player to lone wolf. “…in the big hit movies that have made him a star—Dune, Wonka, Complete Unknown, and Marty Supreme—he is four different versions of a solo act, a one-man show.” Too true.

4. Lauren Michele Jackson, cultural critic, New Yorker staffer, and the author of White Negroes, finally weighed in with the One Battle After Another review this cranky sue has been waiting for.

This late-breaking Letterboxd analysis considering “the film’s ambivalence about its subjects” is just refreshingly sane.

3. On Bluesky, the cartoonist and illustrator Mattie Lubchansky reminded us all that the real Oscars night has long been on YouTube.

sick of all this oscars discourse! it’s up to the VIEWER to determine whether or not famous actor Joe Estevez is “in on the joke”

— mattie lubchansky (@mattielubchansky.com) March 16, 2026 at 2:24 PM

2. Richard Brody, reigning contrarian king and New Yorker film critic, had some fighting words for Train Dreams.