OSCARS 2024 OSCARS : TOP MOMENTS HONOURS

OSCARS 2024 takeaways. Hollywood's biggest night came with many top moments.

LOS ANGELES : From Ryan Gosling's show-stopping I'm Just Ken to calls for a ceasefire, there were several stand-out moments at the 96th Oscars in Hollywood on Sunday.

Here are some of the most memorable things that happened on Tinseltown's glitziest evening :

Kimmel Quips : Kimmel on his fourth outing as host of Oscars, had a great evening : he was relaxed and landed almost all of his jokes with a highly receptive audience.

He mocked the length of the broadcast - it started five minutes late - and poked fun at bum-aching long films, including Martin Scorsese's three-and-a-half hour epic.

'' When I went to see Killers of the Flower Moon, I had my mail forwarded to the theatre,'' He said. ''In the time it takes you to watch it, you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murder yourself.

And he lavished barbed praise on the performance of a dog in the French courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall. '' He has an overdose scene. I haven't seen a French actor eat vomit like that since Gerard Depardieu,'' Kimmel joked.

Barbie World : The billion-dollar blockbuster Barbie was notoriously left out of the best director and best actress categories, and it only took home one award - but frequent allusions to the film meant a rose tint still coloured much of the broadcast.

Gosling offered the splashiest evidence of the film's cultural power, as the nominated actor brought the audience to its feet with a kaleidoscopic performance of the film's eccentric ditty I'm Just Ken.

Call for Ceasefire : Several stars, including supporting actors nominee Mark Ruffalo, wore pins calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, while groups of protesters against Israel's war on the besieged Palestinian territory gathered near the security cordon of the locked-down event.

And Jonathan Glazer - whose film The Zone of Interest, which was set in Auschwitz, won two awards - told the audience his team's movie-making choices ''were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say, 

'' Look what they did then,'' rather to say ' Look what we do now.' ''

'' Our film shows where dehumanisation leads at its worst. It's shaped all of our past and present,'' he said.

In accepting the prize for best international feature film, '' Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.

Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?''

During the '' In Memoriam'' homage, tribute was paid to Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison last month, with supporters blaming President Vladimir Putin.

The heart-rending 20 days in Mariupol won best documentary with its telling of the siege of his eastern Ukrainian city.

Director Mstyslav Chernov said if he could give away his Oscar in exchange for peace, he would. '' I wish to be able to exchange this for Russia never attacking Ukraine, never occupying our cities,'' he said.

'' I wish to give all the recognition to Russia not killing tens of thousands of my fellow Ukrainians.'' [AFP]