As anticipated, it ended up being One Battle After Another’s night at the 98th annual Academy Awards, with the political thriller carting away six Oscars out of a total of 13 nominations.But while Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus continued its march towards awards-season domination, there were moments of genuine surprise and subversion in Sunday’s ceremony.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listSome of those moments had to do with the current political climate in the United States.Host Conan O’Brien and his fellow presenters deftly avoided mentioning President Donald Trump by name, but their barbs took direct aim at his policies since returning to office.Other surprises came from within the filmmaking community itself. For only the seventh time in Oscar history, a tie was announced: two films had gotten an equal number of votes for Best Live Action Short.As a result, both the surrealist thriller Two People Exchanging Saliva and the moody bar-room drama The Singers shared the Academy Award.Here are six key takeaways from the night. Actor Michael B Jordan, left, holds the Oscar for Best Actor next to director Ryan Coogler, who earned an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay [Valerie Macon/AFP]A two-horse race between Sinners and One BattleThe vampire film Sinners came into Sunday night’s ceremony with a record 16 Oscar nominations. But the big question of the night was: how many nods could it actually convert into wins?Its biggest competition was, of course, Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which had the second-highest tally of nominat …
