Remember last year, when the Oscar nominations were all about “Barbenheimer?” Wasn’t that fun?
Well, are you ready to settle for “Dunked,” the considerably less mellow mashup of the year’s two biggest hits among the Best Picture nominees, “Dune: Part Two” and “Wicked?”
Or are you ready for a year where a French-made, Spanish-language musical about a transgender Mexican drug kid is the dominant film by far? Let’s face it, “Emilia Pérez” may be Donald Trump’s nightmare, but it’s an Oscar favorite — and its 13 nominations could make Oscar night uncomfortable at the White House even without Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong also getting nominations for playing Trump and his sloppy mentor Roy Cohn, respectively in “The Apprentice”.
“Emilia Pérez” is not only the most nominated film of the year, it is the most nominated non-English language film in Oscar history, practically topping the previous record of 10 held by “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Roma.”
The film, directed by Jacques Audiard and picked up by Netflix out of the Cannes Film Festival, has been a flashpoint for controversy since its Cannes debut, drawing complaints over its French writer and director’s use of offensive Mexican stereotypes and its treatment of the lead character. gender transition. But it has also gained supporters, including Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, and its nomination haul is another sign that Oscar voters either don’t pay attention to the many controversies raging on what used to be called Film Twitter, or don’t care about them.
While “Emilia” picked up nominations in every expected category and then some, most of the other big contenders had some small (or not so small) moments of weakness: “Conclave” was not nominated for director or picture, “Wicked” goes script misses, “A Complete Unknown” and “Dune” bypassed for film editing…
The 10 nominations for Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour drama “The Brutalist,” meanwhile, were another sign of strength for that film, while “Anora” and “The Substance” did about what was expected of them.
Like last year, the Best Picture nominees include two blockbusters and a bunch of other movies that aren’t blockbusters. But let’s face it, “Dune: Part Two” and “Wicked” don’t quite have the pizzazz (or cool nickname) that “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” did last year. And that could be a problem for the Academy, which is eager to capitalize on the ratings boost it received from the 2024 show, but is already reeling from delays and cancellations caused by the Los Angeles wildfires.
But Oscar voters shouldn’t think about ratings or off-screen disasters when voting for the films they think are the year’s best. Thursday’s nominations weren’t designed to do anything other than show us the favorites for how many of the nearly 9,905 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose this month.
As usual, those favorites are all over the map — and as usual, there were a few surprises, including the omission of two American indie films expected to be nominated for Best Picture, Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain” and Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing.” Those films were apparently pushed out by RaMell Ross’s lyrical and defiant “Nickel Boys” and the biggest single surprise of the nominations, Walter Salle’s Brazilian drama “I’m Still Here.”
The success of “I’m Still Here,” which earned an expected nod for best international feature and longshots for best actress (Fernanda Torres) and best picture, may be a sign of the increasingly international makeup of academy members — but it also could entirely simply mean that when voters saw the film, which Sony Pictures Classics was working hard on at home, they realized how good it was.
The nomination for Torres, in particular, made it easier to accept the sad fact that Marianne Jean-Baptiste was not nominated for “Hard Truths” and Angelina Jolie was passed over for “Maria”; the best actress category simply had far more worthy contenders than it had nomination slots, so you can’t really use the word neglect to describe what happened to these extraordinarily worthy actresses.
The nominations leave us with a race that has a frontrunner but is still wide open. That could change in the next few weeks, especially in early February when Friday the 7th will bring the Critics Choice Awards (which has predicted the Best Picture Oscar nine times in the last 15 years) and Saturday the 8th will bring both the Directors Guild Awards (also 9-for-15) and the all-important Producers Guild Awards (12-for-15, and the best of all Oscar tea leaves).
Until then, the Academy will have to figure out how to attract viewers to a show that lacks the “Barbie”/”Oppenheimer” magic. It’s not that there aren’t any blockbusters coming this year: “Dune” and “Wicked” have both topped $700 million, while “The Substance,” “Conclave” and “Anora” have made back four or five times that much like their budgets in global gross.
But “Wicked” is really the only Best Picture nominee that has influenced pop culture to the extent that people might tune in to the Oscars to see how it goes. And if the Academy and producers want to capitalize on box office success for Oscar ratings, that puts a heavy burden on the shoulders of the only real sensation of any kind in this year’s lineup.
Such a heavy burden, in fact, that it’s beyond belief that one of the reasons the Academy decided to “move away” from performing the nominated songs. Is it crazy to think that will make room for some key “Wicked” cast members to take the stage and perform something other than nominated songs, which their musical has none? (Cynthia and Ariana doing “Over the Rainbow,” anyone?) Maybe it’s crazy, but this is a year for conspiracy theories.
Or maybe the Academy should just lean into the list given to them by their voters, and play up how rare a series of films this is. Even when it hit big at Cannes, there was no reason to expect that a crime drama/musical/love story/transgender study like “Emilia Pérez” could end up as the year’s most nominated film, let alone break the record. for international nominations set by “Crouching Tiger” and “Roma”.
Its second Cannes title, “The Substance,” meanwhile, is a weird, graphic, gooey horror film that cost less than $20 million to gross nearly $80 million worldwide and win Demi Moore her first career Golden Globes acting award. . It’s kind of a miracle.
Then there’s “The Brutalist,” a three-and-a-half-hour epic, expansive and indulgent and beautifully assembled and made for less than $10 million when it looks several times that expensive; there is another remarkable feat.
And even “Wicked,” the giant musical riff on “The Wizard of Oz,” managed to slip in a pretty sharp critique of intolerance and the demonization of others in between all those pretty colors and upbeat songs.
Out of these strange little miracles, the Oscar voters created an interesting, odd list of nominations. And if it’s no “Barbenheimer,” it could be a provocative night in Donald Trump’s America.
