The Oscars
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Who Killed the Oscars? February 28, 2025
In the 1990s, there was a failed experiment in the Arizona desert called Biosphere 2. The idea was to create a self-sustaining orb where pretend astronauts of the future could live without contact with the real world for at least a year. They would g...
The Eight Biggest Story Lines Heading Into the Oscars February 28, 2025
How strange and unpredictable has this awards race been? Consider this: At this time last year, the most burning question wasn’t whether Oppenheimer would win a bunch of awards but whether there were any awards Christopher Nolan’s biopic wouldn’t win...
Late Night's New King February 20, 2025
On a Tuesday in February, Hollywood is in the throes of a “Bonfire of the Vanities” moment. Karla Sofía Gascón’s old social media posts, with shocking takes on George Floyd (“a drug addict swindler”) and Islam (“an infection for humanity that urgentl...
How the Oscar Race Got as Messy as “Conclave” February 07, 2025
Stop me if you’ve seen this one. A committee of august personages convenes, with much pomp and circumstance, to choose the best of their lot. Time-honored rituals are observed. Fancy outfits are donned. The ogling public is kept at bay. The contender...
Latinos Would Like a Word with ‘Emilia Pérez’ February 04, 2025
Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón’s recently resurfaced tweets — including one that posited Adolf Hitler “simply had his opinion of the Jews” — have put the 13 Oscar nominations for French narco musical “Emilia Pérez” in turmoil. The fallout is...
Forget the Oscar Noms January 24, 2025
“Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.”— Jean BaudrillardAmerican films don’t feel like films. It’s a hard thing to describe — but we all know it; or those of us who remember what movies were like at ...
The Winners and Losers of the 2025 Oscar Nominations January 24, 2025
The lead-up to the 97th Academy Awards has been anything but ordinary. Last week, the Oscar nominations were delayed on account of the devastating wildfires across Los Angeles. “We will get through this together and bring a sense of healing to our gl...
‘The Substance’ Is One of the Best Food Movies in Years January 24, 2025
Not long after Elisabeth Sparkle’s 50th birthday, her boss, a boor named Harvey, delivers some bad news to her over a plate of shrimp: He’s giving her the pink slip. An Oscar-winning actress, Elisabeth (Demi Moore) has spent the second chapter of her...
How the Academy Awards Adapted to Catastrophe January 24, 2025
Until two weeks ago, Oscar pundits were describing this awards season as “weird.” Unlike last year’s slate, dominated by Barbenheimer, the new crop of contenders had been thinned out by the actors’ and writers’ strikes, leaving room for such polarizi...
The Monumental Achievement of 'The Brutalist' January 21, 2025
The Brutalist has been much garlanded already as the awards season gathers pace. At Venice, creator Brady Corbet took the Silver Lion for best director. At the Golden Globes, it won Best Drama, Best Director and Best Actor. At the Baftas, it was nomi...
The Best Picture Nominees, 2024 February 19, 2024
The Oscars have never been about art. As Louis B. Mayer once remarked, recalling the creation of his brainchild, “I found that the best way to handle [moviemakers] was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards, they’d kill themselve...
The Lego Movie Changed Hollywood Blockbusters February 09, 2024
On the morning the Oscar nominations were announced, the excited cries of newly crowned nominees were drowned out by a chorus of disappointed Barbie fans. Sure, the film had racked up eight nominations, including one for Best Picture. But where was t...
Ryan Gosling on Nearly Turning Down Ken February 08, 2024
For an actor it’s a strange experience to come upon a character you’re about to play in the flesh — or in the plastic. After Ryan Gosling first read the script for Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” he walked into his backyard and found the real thing — one of...
What Does the EGOT Even Mean, Anyway? February 06, 2024
Humans are funny little creatures. We love making lists, participating in oddball competitions, and creating weirdly specific metrics to be proud of — all quirks that join together in the annual EGOT watch, when fans and record keepers alike obsess o...
Don’t Blame the Patriarchy for ‘Barbie’ Snub January 30, 2024
When Greta Gerwig’s film, Barbie, debuted last summer, it was a source of endless commentary, both positive and negative. Right-wing critics attached to it with that dreadfully boring cliché, “woke,” and left-wing boosters of the film saw it as a fem...
Does 'Barbie' Need All the Oscars for Feminism? January 30, 2024
Like the Barbies in the movie Barbie, the film Barbie seemed capable of anything. From critical praise, to pop culture reverence, to box office domination, to culture war lightning rod, to doll sales, Barbie has checked every box.But it’s the few thi...
How the Cars in Michael Mann's 'Ferrari' Came to Life January 26, 2024
If you love cars and you dig racing, it’s pretty clear from several moments into Ferrari that this Michael Mann epic is one of the greatest car movies ever made. You have a stellar performance from Adam Driver, who plays Enzo Ferrari in midlife, when...
The Oscars Are Confused About “Barbie” January 25, 2024
It was the biggest hit of the summer. Then it was the biggest hit of the year. It was a blockbuster so gigantic—crowd-pleasing, artful, a triumph for its young director—that it changed what the movie business thought it knew about making money. But i...
Everyone Has Lost Their Minds Over Barbie’s “Snubs” January 25, 2024
The Oscar nominations are out. Barbie scored eight. America Ferrera is up for Best Supporting Actress, Ryan Gosling for Best Supporting Actor, Greta Gerwig for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Margot Robbie for Best Picture for her work as a producer. Go...
The Winners and Losers of the 2024 Oscar Nominations January 24, 2024
The long and winding road that is award season has finally arrived at one of its most pivotal pit stops: the 2024 Academy Award nominations. It’s been a great morning for the cultural juggernaut that is Oppenheimer; unfortunately, the same can’t be s...
How Well Do You Know Your Hitchcock? January 24, 2024
Though he never won the Oscar for Best Director in his lifetime, Alfred Hitchcock enjoys an enviable posthumous existence. He may be the most revered of all film directors today. He is my own favorite. Time was, critics condescended to Hitchcock on t...
The Many Contradictions of Paul Giamatti January 23, 2024
“You are the motherfucking Antichrist!” For many moviegoers, their introduction to Paul Giamatti came in 1997, when the then baby-faced actor screamed this line at the shock jock Howard Stern. In Private Parts, Giamatti plays Stern’s boss at radio st...
How Julianne Moore Found the Truth in 'May December' January 16, 2024
Julianne Moore knew the moment in May December where her character would break down. It wasn’t exactly written that way in Samy Burch’s script, nor was it director Todd Haynes’s vision for the emotional scene. But Moore always comes onto a set—especi...
The Biggest Takeaways From the 2024 Golden Globes January 09, 2024
Sunday night was intended to mark a new era for the Golden Globes. The Globes have long been positioned as the chaotic, boozier cousin of the Oscars—the former hasn’t always been a useful precursor for the rest of awards season, but it tends to make ...
