Hollywood’s cluelessness was demonstrated by the 13 nominations for Emilia Perez. In the entire history of the Oscars, no film has ever earned more than 14, and only three films have reached that amount, so in terms of nominations, Emilia Perez is now the fourth-most honored film in history.
Say what?
Not only is there an immense 44-point gap between the tomatometer (critics’ ratings) and the popcornmeter (audience ratings), but even the critics didn’t like it that much! Even if you forget about the poor audience reception, it also has the worst reviews of any of the nominees! In terms of audience ratings, it scores 32% and the next-lowest nominee is at 75%. So there you have a film that nobody thought to be especially good, suddenly pulling down not only the lion’s share of the noms, but the kind of numbers that place it above the greatest films in history.
And people wonder why the Oscar telecast doesn’t generate much interest anymore. Just a decade ago (actually 2014), the Oscars pulled about 44 million viewers. The last four years have all been below 20.
The list of tomato/popcorn ratings:
Anora 93/90
The Brutalist 93/83
A Complete Unknown 80/96
Conclave 93/86
Dune: Part 2 92/95
Emilia Perez 76/32
I’m Still Here 95/99
Nickle Boys 90/78
The Substance 89/75
Wicked 88/95
Some surprises:
Zero nominations for Challengers and Queer – a total goose egg for Luca Guadagnino.
No nominations for Babygirl or The Last Showgirl, not even a Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis. (Pamela Anderson and Nicole Kidman were also considered potential nominees for acting nods.)
No nominations for Margaret Qualley or Selena Gomez.
Many nods for Nosferatu, but mostly in the technical/atmospheric categories like costume design, make-up and hair, … (Cinematography is certainly a major one, however.)
Sebastian Stan was OK as Trump, I guess, but I didn’t realize that other people were impressed enough to nominate him as Best Actor. Daniel Craig was expected to get the fifth nomination in that category. Stan has zero chance to win against Brody, Chalumet, and Fiennes, so his nomination seems like kind of a “Fuck you, Trump” gesture. Not to mention “Fuck you, 007.”
Betting on the awards: the opening line
Adrian Brody is the favorite for Best Actor, with Chalumet the only strong challenger.
Demi Moore and Mikey Madison are 1-2 for Best Actress.
Kieran Culkin is considered an absolute lock for Best Supporting Actor.
Zoe Saldana is a heavy favorite for Best Supporting Actress.
The Brutalist is an overwhelming favorite to win Best Picture.
Its director, Brady Corbet, is also favored. Don’t read too much into what I’m about to write, because I watched the Brutalist, all 67 hours of it, and I liked it. I admired it as well, but man, you can’t see this whole mofo on a plane unless you’re flying to Sydney. OK, that was bullshit, but this is not: because the film is so long, and because it is in 70mm, the canisters containing the film weighed 300 pounds when they arrived in Venice. No gondola ride for those bad boys.
My gut reaction is that it’s one of those films that screams, “I’m an important historical epic, look at me.” To me, that is a position better suited to a biopic or some other kind of true story, rather than a story from the imagination. As it stands, we are asked to learn lessons about human nature and post-war America from a bunch of stuff that never happened. That’s flimsy.
But I have to concede that the film is pretty much as brilliant as advertised!
By the way, does anyone but me remember that Laszlo Toth, the name of the protagonist in The Brutalist, is one of the characters created by comedian Don Novello? Obviously, that character never took off like Father Guido Sarducci.
To take the story one layer deeper, Novello himself took the name from a real person – the madman who attacked Michelangelo’s Pieta in the early 70s. The original Mr. Toth took a hammer to the Pieta while wearing a tuxedo and screaming “I am Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.”
Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.
Wicked and Dune Part 2 were two of the top 10 films by box office in 2024.
I’m not sure what else could have been nominated from the top 10. I was going to say that every other film in the top 10 was either a sequel, prequel or remake, but so are Wicked and Dune!
The highest grossing original film of 2024 was It Ends With Us at #15. This really is kind of pathetic.
And it’s worse than that because “It Ends with Us” isn’t really original: It’s a book adaptation.
At #16 is “The Wild Robot” (animated, adapted from a book). And 17-20 are all sequels and prequels.
Finally, at #21, we find the live action-animation hybrid “IF” from John Krasinski.
Sheesh.
The nudity quota in the best actress award was good, again. Demi Moore, Mikey Madison and Fernanda Torres were nude in their performances that were nominated lol
In my world of horror, The Substance getting the nods it got despite being a balls-out body horror gore fest is -amazing-.
On another matter, I’ve been trying to get into the remake of Battlestar Galactica, but, I find it to be very much a space opera.
One interesting thing (I’d say amusing but given the subject) in the miniseries that launched the series, Admiral Adama (Edward James Almos) is giving a speech to decommission the Galactica. Directly prior to this, he gets annoyed and throws away his prepared text, and delivers a speech saying something like ‘the human species is capable of doing awful things.’ And, at the moment, in the center of the screen is the actress Nicki Clyne who some years later got herself caught up in the NXIVM cult scandal (the one with Alison Mack, who was briefly married to Nicki Clyne is a sham marriage), the cult that engaged in human trafficking among other awful things.
I think the original Battlestar Galactica is unfairly and inaccurately regarded. The media seems to need to make everything a contrast: the original was terrible but the remake was brilliant!
I read an article on the remake saying something like ‘one of the great things about the remake (unlike the cornball original) is how realistic it was, it dealt with such mundane things as governance of the ship and lack of food supply. Actually, those were both taken from episodes in the original Battlestar Galactica.
Also, it was not cancelled due to poor ratings, per se, the ratings at the end of its season were quite high, but they weren’t high enough given the cost of production.
What is now called the second season of Battlestar Galactica was originally called Galactica 1980, and it was pretty bad. The problem, in addition to the significantly reduced budget, is that it aired at 7:00PM which until President Reagan gutted the act, was the children’s prime time hour. So, the show had to feature educational lessons for children. The producers of the show obviously decided ‘what better way to appeal to children than to have children star on the show?’ and those episodes were horrible.
There were basically just two good episodes: the Halloween episode featuring Wolfman Jack and the final episode featuring the return of Starbuck .
In the first season, there was a two part episode that I think was clearly meant to set the philosophy of the series (the series producer Glen A. Larson was a Mormon, however when I saw the series again, I didn’t know that at the time.) This was the episodes that featured Patrick MacNee as Count Iblis, the Imperious leader of the Cylons. I thought it was really good until the conclusion when it descended into new age nonsense.
I know that Mormons believe they have something to do with space aliens but I was not aware that the Mormon religion had any similarity to new age nonsense.
Fun fact: Iblis is the Quranic name for the figure called Satan in the Bible.
Yeah, both shows eventually got silly. The remake just needed to end one episode earlier than it did. We didn’t need to see them reach earth and presumably colonize and mate with primitive humanity.
But Glen A. Larson was a Mormon. He and/or his estate (I don’t know when he died) probably insisted that the parallel to the Mormon pioneers’ journey to Salt Lake City be made explicit before the show ended.
Holy Orson Scott Card, Batman!
You know, in retrospect, I’m a little bit surprised the producers of BSG never (to my knowledge) approached Orson Scott Card to write or co-write an episode. I don’t agree with the man’s politics, but he’s an excellent storyteller whose tales go beyond kapow and kablooey to explore the inner lives of the characters.
I care about some of these films. I’m just angry the Oscars nominated Diane Warren…. again for Best Original Song? Whose dick does she keep sucking to get another Oscar nod for her shitty song?
She composed songs for the last 2 oscars, so while I am adverse to conspiracy theories, there seems like some dick suckin may be happening.
PR
She’s a prolific songwriter who ends up with tunes in a whole lot of movies. There could be some favors exchanged, but it could also just be the sheer volume of compositions.
Have you heard any of the songs she’s written lately? They’re shit.
Congratulations Demi Moore. BTW Emilia Perez is overrated.
Ya think? In terms of Oscar nominations, it might be the most overrated film in history.
I hadn’t heard OF Emilia Perez until today. I read the phrase “trans musical” in the description so maybe the nom was meant as a FU to Trump? But then, Apprentice was right there (and probably a better movie, speaking as someone who has seen neither but hates musicals).
Maybe it was an FU to Trump, which is fine by me. Albeit I understand that many even in the trans community object to Emilia Perez,…and so do Mexicans. Also, while some reviewers loved it, there was not even a strong consensus among them, with other reviewers seeing it as a real misfire or even as somewhat trashy. They loved it at Cannes though, where it won the Jury Prize, but that is usually a reliable sign for me that it is not a film I would like (with some exceptions, over the years). Overall, there is nothing at all that I know about Emilia Perez that would inspire me to see the film, and I will continue to give it a hard pass.
I will say though that even as out of touch as the Academy admittedly is, I was surprised by their embrace of Emilia Perez given that it has not been all that well received by many even among those you would think might like it. I don’t know what is going on, but the FU to Trump theory is as good as any.
I think that’s overthinking it.
A small movie with a famous lead and political hot button topics? Wanna go count how many of those got noms when better movies got ignored? It’s called virtue signaling and Hollywood invented it.
But now they nominated a movie that the people it’s about are speaking out against.
I think religion invented virtue signaling or maybe goverrnments or maybe random people in a society.
Zzzzzz
You’re saying what we’re all thinking.
I not only remember Laszlo Toth, I have a copy of “The Laszlo Letters,” a hilarious book of letters that he wrote to various public figures and companies under that name, making absurd complaints or suggestions, along with the straight-faced responses.
BTW, I had no interest in “Emilia Perez,” but now that I know Oscar voters consider it equally as worth of nominations as “Mary Poppins,” “Forrest Gump” and “Gone With the Wind,” I might have to stream it.
I also have that book sitting around somewhere.
My own first choice for Best Picture, among the contenders I have seen, would be Conclave. I didn’t think that the movie had all that much new or significant to say about religion or social issues, despite maybe having some pretensions otherwise. But I liked it as a very well made, old-fashioned political thriller, where the politics just happened to be those of the Vatican. And it had some great acting performances as well.