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  • Dorian Film Awards: ‘All of Us Strangers’ Tops Nominations

    Dorian Film Awards: ‘All of Us Strangers’ Tops Nominations

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    GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics announced the nominees of the 15th Dorian Film Awards, and Searchlight’s All of Us Strangers leads the nominations with nine.

    The Andrew Haigh-written and -directed drama earned nods for film of the year, LGBTQ film of the year and genre film of the year, with Haigh also landing nods for best director and best screenplay. Andrew Scott was nominated for his lead performance, while Claire Foy and Paul Mescal are both nominated in best supporting performance. (The Dorians’ acting categories are gender neutral, with 10 contenders in both categories.)

    Following in All of Us Strangers‘ lead is Warner Bros.’ Barbie, which scored seven noms, including film of the year, best director for Greta Gerwig (also nominated for writing the screenplay with partner Noah Baumbach), best supporting performance (Ryan Gosling) and best film music.

    The three remaining film of the year nominees are Netflix’s May December, A24’s Past Lives and Searchlight’s Poor Things. Nominated alongside All of Us Strangers for LGBTQ film of the year are Amazon MGM Studios’ Bottoms, MUBI’s Passages, Netflix’s Rustin and Amazon MGM Studios’ Saltburn.

    Many Oscar nominees landed Dorian nods for their performances: Rustin‘s Colman Domingo, Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone, Poor Things‘ Emma Stone, The Color Purple‘s Danielle Brooks, Anatomy of a Fall‘s Sandra Hüller, Nyad‘s Jodie Foster, Oppenheimer‘s Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. and The Holdovers‘ Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Other acting nominees include performances passed over by the Academy, including Monica‘s Trace Lysette, Past Lives‘ Greta Lee, Saltburn‘s Rosamund Pike and May December‘s Charles Melton and Natalie Portman.

    GALECA added three new categories to the Dorians lineup this year: LGBTQ screenplay of the year, LGBTQ non-English language film of the year and genre film of the year.

    GALECA will announce the winners of the 15th Dorian Film Awards on Monday, Feb. 26.

    The full list of nominations follows.

    Film of the Year
    All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)
    Barbie (Warner Bros.)
    May December (Netflix) 
    Past Lives (A24) 
    Poor Things (Searchlight)

    LGBTQ Film of the Year
    All of Us Strangers (Searchlight) 
    Bottoms (MGM)
    Passages (MUBI, SBS)
    Rustin (Netflix)
    Saltburn (Amazon MGM) 

    Director of the Year
    Greta Gerwig, Barbie (Warner Bros.)
    Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)
    Todd Haynes, May December (Netflix)
    Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer (Universal)
    Celine Song, Past Lives (A24)

    Screenplay of the Year
    Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, Barbie (Warner Bros.)
    Samy Burch, May December (Netflix)
    Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)
    Arthur Harari and Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall (NEON)
    Celine Song, Past Lives (A24) 

    LGBTQ Screenplay of the Year 
    Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)
    Arthur Harari and Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall (NEON)
    Dustin Lance Blackand Julian Breece, Rustin (Netflix)
    Arlette Langmann, Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, Passages (MUBI)
    Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott, Bottoms (MGM)

    Non-English Language Film of the Year
    Anatomy of a Fall (NEON) 
    The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS, Toho)
    Godzilla Minus One (Toho)
    Past Lives (A24)
    The Zone of Interest (A24)

    LGBTQ Non-English Language Film of the Year
    Afire (Janus Films, Sideshow)
    Anatomy of a Fall (NEON)
    Cassandro (Amazon MGM)
    Monster (Well Go USA, Gaga, Toho)
    Rotting in the Sun (MUBI)

    Unsung Film of the Year
    To an exceptional movie worthy of greater attention
    Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate)
    Monica (IFC)
    Origin (NEON)
    Theater Camp (Searchlight)
    A Thousand and One (Focus Features)

    Film Performance of the Year
    Colman Domingo, Rustin (Netflix)
    Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers (Focus Features)
    Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple)
    Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall (NEON)
    Greta Lee, Past Lives (A24)
    Trace Lysette, Monica (IFC)
    Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer (Universal)
    Natalie Portman, May December (Netflix)
    Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)
    Emma Stone, Poor Things (Searchlight)

    Supporting Film Performance of the Year
    Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple (Warner Bros.)
    Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer (Universal)
    Jodie Foster, Nyad (Netflix)
    Claire Foy, All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)
    Ryan Gosling, Barbie (Warner Bros.) 
    Rachel McAdams, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate)
    Charles Melton, May December (Netflix)
    Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)
    Rosamund Pike, Saltburn (Amazon MGM)
    Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers (Focus Features)

    Documentary of the Year
    American Symphony (Netflix)
    Beyond Utopia (Roadside Attractions, Fathom Events)
    Kokomo City (Magnolia)
    Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (Apple TV+)
    20 Days in Mariupol (PBS Distribution)

    LGBTQ Documentary of the Year
    Every Body (Focus Features) 
    Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (HBO, Confluential Films)
    Kokomo City (Magnolia)
    Little Richard: I Am Everything (Magnolia)
    Orlando, My Political Biography (Janus Film, Sideshow)

    Animated Film of the Year
    The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS, Toho)
    Elemental (Disney)
    Nimona (Netflix, Annapurna)
    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony)
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount)

    Genre Film of the Year 
    For excellence in science fiction, fantasy and horror
    All of Us Strangers (Searchlight)
    Godzilla Minus One (Toho)
    M3GAN (Universal)
    Poor Things (Searchlight)
    Talk To Me (A24)

    Film Music of the Year
    Barbie — Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt, et al. (Warner Bros.)
    The Boy and the Heron — Joe Hisaishi (GKIDS, Toho)
    The Color Purple — Stephen Bray, Allee Willis, Brenda Russell, Kris Bowers, et al. (Warner Bros.)
    Oppenheimer — Ludwig Göransson (Universal) 
    The Zone of Interest — Mica Levi (A24)

    Visually Striking Film of the Year
    Asteroid City (Focus Features)
    Barbie (Warner Bros.)
    Oppenheimer (Universal)
    Poor Things (Searchlight)
    Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (Sony)

    Campiest Flick
    Barbie (Warner Bros.)
    Bottoms (MGM)
    Dicks: The Musical (A24)
    M3GAN (Universal) 
    Saltburn (Amazon MGM)

    “We’re Wilde About You!” Rising Star Award
    Ayo Edebiri
    Lily Gladstone
    Jacob Elordi
    Charles Melton
    Dominic Sessa

    Wilde Artist Award
    To a truly groundbreaking force in entertainment
    Quinta Brunson
    Ayo Edebiri
    Greta Gerwig
    Lily Gladstone
    Todd Haynes

    GALECA LGBTQIA+ Film Trailblazer Award 
    For creating art that inspires empathy, truth and equity
    Colman Domingo
    Jodie Foster
    Andrew Haigh
    Todd Haynes
    Andrew Scott

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    Tyler Coates

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  • ‘Green Border’ Wins Rotterdam Audience Award

    ‘Green Border’ Wins Rotterdam Audience Award

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    Green Border, Agnieszka Holland’s harrowing tale of refugees caught in the wooded boundary between Belarus and Poland, won the Audience Award at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival, which wrapped up Sunday.

    Japanese director Tanaka Toshihiko won Rotterdam’s coveted Tiger Award for best competition film for his debut Rei, a drama exploring human relationships made almost entirely with a cast and crew of mostly nonprofessionals and students. The Iranian drama The Old Bachelor from director Oktay Baraheni won Rotterdam’s VPRO Big Screen Award.

    The FIPRESCI Award, handed out by international film critics, went to Kiss Wagon from the Indian director Midhun Murali.

    Judged by the audience’s response, Rotterdam 2024 was a resounding success, with the festival reporting more than a quarter of a million viewers over its 11-day program, which included the screening of 424 films and artist discussions with the likes of Oscar contender Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall), Italian directing veteran Marco Bellocchio (The Traitor) and pop music legend Debbie Harry.

    “This edition we saw with great pleasure how our discoveries found their audiences,” said Rotterdam festival director Vanja Kaludjercic. “From the joy of our opening night to the excitement of welcoming superstars and cinematic giants, to witnessing the blossoming of future greats like the Tiger Award winner, there was a special atmosphere at the festival this edition. We take pride in making a program that foregrounds the unexpected and unique — and that challenges and enriches…. As we look ahead, we see that our ideas and aspirations connect strongly with the audience, strengthening us for the years to come.”

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    Scott Roxborough

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  • Sterling K. Brown Predicts He’ll Lose the Oscar to Robert Downey Jr.: “He’s Incredibly Deserving”

    Sterling K. Brown Predicts He’ll Lose the Oscar to Robert Downey Jr.: “He’s Incredibly Deserving”

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    Sterling K. Brown said he isn’t expecting to take home an Oscar this year, but he’s “totally fine” with it.

    The actor, who is up for best supporting actor for his role in American Fiction, recently joked during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, “There’s no losing yet — it’ll happen in its own due time.”

    Brown proceeded to say that “Colman [Domingo] will probably win,” adding, “I know that I’m not going to win.” Domingo was also a guest on the BBC show, as well as scored a best leading actor Oscar nomination for Rustin.

    Though Graham Norton and the other guests pushed back, telling Brown that he still has a good chance at winning, the This Is Us actor admitted he’s “totally fine” if he doesn’t take home the trophy.

    “Robert Downey Jr. is going to win, and he’s incredibly deserving,” Brown said of the Oppenheimer star and his fellow nominee. “He’s an incredible actor. You should give him love. And the fact that I get a chance to be nominated along with him and Mr. [Robert] De Niro and Ryan Gosling and [Mark] Ruffalo, I’m just happy to be in the room.”

    Norton went on to tease Brown on his perspective should he end up winning the Academy Award. “On the night, this will all be very humble,” the host quipped. “’I can’t believe I won!’”

    Brown told The Hollywood Reporter last month that he thought the Cord Jefferson-directed movie, adapted from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, “was one of the best scripts I’d ever read.”

    “It was able to make fun of an industry and also challenge it to say there are ways in which you could be better,” he said of American Fiction. “You are narrow in terms of Black life that you are willing to portray for mass consumption. I’m going to tell you that, and at the same time, I’m going to give you an idea of other stories that would be viable for mass consumption.”

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    Carly Thomas

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  • All the Girlies Are Going to the 2024 Grammys

    All the Girlies Are Going to the 2024 Grammys

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    She might kill her ex.
    Photo: Andrew Chin/Getty Images

    The Grammys are for the girls this year. An impressive number of women are nominated for music’s top honors, and now, many of them will be taking the stage too. The boys are performing with girls as well — Brandy is joining Burna Boy along with 21 Savage, while Tracy Chapman will duet her song “Fast Car” with Luke Combs. Grande Girlie Joni Mitchell will take the stage for the very first time in Grammys history. SZA, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, and Olivia Rodrigo are also set to perform — as well as Billy Joel, an honorary girlie after Rodrigo name-dropped him in her 2021 song “Deja Vu.” Variety also reported that Miley Cyrus was rehearsing to perform “Flowers,” which was perhaps meant to be a surprise given that she has yet to officially be announced as a performer.

    Meanwhile, SZA, Phoebe Bridgers, and Victoria Monét are some of the night’s top honorees — not to mention Taylor Swift, who’s looking to set some records with Midnights. It all goes down February 4 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Below is everything you need to know before you get the girls together to watch.

    SZA leads the Grammy pack with nine nominations for her second album, SOS, including in the top categories of Album, Record, and Song of the Year. Bridgers and Monét are just behind her with seven apiece, followed by the rest of boygenius, Jack Antonoff, Batiste, Brandy Clark, Miley Cyrus, Eilish, Rodrigo, and a little lady named Taylor Swift, all with six each. Women showed up strong when the nominees were announced on November 10, with female artists in seven out of the eight slots for Album, Record, and Song of the Year. SZA has a chance to add some serious hardware, Swift could set a record for Album of the Year wins — or Batiste could surprise us all again after playing the dark horse in 2022. Don’t put it past the Academy.

    Even Burna Boy will be joined by a girlie, when Brandy takes the stage for the first time in decades alongside him and 21 Savage for the Grammys’ first-ever Afrobeats performance. Tracy Chapman will make an even rarer appearance to prove she really does like Combs’s “Fast Car” cover, dueting her hit with him. They’re just two legends scheduled, along with Mitchell (for the first time ever), Joel (for the first time in decades), and U2 (live from the Sphere in Las Vegas). SZA, Rodrigo, Eilish, and Lipa are also among the women performing — and some of the night’s top nominees. They could be part of a few brewing Grammy Moments™: a possible Barbie medley between Eilish and Lipa and a chance for Rodrigo to perform with one of her faves, Joel. Travis Scott will also perform.

    Nope — it’s Trevor Noah again. The comedian is hosting the Grammys for the fourth consecutive year, the Academy announced on December 13. Hey, at least this show can hold down a host. Noah is also up for some hardware himself this year, in Best Comedy Album for I Wish You Would.

    The women are back as announced presenters, however. Christina Aguilera, Meryl Streep, Samara Joy, Taylor Tomlinson, and Oprah Winfrey are all set to present. Oh, and Lionel Richie, Lenny Kravitz, Maluma, and Barbie boy Mark Ronson.

    As usual, most of the Grammy Awards will be given out before the televised show. That happens at the Premiere Ceremony, which streams on February 4 beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET on YouTube. And with a somewhat loaded list of performers, this year’s may actually be worth tuning in to. They’ll include singer-songwriter Clark, a top nominee with six nods, as well as nominees Laufey, Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, Kirk Franklin, Gaby Moreno, Adam Blackstone, and Bob James. Other performers will include Sheila E., Pentatonix, Larkin Poe, Jordin Sparks, and J. Ivy, plus drummer Harvey Mason Sr., father of the Recording Academy’s own CEO. Songwriter of the Year nominee Justin Tranter will host the preshow; presenters include current nominees Carly Pearce, Natalia Lafourcade, Rufus Wainwright, Patti Austin, and Molly Tuttle, along with Jimmy Jam.

    Quite a lot, actually. Most prominently, the number of nominees in the Big Four categories (Album, Record, and Song of the Year, plus Best New Artist) is being reduced from ten to eight. The Academy had upped the nominees in those categories to ten just two years ago, out of diversity concerns; there had been eight nominees since the 2019 awards. Also, the Non-Classical Producer of the Year and Songwriter of the Year will move to the general category, where all Academy members can vote on those awards. The Grammys are adding three awards this year: Best African Music Performance, Best Pop Dance Recording, and Best Alternative Jazz Album. Oh, and at least you won’t have to worry about AI — the Academy added a rule against contributions by artificial intelligence to submissions.

    The ceremony will air on CBS and Paramount+ With Showtime on February 4, beginning at 8 p.m. ET.

    This story has been updated throughout with additional information.

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    Justin Curto

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  • Galit and Chef Paul Virant Earn Local Banchet Honors

    Galit and Chef Paul Virant Earn Local Banchet Honors

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    Sunday night marked a new beginning for the Jean Banchet Awards, the local honors that recognize Chicago restaurants and chefs (it’s also named for the esteemed French chef). The Banchets skipped 2023 as the committee of local chefs and tastemakers who vote on the awards reassembled itself with a new charitable beneficiary. Those efforts produced a brisk two-hour ceremony at Venue SIX10 where Galit, the upscale contemporary Middle Eastern eatery, won Restaurant of the Year.

    “I want to thank this lovely chef and bald gentleman, Zach [Engel], for giving me a call several years ago,” Galit co-owner Andres Clavero said Sunday night while onstage. “The stories of food have been so emotionally important and personal to the two of us. In a year where everyone was asked to do what’s changing what is different and nothing has changed — we will continue to share stories of those that are unheard and food that is meaningful and showcase people who don’t necessarily have a voice.”

    Clavero and chef Engel keep adding to their trophy case. The Lincoln Park restaurant has already achieved a Michelin star status for the last three years. Engel is a James Beard Award winner for 2017’s Rising Chef of the Year while he worked at Shaya in New Orleans. Later this year, the duo plans to open a second restaurant, a few doors away from Galit on Lincoln Avenue.

    Meanwhile, Paul Virant, a venerable chef behind hits like Gaijin in Fulton Market and Vistro Prime in suburban Hinsdale, won Chef of the Year. Virant’s influence, through cookbooks and as a role model to many chefs who attended the ceremony, is also evident at two of his shuttered restaurants, Perrenial Virant in Old Town, and Vie in suburban Western Springs.

    Awards host Michael Muser, the master sommelier and co-owner at Ever, kept the event running smoothly. While he peppered the show with jokes, he had only one meaty comedic bit which came in the opening monologue, a David Letterman-style Top 10 list, “Top 10 Ways to Tell if Your Restaurant Employee is High on the Job.”

    “No. 5: You serve a consummé that tasted like bong water because it actually is bong water,” Muser said.

    Muser dedicated that line to retired Chicago Tribune dining critic Phil Vettel, the recipient of the night’s Culinary Excellence of the Year Award. Breakfast Queen Ina Pinkney, looking spry before her 81st birthday on Valentine’s Day, presented the awarded Vettel with a charming story about when Vettel, then an anonymous critic, revealed his identity to her while interviewing her before her 2013 retirement. Vettel would retire in 2021 after 31 years at the Trib.

    “Do you know what a forager bee does?” Vettel told the audience. “The forager bee looks for flowers, looks for nectar — finds areas with really good quality nectar and then it goes back to the hive and does this little nectar dance which tells all the other bees ‘follow me I know where the good shit is.’”

    “And that’s my career.”

    For 2024, the Banchets partnered with Chicago Chefs Cook, a nonprofit that formed in 2020 and has raised more than $1 million for numerous charitable causes both internationally and locally. For the previous 20 years, the awards were associated with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, but after the 2022 show, the sides separated.

    For Sunday’s event, Chicago Chefs Cook picked James Beard and Jean Banchet award winner Erick Williams’ group, the Virtue Leadership Development Program, as the beneficiary. Williams has stressed the importance of mentors — one example is Damarr Brown his chef de cuisine at Virtue and the 2023 Emerging Chef of the Year by the Beard Foundation. Williams spoke about the need to invest in underserved communities, and how those resources impact growth. Equity (versus equality) is about more than just what spaces look like in terms of representation.

    “By having the opportunities — or tools, equipment, the books, the support, the mentorship, and the development — I have the grand opportunity to speak with heads of states, heads of cities, and everyone down to someone’s 90-year-old grandmother who wanted to just celebrate being 90 years old,” Williams said.

    Another highlight from Sunday came after Rubi’s on 18th, the winner of Heritage Restaurant of the Year. Members of the family who owns Pilsen taqueria — once a staple at the Maxwell Street Market — took the stage. Owner Gilberto Ramirez hid tears behind a white cowboy hat he used to cover his face. After his family gave their remarks, he took the podium and simply yelled “I love Chicago!” That earned the loudest applause of the night.

    1462 E. 53rd Street, Chicago, IL

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    Ashok Selvam

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  • Tom Hollander Hoped to Play Truman Capote 20 Years Ago. Finally, He Got His Chance

    Tom Hollander Hoped to Play Truman Capote 20 Years Ago. Finally, He Got His Chance

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    I appreciate the answer, unless you feel that you want to share anything else.

    There are issues about representation. There are types of actors that have not been given sufficient chances to play great parts. All of these things are in the process of being revised and improved and changed, and that’s all absolutely right. At the same time as that movement is happening, what shouldn’t be sacrificed is the sort of basic fundamental principle of actors being able to play things that they are not necessarily, because then that’s not art. If an actor’s body is their canvas, my body is my tool—the painter uses a canvas, the actor uses their own body—so within that definition of acting, there has to be the possibility of transformation. And sometimes the most interesting, creative work comes from where somebody who is not something is coming up against it, and it’s the fizz of that—the joining of two that makes it interesting.

    So what did that look like for you? What was your relationship to Capote’s work, and were you reading a lot of him in the lead-up to this?

    Not as much as I should, I should be able to say, yes, I read every word, but… When we were doing it, literally, my day was spent learning the lines, the weekends were learning the lines, the evenings were learning the lines, and the days were shooting them. I’d read Other Voices, Other Rooms and In Cold Blood when I was young, and I remembered them, and I’d read a few of the short stories. And Music for Chameleons, I read just before we started. But I’m no authority on Truman Capote. I think I’ve read enough of him to have a sense of how good he was.

    But in terms of what I know about him as a man, it’s what we did in this show, which has kind of come through what Robbie knows of him. I’m the actor. I’m the vessel through which all their work and their assimilation of the different elements gets presented. I just try and embody what they have created. It was beyond Truman, probably, at some point. I don’t think we should be thinking of it as a biopic. The biopics were those two films; this is taking him as a sort of mythical figure that you can do stuff with tonally.

    What was it like to get into the role every day? Some of your co-stars have said they feel like they met you, Tom, only after filming wrapped.

    I had an amazing team around me, without whom I would’ve had a collapse of some sort. Jerome Butler, my voice coach, was a wing man and sort of just buddy and brilliant collaborator, who helped me find the voice and was always there. Polly Bennett is a movement person who I’ve worked with before in the theater, and a couple of times she came over for a bit and helped me. We had fun working out what my version of Truman could be physically, to find a language for that. And then you learn the lines. Then I imagine saying the lines as me, and you try and sort of blur yourself with the character. What I couldn’t do playing this part was look at it. I couldn’t watch myself. I couldn’t look at the monitor because I found it literally physically nauseating to watch myself. He’s a very, very singular guy, Truman Capote. The ideal scenario is to be sitting completely still. beautifully lit with a cigarette doing a little pose. And then I can watch it and I go, okay, that looks fine. But Truman is too active, too mobile, too vocally extraordinary for me to watch it.

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    David Canfield

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  • Barbie’s Dream Revenge: How Snub Fury Can Upend an Oscar Race

    Barbie’s Dream Revenge: How Snub Fury Can Upend an Oscar Race

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    “If I were the front-runner, I’d be worried.” These words, spoken back in 2013 by an Academy voter during the tumultuous Oscar season, were in reaction to a perennial phenomenon that has arisen again: a conspicuous snub. This time, there are two of them.

    The final weeks of Hollywood’s awards race are always when the friendly rivalries turn hostile, the whisper campaigns become deafening, and the currents and conventional wisdom can abruptly shift. This year Oppenheimer heads toward the Academy Awards ceremony as the proverbial front-runner, with 13 nominations, including best picture and best director for Christopher Nolan. But when the nominations were announced this week, much of the chatter was focused on two people who were left out.

    Barbie cowriter and director Greta Gerwig was conspicuously absent from the directing category, while the movie’s star and producer, Margot Robbie, was left out of the best-actress contenders. (Notably, Gerwig is nominated for her screenplay, while Robbie shares the best-picture nomination, so both remain Oscar nominees.) Their snubs in those specific categories might seem ominous for the movie’s best-picture prospects, but history shows that a film’s campaign for the top prize can be galvanized by glaring omissions. Gerwig in particular may not have been on the directing short list, but she ruled the headlines nonetheless: “Oppenheimer dominates the Oscar nominations, as Gerwig is left out for best director,” read the NPR story.

    To be clear, Team Oppenheimer hasn’t taken anything away from Team Barbie. After the two settled on the same release date, the “Barbenheimer” craze seemingly benefited both of them immeasurably. Robbie and Oppenheimer actor Cillian Murphy even joined forces for Variety’s Actor on Actors video series, and after so much critical acclaim and box office success, both films were destined to have a major presence at the Academy Awards. And they do. It’s just that two key players from Barbie didn’t make the cut, leaving outsiders agog with disbelief. How did this happen?

    We call it a “snub” when a favorite is left out, but the nomination process is really more like a game of musical chairs, with more worthy honorees than there are slots. Academy voters like to mix things up and spread around their support, motivated by a sense of fairness and a desire to use their ballot to do something meaningful. And that doesn’t change in phase two, when voters get the chance to see what’s already on the ballot, what might be missing, and put their support behind something that was snubbed on nominations morning.

    After all, it’s happened before.

    In the Oscar race for the films of 2012, there was something for everybody—history with Lincoln, action with Zero Dark Thirty, heartbreak with Amour, and indie grit with Beasts of the Southern Wild. But everyone seemed to agree that the movie with the complete package was Argo, the based-on-a-true-story thriller that earned seven Oscar nominations…but no directing nod for director Ben Affleck.

    That shocking snub motivated that anonymous voter to say, “If I were the front-runner, I’d be worried.” At that point the perceived front-runner was Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, with 12 nominations and a slam dunk best-actor contender in Daniel Day-Lewis. But after nominations morning, Argo became the David facing down the Goliaths of Lincoln, Les Mis, and Life of Pi, all of which went on to collect other top awards. On the day of the nominations, Affleck’s directing absence was viewed by pundits as a sign that Argo lacked support, but in the days and weeks to follow, outrage over the snub turned into a kind of underdog enthusiasm that ultimately vaulted Argo to a best-picture victory.

    How exactly did it happen? Voters detected unfairness, and they wanted to fix it. Affleck and Team Argo couldn’t control that, but they made some key decisions that helped their cause.

    Affleck, for his part, responded to the discourse with humor and humility. “I mean, I also didn’t get the acting nomination. And no one’s saying I got snubbed there!” he said backstage at the Golden Globes, holding the prize for directing.

    It was his allies, meanwhile, who could speak more openly on his behalf. The recently passed Alan Arkin, who received a supporting-actor mention for his work on the film, said this in reaction: “The main concern outside of the initial joy was wishing that Ben had been given a nod. It’s an absolutely perfect film in every way, and he’s responsible for it.”

    George Clooney, who produced Argo, joined the clapback by invoking sympathy for Affleck, who had made a filmmaking comeback after a string of critically panned flops like Gigli. “Part of the reason there’s such admiration for Ben at this stage is because he was in actor jail,” Clooney said in the Golden Globes pressroom. “I did Batman & Robin—trust me, I know. It’s how you handle yourself when things aren’t going particularly well. He directed his way out of this. I can’t tell you how proud we are to have worked with him—and how much I hate him.”

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    Anthony Breznican

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  • How Hailee Steinfeld’s ‘Across the Spider-Verse’ Performance Came to Life, Over and Over Again

    How Hailee Steinfeld’s ‘Across the Spider-Verse’ Performance Came to Life, Over and Over Again

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    Voicing a character can be just as isolating as you might expect—you fly in from “God knows where,” as Hailee Steinfeld  puts it, and try to get yourself into the mindset of a character who only exists as a stick figure at best. You’re alone in the booth, reacting not only to an artificial world but to someone reading the lines that will eventually belong to your costars. 

    But that’s not how Kemp Powers and his fellow Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse directors, Joaquim Dos Santos and Justin K. Thompson, were interested in doing things. Powers, the codirector of Pixar’s Oscar-winning Soul, made himself an active presence in the recording booth with his actors, to the point that Steinfeld credits him with the performance she was able to give as Gwen Stacy. Though Powers insists he’s “no Shea Whigham” (Whigham voices Gwen’s father in the film), he knew there was a lot riding on Steinfeld’s performance in particular. Though Shameik Moore returns as the franchise’s hero, Miles Morales, who has his own adventures and emotional obstacles to overcome, Steinfeld’s Gwen is far more prominent than she was in 2018’s *Into the Spider-Verse—*and such a powerful figure that the world she inhabits literally transforms itself based on her emotions. 

    So how do you explain to an actor a world that’s like a “mood ring” when the technology to animate that world hasn’t even been completed yet? Powers and Steinfeld reunited on this week’s Little Gold Men to break down their creative process—and how they’ll bring the reaction to Across the Spider-Verse into their work on the upcoming third film. 

    **Vanity Fair: **Could you guys start by talking about how you first started working together? Hailee, you were part of the first film, but, Kemp, you were jumping in for the sequel. Do you remember that first meeting? 

    Kemp Powers: I just remember our first meeting was Hailee’s first recording session. That session included a pitch about what the movie was going to be, because this movie was so visually different than the first one. I did a lot of explaining about Gwen’s world in particular because Gwen is a lot more forward in this film, and her world is basically this mood ring. It was tough because the technology wasn’t done yet, so we had just, like, a couple of tech samples, some visual development that we showed Hailee. And then we just got into it. Of course, the way these animated films are made, it was basically just random scenes from all throughout the movie—you can ask Hailee, but I’m sure it must have made, like, no sense what the hell the story was gonna be.

    She doesn’t know this, but I was kind of intimidated, because I had just watched True Grit a couple of days before our recording session. When Hailee came in, she had that kind of Mattie energy, where she comes in like a pro. The only thing that gives it away is she had her two Yorkshire terriers with her. She let them out in the booth and they were walking around, and she was just like, “Alright, let’s do this.” There was a little bit of an intimidation, but it very quickly melted away. 

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    Katey Rich

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  • Where to Watch the 2024 Oscar Nominees

    Where to Watch the 2024 Oscar Nominees

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    Now that the 2024 Oscar nominations are here, it’s homework time. Sure, nobody but the Oscar voters themselves are required to watch all of the Oscar nominees, but why not head into the awards on March 10 as informed as you can be? Plus, between some of last year’s biggest blockbusters, heart-wrenching documentaries, and what might be the best superhero movie ever, there’s a lot of great stuff to catch up on.

    Below, a guide to where you can catch all of this year’s nominees, including streaming links for everything that’s already available for you right at home. Happy viewing!

    STREAMING

    American Symphony (Netflix)

    Oscar and Grammy winner Jon Batiste gets the full documentary treatment with this heartbreaking, intricately crafted portrait of an artist approaching the most ambitious work of his career, and of a marriage facing down a devastating disease. The Netflix film was rather shockingly snubbed for best documentary, where it was expected to win, but Batiste’s original song “It Never Went Away” was nominated in a competitive category alongside two Barbie songs.

    Barbie (Max)

    Last year’s box office champ is now nominated for eight Oscars, and even without best-director and best-actress nods, it will be a force to be reckoned with at the March 10 ceremony. The Oscar-nominated costumes and production design might be what first caught our eye, but the infinitely quotable screenplay and performances (also Oscar-nominated!) are what’s made it endure.

    Bobi Wine: The People’s President (Disney+)

    A rousing portrait of political movement and dissent, this documentary examines the effort of singer Bobi Wine to run a democratic campaign against the sitting autocratic government of Uganda—and his plea for the people to make a change.

    The Creator (Hulu)

    Hailed for the visual effects it accomplished on a relatively modest $80 million budget, the Gareth Edwards–directed sci-fi film earned a nomination for those dazzling effects as well as one for sound. If you ask our critic, it deserved to be a sleeper hit—maybe now’s the time.

    El Conde (Netflix)

    Rich in classic cinematic references ranging from Nosferatu to Superman, this decidedly strange anti-biopic from Spencer’s Pablo Larraín felt too weird even for the Academy. The gist: Chilean dictator ​​Augusto Pinochet is a vampire who won’t stop haunting the country he nearly destroyed. But Edward Lachman’s stark, dreamy black-and-white cinematography proved too stunning for his peers to deny.

    Elemental (Disney+)

    Pixar Animation’s 27th feature film is set in a world of anthropomorphic elements of nature and centers around two: Ember, a fire element, and Wade, a water element. It’s a classic Pixar movie, a heartwarming tale about embracing differences with gorgeous visuals, and it’s nominated for best animated feature.

    The Eternal Memory (Paramount+)

    In this stunningly moving Chilean documentary, a journalist suffering from Alzheimer’s and his wife, a noted actor, simply take life day by day. Maite Alberdi’s intimate hand captures the heartbreak, humor, and enduring love between a couple treating every day as if it could be their last—or just any other.

    Flamin’ Hot (Disney+, Hulu)

    You may not have expected Eva Longoria’s zippy directorial debut—a biopic of the man who claimed (rather controversially) to be the inventor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos—to enter the Oscar conversation after its swift drop on Hulu. But when one asks Diane Warren to contribute an original song, that equation quickly changes—and indeed, Warren’s “The Fire Inside” has given the songwriter, remarkably, her 15th nomination.

    Golda (Fubo)

    Helen Mirren may be a versatile, transformational actor, but she’d never gone under prosthetics for a role the way this eponymous biopic required. For rendering the Oscar winner completely unrecognizable in the role of Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister who guided her country through a time of brutal war, makeup artist Karen Hartley-Thomas and her team earned a deserved surprise nomination.

    Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 (Disney+)

    Nominated in the best-visual-effects category, the conclusion to the Guardians of the Galaxy series was one significant bright spot in Marvel’s otherwise rough 2023.

    The Holdovers (Peacock)

    The 1970-set film is director Alexander Payne’s first feature since 2017’s drama Downsizing and reunites the director with his Sideways star and now best-actor nominee Paul Giamatti. In the film, Giamatti plays a cranky professor at an all-boys East Coast prep school forced to stay on campus over the holidays and chaperone a handful of students and fellow employees, including grieving mother and cook Mary Lamb, played by fellow new nominee Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

    Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney+)

    The latest entrant in the iconic franchise struggled at the box office even as it brought Harrison Ford back in gear—and winningly paired him with Phoebe Waller-Bridge—but the Academy wasn’t ready to give up on the legendary composer John Williams, breaking his own record this year with his 54th Oscar nomination for the score.

    Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple TV+) 

    One could argue that the three-hour Western crime drama, which is based on the 2017 book by David Grann, has been an Oscar contender since production was announced. With three icons of cinema involved in director Martin Scorsese and stars Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, the film was always going to be a must-see, and with Lily Gladstone’s powerful, moving performance at its true center, it’s no wonder the film has 10 nominations.

    Maestro (Netflix)

    Bradley Cooper’s passion project, about the life and loves of famed composer Leonard Bernstein, has long been a front-runner to land Oscar nominations. The film received seven nods in total, including best picture, acting nominations for writer-director-star Cooper and Carey Mulligan, best original screenplay, best cinematography, best sound, and best makeup and hairstyling.

    May December (Netflix) 

    A “sly wonder” when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the latest from Todd Haynes was picked up by Netflix and got a robust awards-season push, including a lot of buzz for stars Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton. In the end it landed just one Oscar nomination, for the screenplay by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, but it’s already well on its way to becoming a modern classic.

    Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (Paramount+)

    Overshadowed last summer by the Barbenheimer phenomenon, the latest Mission: Impossible isn’t quite the Oscar force that Tom Cruise’s last movie was, but it has two well-earned nominations for its sound and visual effects.

    Nimona (Netflix)

    The animated adaptation of ND Stevenson’s graphic novel features stellar lead voice performances from Riz Ahmed and Chloë Grace Moretz, plus an elegant animation style that helps it stand apart from so many mainstream animated releases.

    Nyad (Netflix)

    Nominated for both Annette Bening’s rigorous lead performance as the marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, and Jodie Foster’s warm supporting turn as her coach, Bonnie Stoll, Nyad is a sports drama that really lifts off thanks to the friendship at its center. As Vanity Fair chief critic Richard Lawson wrote in his review, “Nyad crackles most when Nyad and Bonnie are grooving together on land.”

    Rustin (Netflix)

    Colman Domingo’s best-actor nomination makes him the first openly gay actor nominated for an Oscar in more than 20 years—a feat even more special because his nod is for playing civil rights pioneer Bayard Rustin, whose pivotal role in organizing the March on Washington was often overlooked until now. 

    Society of the Snow (Netflix)

    The harrowing true story of the Uruguayan rugby team who survived a plane crash in the Andes has never been more vivid than in J.A. Bayona’s film, an Oscar contender for both best international feature and hair and makeup. Bayona says he prepared the actors extensively so he could film “almost like a documentary”—a commitment to realism that absolutely comes through.

    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Netflix)

    Another strike against the “sequel is never better than the original” crowd, this spectacular second cinematic chapter in the saga of Miles Morales joined the ranks of Barbie and Oppenheimer as a dual box-office and critical phenomenon. From an Oscar-nominated team including Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Kemp Powers, the kinetic animation style and dizzying energy hurtled this story to a cliff-hanger—one just juicy enough to keep us both satisfied and hungry for more.

    RENTABLE

    Anatomy of a Fall

    Justine Triet’s layered legal thriller has been picking up acclaim and awards-season steam this month, particularly after taking home the best-screenplay trophy at the Golden Globes. After winning the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, Triet’s film has also received seven BAFTA nominations and is now up for five Oscars, including best actress for Sandra Hüller’s powerful performance.

    Four Daughters

    This innovative, experimental documentary provides an intimate, if controlled, depiction of ordinary Tunisian family life, after two daughters disappear from a family of four children. Director Kaouther Ben Hania places actors in the roles of the missing daughters to carefully explore feelings of grief, loss, confusion, and love in a broken family unit. It’s an exclusive in the Kino Film Collection in addition to being available to rent. 

    Oppenheimer

    The most-nominated film of the year and best-picture favorite, Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic may earn stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr. their first Oscars in addition to accolades for its mind-boggling visuals and score. With a rigorous attention to real history but a brisk pace that makes three hours fly by, it’s a spectacle that still hits hard on the small screen.

    Napoleon

    The Ridley Scott–directed epic about France’s notorious conqueror, played by Joaquin Phoenix, picked up three nominations from the Academy, including best achievement in production design, costume design, and visual effects.

    Past Lives

    Celine Song’s celebrated first feature, which she wrote and directed, has been a critical darling since its Sundance debut in 2023. The film, about two friends drifting in and out of each other’s lives over nearly three decades, played by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, has two nominations for Song’s original screenplay and best picture.

    The Color Purple 

    This starry big-screen adaptation of Alice Walker’s beloved novel and the Broadway show it inspired boasts a talented ensemble and two icons as executive producers, Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. Though Danielle Brooks received the film’s only Oscar nomination, the entire cast has been celebrating both the making and release of the film. 

    20 Days in Mariupol

    This harrowing, immersive documentary emerged as one of the year’s most decorated ever since premiering more than a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival. The filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov breathtakingly documents the 20 days he spent in a Ukranian city under siege immediately following the Russian invasion. It’s both nominated for best documentary and was Ukraine’s shortlisted entry for international feature. (Currently streaming for free on YouTube.)

    ONLY IN THEATERS

    The Boy and the Heron

    The critical acclaim and box office success of what may or may not be Hayao Miyazaki’s final film was enough to land the beloved director a Golden Globe for his fantastical coming-of-age film, also up for the best-animated-feature Oscar.

    American Fiction

    Cord Jefferson’s acclaimed directorial debut is yet another critical and awards-season darling based on a novel. Fiction is an adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, Erasure, and stars Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Erika Alexander, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Issa Rae. The film has five Oscar nominations including best picture, lead and supporting acting noms for Wright and Brown, best adapted screenplay, and best original score.

    Godzilla Minus One

    Somehow, this relatively low-budget Japanese phenomenon is the first Godzilla movie to ever receive an Oscar nomination, for its visual effects. And how appropriate, with director Takashi Yamazaki conjuring a sense of terror and wonder in his portrait of a postwar Japan under siege from an iconic movie monster.

    Poor Things

    Combine Frankenstein with a coming-of-age road-trip saga and you come close to describing what makes Poor Things, nominated for 11 Oscars, so special. Led by Emma Stone’s richest performance yet, courtesy of her enduring collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos, it’s a visually dazzling and surprisingly moving period piece so appealing that costar Ramy Youssef agreed to do it before reading a word of the script.

    The Teachers’ Lounge

    Led by a ferociously brilliant Leonie Benesch, this German social thriller was the surprise talk of festivals all around the world in 2023, from its Berlin premiere to its North American launch in Telluride. Accordingly, while flashier titles took up more oxygen in the international-film race, it’s no surprise that this portrait of a modern-day elementary school teacher facing a profound moral quandary made its way into the Oscars’ final five.

    The Zone of Interest

    Jonathan Glazer’s “chilling presentation of evil,” as we’ve described it, is a Holocaust movie unlike any other. The film paints a stark portrait of a family, the patriarch played by Christian Friedel and matriarch by Sandra Hüller, who live a lavish life despite being located right next to Auschwitz. It has five Oscar nominations including best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay.

    NOT AVAILABLE YET 

    Io Capitano

    This best-international-feature nominee from Italy and director Matteo Garrone is a moving “Homeric adventure” about two Senegalese teenagers who leave their home in Dakar in search of a better life in Europe. In addition to the Oscar and Golden Globe nomination, star Seydou Sarr received the best-young-actor award at the Venice Film Festival last year.

    Perfect Days

    Made by German director Wim Wenders but filmed in Japan, this international-feature nominee doesn’t open in North American theaters until February 7—plenty of time to catch this lovely, meditative film before Oscar night.

    Robot Dreams

    This first animated feature from award-winning Spanish director Pablo Berger (Blancanieves) is based on the graphic novel by Sara Varon and revolves around a lonely dog living in Manhattan who decides to build himself a robot for company. The moving story about the importance of friendship is nominated for best animated feature but is not yet available in theaters or to stream.

    To Kill a Tiger

    This best-documentary-feature nominee centers around Ranjit, a farmer and loving father in India seeking justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the survivor of a brutal sexual assault. Director Nisha Pahuja worked for nearly 10 years to bring the story to big screens.

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    Katey Rich, Kara Warner, David Canfield

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  • The Worst Wins in Oscar History

    The Worst Wins in Oscar History

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    It’s important to remember, especially in this day and age, that the Academy Awards are not a judge of any film’s quality. They’re an industry award ceremony heavily impacted by studio campaigning; occasionally that overlaps with making a choice that the masses can celebrate. Despite this, the Academy would love us to think the opposite, that their Best Picture is actually the best film of the year, full stop. That’s why, with every Oscar season comes a corresponding discourse cycle that lasts up to the ceremony itself, and sometimes long after.

    The Academy does often honor great films: movies like Amadeus, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King all deserved their flowers. Recent awards going to Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight seemed to signal a shift in a less boring direction. But not every choice the Academy has made has been popular, and those of us who follow these ceremonies love nothing more than to nitpick their decisions.

    Because awards season also means it’s hater season, we’ve chosen to highlight the worst of the worst, the most baffling recipients of Hollywood’s most prestigious prizes. Many bad movies have won Best Picture, but plenty of other terrible performances have won acting awards and technical categories that they don’t deserve. Some are so bad they forced the Oscars to redefine their parameters to keep it from happening again. Here are 12 Oscar winners that pretty much everyone agrees shouldn’t have won, or even been nominated at all. Argo fans, this one is not for you.

    The 12 Worst Wins in Oscar History

    Sometimes the Academy gets it right… and sometimes they give awards to Bohemian Rhapsody.

    READ MORE: The 10 Most Surprising Oscar Best Picture Winners

    The Worst Oscar Snubs of 2024

    These films and filmmakers were overlooked by this year’s Academy Awards.



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    Emma Stefansky

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  • Cesar Nominations: ‘Anatomy of a Fall,’ ‘The Animal Kingdom’ Lead the Pack for French Film Awards

    Cesar Nominations: ‘Anatomy of a Fall,’ ‘The Animal Kingdom’ Lead the Pack for French Film Awards

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    Justine Triet’s Oscar-nominated Anatomy of a Fall and Thomas Cailley’s fantasy drama The Animal Kingdom are the front runners for this year’s Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Academy Awards. In nominations announced Wednesday, Anatomy picked up 11 Cesar noms and The Animal Kingdom 12. Both were nominated in the best film and best director categories.

    Also nominated for best film are Jean-Baptiste Durand’s Junkyard Dog, All Your Faces from director Jeanne Herry and Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case.

    France’s official Academy Award contender, Anh Hung Tran’s foodie period drama The Taste of Things, which missed out on an Oscar nom on Tuesday, picked up three Ceasar nominations, but none in the main categories.

    German actress Sandra Hüller, a best actress nominee at this year’s Oscars for her starring turn in Anatomy of a Fall, is also up for the Cesar for best actress, going up against Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, nominated for Little Girl Blue, Lea Drucker, up for Last Summer, Hafsia Herzi, nominated for The Rapture, and Belgian actress Virginie Efira, nominated for her work in Just the Two of Us.

    The 2024 Cesar Awards will be handed out at a ceremony in Paris on Friday, Feb. 23.

    Oscar frontrunner Oppenheimer picked up a single Cesar nomination, in the best foreign film category, but Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan is guaranteed a trophy. The British director will receive an honorary Cesar for lifetime achievement at this year’s ceremony.

    2024 Cesar Nominations

    Best Film

    Anatomy of a Fall produced by Marie-Ange Luciani, David Thion, directed by Justine Triet

    Junkyard Dog produced by Anais Bertrand, directed by Jean-Baptiste Durand

    All Your Faces produced by Hugo Selignac, Alain Attal, directed by Jeanne Herry

    The Goldman Case produced by Benjamin Elalouf, directed by Cédric Kahn

    Animal Kingdom produced by Pierre Guyard, directed by Thomas Cailley

    Best Director

    Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall

    Catherine Breillat for Last Summer

    Jeanne Herry for All Your Faces

    Cédric Khan for The Goldman Case

    Thomas Cailley for Animal Kingdom

    Best Actress

    Marion Cotillard for Little Girl Blue

    Léa Drucker for Last Summer

    Virginie Efira for Just the Two of Us

    Hafsia Herzi for The Rapture

    Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall

    Best Actor

    Romain Duris for Animal Kingdom

    Benjamin Lavernhe for Abbé Pierre: A Century of Devotion

    Melvil Poupaud for Just the Two of Us

    Raphaël Quenard for Yannick

    Arieh Worthalter for The Goldman Case

    Best Supporting Actress

    Leïla Bekhti for All Your Faces

    Galatea Bellugi for Junkyard Dog

    Élodie Bouchez for All Your Faces

    Adèle Exarchopoulos for All Your Faces

    Miou Miou for All Your Faces

    Best Supporting Actor

    Swann Arlaud for Anatomy of a Fall

    Anthony Bajon for Junkyard Dog

    Arthur Harari for The Goldman Case

    Pio Marmaï for Yannick

    Antoine Reinartz for Anatomy of a Fall

    Best Newcomer Actress

    Céleste Brunnquell for No Love Lost

    Kim Higelin for Consent

    Suzanne Jouannet for La Voie Royale

    Rebecca Marder for Grand Expectations

    Ella Rumpf for Marguerite’s Theorem

    Best Newcomer Actor

    Julien Frison in Marguerite’s Theorem

    Paul Kircher for Animal Kingdom

    Samuel Kircher for Last Summer

    Ivilo Machado-Graner for Anatomy of a Fall

    Raphaël Quenard for Junkyard Dog

    Best Original Screenplay

    Justine Triet, Arthur Harari for Anatomy of a Fall

    Jean-Baptiste Durand for Junkyard Dog

    Jeanne Herry for All Your Faces

    Nathalie Hertzberg, Cédric Kahn for The Goldman Case

    Thomas Cailley, Pauline Munier for Animal Kingdom

    Best Adapted Screenplay

    Valerie Donzelli, Audrey Diwan for Just the Two of Us

    Vanessa Filho for Consent

    Catherine Breillat for Last Summer

    Best Original Score

    Gabriel Yared for Just the Two of Us

    Delphine Malaussena for Junkyard Dog

    Vitalic for Disco Boy

    Andrea Laszlo de Simone for Animal Kingdom

    Guillaume Roussel for The Three Musketeers (Part 1: D’Artagnan / Part 2: Milady

    Best Sound

    Julien Sicart, Fanny Martin, Jeanne Delplancq, Olivier Goinard for Anatomy of a Fall

    Remi Daru, Guadalupe Cassius, Loic Prian, Marc Doisne for All Your Faces

    Erwan Kerzanet, Sylvian Malbrant, Olivier Guillaume for The Goldman Case

    Fabrice Osinkski, Raphael Sohier, Matthieu Fichet, Niels Barletta for Animal Kingdom

    David Rit, Gwennole le Borgne, Oliver Touche, Cyril Holtz, Niels Barletta for The Three Musketeers (Part 1: D’Artagnan / Part 2: Milady

    Best Cinematography

    Slivion Beaufils for Anatomy of a Fall

    Jonathan Ricquebourg for The Taste of Things

    Patrick Ghiringhelli for The Goldman Case

    Davio Cailley for Animal Kingdom

    Nicolas Bolduc for The Three Musketeers (Part 1: D’Artagnan / Part 2: Milady)

    Best Editing

    Laurent Sénéchal for Anatomy of a Fall

    Francis Vesin for All Your Faces

    Valérie Loiseleux for Little Girl Blue

    Yann Dedet for The Goldman Case

    Lilian Corbeille for Animal Kingdom

    Best Costume Design

    Jürgen Doering for Jeanne du Barry

    Pascaline Chavanne for The Crime is Mine

    Tran Nu Yên Khê for The Taste of Things

    Ariane Daurat for Animal Kingdom

    Thierry Delettre for The Three Musketeers (Part 1: D’Artagnan / Part 2: Milady)

    Best Production Design

    Emmanuelle Ouplay for Anatomy of a Fall

    Angelo Zamparutti for Jeanne du Barry

    Toma Baquéni for The Taste of Things

    Julia Lemaire for Animal Kingdom

    Stéphane Taillasson for The Three Musketeers (Part 1: D’Artagnan / Part 2: Milady)

    Best Visual Effects

    Thomas Duval for Acid

    Lise Fischer, Cédric Fayolle for The Mountain

    Cyrille Bonjean, Bruno Sommier, Jean-Louis Autret for Animal Kingdom

    Olivier Cauwet for The Three Musketeers (Part 1: D’Artagnan / Part 2: Milady)

    Léo Ewald for Vermin

    Best Short Film

    L’Attente directed by Alice Douard, produced by Marie Boitard, Alice Douaro

    Bolero directed by Nans Laborde-Jourdaa, produced by Margaux Lorier

    Rapide directed by Paul Rigoux, produced by Anne Luthaud

    Les Silencieux directed by Basile Vuillemin, produced by Thomas Guent Ch

    Best Animated Feature

    No Dogs or Italians Allowed directed by Alain Ughetto, produced by Alexandre Cornu, Jean-François Le Corre, Mathieu Courtois

    Chicken for Linda! directed by Chiara Malta, Sébastien Laudenbach, produced by Marc Irmer, Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron

    Mars Express directed by Jérémie Périn, produced by Didier Creste

    Best Documentary

    Atlantic Bar directed by Fanny Molins, produced by Chloé Servel, Nicolas Tiry

    Four Daughters directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha

    Little Girl Blue directed by Mona Achache, produced by Laetitia Gonzalez, Yaël Fogiel

    Our Body directed by Claire Simon, produced by Kristina Larsen

    On the Adamant directed by Nicolas Philibert, produced by Miléna Poylo, Gilles Sacuto, Céline Loiseau

    Best First Feature

    Bernadette directed by Léa Domenach, produced by Antoine Rein, Fabrice Goldstein

    Junkyard Dog directed by Jean-Baptiste Ourand, produced by Anaïs Bertrand

    The Rapture directed by Iris Kaltenbäck, produced by Alice Bloch, Thierry de Clermont-Tonnerre

    Vermin directed by Sébastien Vanicek, produced by Harry Tordjman

    Vincent Must Die directed by Stephan Casting, produced by Thierry Lounas, Claire Bonnefoy

    Best Foreign Film

    Kidnapped directed by Marco Bellocchio

    Fallen Leaves directed by Aki Kaurismaki

    Oppenheimer directed by Christopher Nolan

    Perfect Days directed by Wim Wenders

    The Nature of Love directed by Monia Chokri

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    Georg Szalai

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  • See All the Actors Nominated for a 2024 Oscar

    See All the Actors Nominated for a 2024 Oscar

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    Vanity Fair

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  • Oscars 2024 Nominations: The Most Shocking Snubs and Surprises

    Oscars 2024 Nominations: The Most Shocking Snubs and Surprises

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    One of the only certainties of Oscar season is that voters will upend months of prognosticating from pundits by doing whatever they feel like doing when the time comes to fill out their ballots. As always, the bewildering snubs—no directing love for Greta Gerwig? Really?—were accompanied by some extremely pleasant surprises. Leonardo DiCaprio’s loss, you might say, was Colman Domingo’s gain. Here, VF weighs in on the things that nobody—or next to nobody—saw coming.

    Surprise: America Ferrera Stands Out in Barbie

    Her performance was all-around great, but that monologue! You know the one. Director Greta Gerwig told VF that the impassioned “always/never” speech, which she co-wrote with her co-parent Noah Baumach, “does not exist as it does without America. It’s hers by right, more than anyone else. That scene still really touches me. I see some of my friends’ teenage girls who don’t think they’re good enough, but they’re so beautiful and so smart and you just want them to know.” Ferrera has said that Gerwig enlisted her to help write the now-infamous monologue. “Some of what we talked about made it into the script. The line, ‘Always be grateful’ came out of that conversation with Greta,” Ferrera told The New York Times. “She expounded on it adding, ‘But never forget that the system is rigged.’”

    Snub: Margot Robbie Misses, as Does Barbie Below-the-Line

    Tempering the excitement of Ferrera’s deserved nod, Greta Gerwig’s comical cultural juggernaut missed out on editing, sound, and director, as well as best actress for Margot Robbie (though she’s nominated as a producer for it in the best picture category). Was it genre bias, gender bias, or promotion fatigue? (And can the first and last things be explained by the middle thing? Maybe …) Gerwig’s achievement in busting the box office with the highest grossing film directed by a woman—$1.5 billion worldwide—did not translate into a nomination for the director, who has three previous nods: for directing Lady Bird (another historic nod for a woman), for writing its original screenplay, and for writing the adapted screenplay of Little Women). But all is not lost for the doll film that launched a thousand think pieces: Ryan Gosling earned an expected supporting nomination, songs by Billie Eilish and Mark Ronson did too, and Gerwig and her partner Baumbach—who tied the knot amid Barbie’s press push—were recognized in adapted screenplay.

    Surprise: Sterling K. Brown Snags a Supporting Slot for American Fiction

    As Cliff Ellison, the brother reluctantly drawn back into the fold of his family after a tragedy, Brown brings both subversive energy and relatable pathos to Cord Jefferson’s debut feature. Cliff’s got his own shit going on, but once he shows up, we can’t get enough of him. Brown’s SAG nomination for best supporting actor—as well as the cast’s richly deserved ensemble nod—put him on the radar for more awards love this season, and now the three-time Emmy winner has got his first Oscar nomination, one of five for American Fiction.

    Snub: Leo Loses Out as Killers of the Flower Moon Wilts—A Little

    Lily Gladstone secured a best actress nomination, Martin Scorsese unsurprisingly got a best director nod, and Killers found a place in the best picture category. But Leonardo DiCaprio’s failure to secure a nomination for best actor landed as both a surprise and a snub, as did the film’s miss for adapted screenplay, considering how much was made of Scorsese and Eric Roth’s adaptation of David Grann’s 2017 bestselling history of the murders of Osage tribe members over their oil-rich Oklahoma land. Oscar race onlookers noticed that DiCaprio leaned in to Gladstone’s campaign, instead of flogging himself, and he still notched a nomination for producing the movie. Leo lives!

    Snub: Bradley Cooper Gets No Love for Directing Maestro

    Mr. Cooper has plenty of things to be thrilled about this morning: His labor of love Maestro was nominated for seven Oscars, and his own personal tally now stands at a seriously impressive 12. Still, it’s baffling that the actual maestro behind Maestro didn’t get nominated for best director, just as Gerwig’s vision for Barbie went unrecognized in the same category. It may be that voters knew that Maestro (and Barbie) would do just fine all in all, and decided to give the edge to the directors of gripping smaller movies, like Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest.  

    Surprise: Colman Domingo Rises in Rustin

    There are many reasons to be thankful for Colman Domingo’s best actor nomination: that it acknowledges a great actor’s great performance (and a milestone: his first time as No. 1 on the call sheet); that it will bring more attention to the life and work of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, an openly gay man whose contributions to the movement were marginalized because of his sexuality, but whose story is now being told with an openly gay actor in the role; and that it will give us more opportunities to enjoy Domingo’s stellar red-carpet game, which has been winning hearts and minds all season. (Who else could pull off a mustard Valentino Haute Couture suit with a gold coat?) In December, appearing on VF’s Little Gold Men podcast, he said this about Rustin: “Those rare times you get as an artist to really pour everything you have into it—all your skills and all the things you’ve been doing in the theater and television as a writer, as a director, as a producer, to create this film—it called on everything that I had.” Looks like the Academy voters noticed. (By the way, he’s terrific as Mister in The Color Purple too.)

    Snub: Saltburn Gets Smoked

    Emerald Fennell’s vicious satire of upper-class life (and working-class ambition?) was blanked across the board, missing a semi-expected nod for best original screenplay as well as hoped-for nominations for actor Barry Keoghan and supporting actor Jacob Elordi that may have been realer in the minds of fans than they ever were among Academy voters. Was this film just too misanthropic for fundamentally sentimental voters, or was there just too much competition in this surprisingly stacked year? Everyone involved will have plenty of time to ponder the possibilities.

    Surprise: The Teachers’ Lounge Is in Session

    Ilker Çatak’s gripping film about a German school quickly devolving into The Crucible didn’t seem to have much heat going into the voting period, but it grabbed a well-deserved nomination in the best international film category. Germany’s official Oscars entry follows a sixth-grade teacher played with startling purpose and humanity by Leonie Benesch as she navigates a minefield of suspicions and defends her students not just from their peers but from teachers and parents.

    Snub: Time Runs Out for May December

    Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and Charles Melton didn’t rank for May December, but a movie revisiting (however artfully) the Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau relationship—which started with Letourneau’s arrest for raping Fualaau when he was only 12—was always gonna go down with some icky shivers. Imagine a film with the genders reversed? You can’t. Wait, no—Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita. Which, come to think of it, was nominated for best adapted screenplay. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that original screenplay (written by Samy Burch) would be the only category where Todd Haynes’s well-regarded film ended up being recognized.

    Snub: American Symphony Goes Silent

    Matthew Heineman’s documentary is about art, love, life, and death, for starters, but apparently Oscar voters wanted…. more? American Symphony tells the story of Jon Batiste’s quest to write a symphony just as he and his life partner, author Suleika Jaouad, discover that the latter’s cancer has returned. Batiste told VF that agreeing to such an unusually candid film required a leap of faith: “It felt like it was much bigger than us. And even though it was more than we had bargained for going in, it felt as though this is what the spirit was leading us to do. It was a work of God that we had to complete to the end.”

    Sad: Greta Lee Runs Out of Lives

    Celine Song’s wildly impressive debut, Past Lives, received two nominations, for best picture and best original screenplay. We would have loved to see Lee’s exquisitely nuanced lead performance recognized as well. As Nora, a New York City playwright who reunites with her childhood best friend from Korea, Lee impeccably calibrates humor, affection, love, and regret on the way to the film’s cathartic emotional climax. Her absence here isn’t technically a snub (this year’s best actress category includes some legitimately fierce contenders), nor is it a surprise, just an occasion for a moment of sadness for what might have been. Which, come to think of it, is what Past Lives is all about.

    Sad: Super Mario Bros. Gets Lemons, Not Lemonade

    OK, maybe a movie based on a Nintendo game was never going to win best picture (it’s not like it’s about something serious, like dolls!), but Jack Black’s virally fruitful “Peaches”? Hear it once and you’ll sing it, along with your five-year-old, a billion times. A disappointing day for everyone who likes their nominations with a side of delight.

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    Vanity Fair

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  • Oscar Nominations 2024: See the Full List Here

    Oscar Nominations 2024: See the Full List Here

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    A historic nomination for Lily Gladstone. Thirteen noms for Oppenheimer and 11 for Poor Things. A trio of noms for Bradley Cooper, bringing his lifetime total to 12, though he (and Greta Gerwig) were both snubbed for best director. 

    Announced by Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid live from the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, the Oscar nominations 2024 brings big news for many of the most significant films of the past year. Heading into nominations morning films including Oppenheimer, Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, and The Holdovers all looked strong, with major wins at the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes and support from the guilds of directors, actors, and producers who make up a huge part of the Academy’s voting body. But there were so many other contenders hoping to join them, from fellow best picture hopefuls like Maestro and Past Lives to animated blockbusters ranging from The Boy and the Heron to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

    Who made the final cut? Read below for a full list of this year’s Oscar nominations, and then head over to our list of the 2024 Oscar nomination snubs and surprises.  

    BEST PICTURE

    American Fiction
    Anatomy of a Fall
    Barbie
    The Holdovers
    Killers of the Flower Moon
    Maestro
    Oppenheimer
    Past Lives
    Poor Things
    The Zone of Interest

    BEST DIRECTOR

    Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
    Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
    Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
    Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
    Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall

    BEST ACTRESS

    Annette Bening, Nyad
    Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
    Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
    Carey Mulligan, Maestro
    Emma Stone, Poor Things

    BEST ACTOR 

    Bradley Cooper, Maestro
    Colman Domingo, Rustin
    Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
    Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
    Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

    BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

    Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
    Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
    America Ferrera, Barbie
    Jodie Foster, Nyad
    Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

    BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

    Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
    Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
    Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
    Ryan Gosling, Barbie
    Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

    BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

    Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall
    David Hemingson, The Holdovers
    Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer, Maestro
    Samy Burch, May December
    Celine Song, Past Lives

    BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

    Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
    Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie
    Tony McNamara, Poor Things
    Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
    Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest

    BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

    Io Capitano, Italy
    Perfect Days, Japan
    Society of the Snow, Spain
    The Teacher’s Lounge, Germany
    The Zone of Interest, United Kingdom

    BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

    The Boy and the Heron
    Elemental
    Nimona
    Robot Dreams
    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

    BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

    Bobi Wine: The People’s President
    The Eternal Memory
    Four Daughters
    To Kill a Tiger
    20 Days in Mariupol

    BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

    El Conde
    Killers of the Flower Moon
    Maestro
    Oppenheimer
    Poor Things

    BEST EDITING

    Anatomy of a Fall
    The Holdovers
    Killers of the Flower Moon
    Oppenheimer
    Poor Things

    BEST COSTUME DESIGN

    Barbie
    Killers of the Flower Moon
    Napoleon
    Oppenheimer
    Poor Things

    BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP 

    Golda
    Maestro
    Oppenheimer
    Poor Things
    Society of the Snow

    BEST SOUND

    The Creator
    Maestro
    Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One
    Oppenheimer
    The Zone of Interest

    BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

    The Creator
    Godzilla Minus One
    Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
    Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One
    Napoleon

    BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

    Barbie
    Killers of the Flower Moon
    Napoleon
    Oppenheimer
    Poor Things

    BEST ORIGINAL SONG

    “What Was I Made For?”, Billie Eilish and Finneas, Barbie
    “I’m Just Ken,” Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, Barbie
    “The Fire Inside,” Diane Warren, Flamin’ Hot
    “It Never Went Away,” Jon Batiste, American Symphony
    “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People),” Osage Tribal Singers, Killers of the Flower Moon

    BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

    American Fiction
    Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    Killers of the Flower Moon
    Oppenheimer
    Poor Things

    BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT

    The After
    Invincible
    Knight of Fortune
    Red, White and Blue
    The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

    BEST ANIMATED SHORT

    Letter to a Pig
    Ninety-Five Senses
    Our Uniform
    Pachyderme
    War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

    BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

    The ABCs of Book Banning
    The Barber of Little Rock
    Island in Between
    The Last Repair Shop
    Nai Nai & Wai Po

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    Vanity Fair

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  • Razzies Announce Nominees For Worst Movies of 2023

    Razzies Announce Nominees For Worst Movies of 2023

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    As is tradition, the day before the Oscar nominees are announced, the Razzie Awards’ annual nominations are announced as well, “honoring” the worst in the cinema for the calendar year.

    This year’s nominees are dominated by some very worthy “contenders,” including my own pick for the worst film of 2023: Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey. Other “top” nominees include the quite terrible Expend4bles (leading all films with seven nominations) and The Exorcist: Believer (five nominations).

    Of course, this being the Razzies, though, there were some odd choices and some very cheap shots. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny got two nominations and in both cases in their official release, the Razzies made fun of its title for some inexplicable reason, calling it Indiana Jones and The Dial of…Still Beating a Dead Horse once and Indiana Jones and the Dial of…Can I go home now? another time.

    Now, I liked Dial of Destiny; it was no Raiders of the Lost Ark but it also wasn’t Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But some people didn’t like it; I guess enough people who vote on the Razzies didn’t like it, because they nominated it. But why make fun of its title? It’s a perfectly fine title.

    I’m also confused why Meg 2: The Trench and Shazam! Fury of the Gods would be nominated for Worst Picture of the year but not nominated for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel? They’re both sequels and they’re both one of the worst movies of the year … so doesn’t that automatically make them one of the worst prequels/remakes/rip-offs/sequels of the year too? That doesn’t make any sense. (The Razzies nominated Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the aforementioned Indiana Jones in that category in their place.)

    That’s the Razzies for you, I guess. As always, I continue to feel like bad movies deserve better awards. Here’s the full list of this year’s Razzie nominees. The “winners” will be announced the night before the Academy Awards, Saturday March 9.

    Worst Picture
    The Exorcist: Believer
    Expend4bles
    Meg 2: The Trench
    Shazam! Fury of the Gods
    Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

    Worst Actor
    Russell Crowe, The Pope’s Exorcist
    Vin Diesel, Fast X
    Chris Evans, Ghosted
    Jason Statham, Meg 2: The Trench
    Jon Voight, Mercy

    Worst Actress
    Ana de Armas, Ghosted
    Megan Fox, Johnny & Clyde
    Salma Hayek, Magic Mike’s Last Dance
    Jennifer Lopez, The Mother
    Helen Mirren,  Shazam! Fury of the Gods

    Worst Supporting Actress
    Kim Cattrall, About My Father
    Megan Fox, Expend4bles
    Bai Ling, Johnny & Clyde
    Lucy Liu, Shazam! Fury of the Gods
    Mary Stuart Masterson, Five Nights at Freddy’s

    Worst Supporting Actor
    Michael Douglas, Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania
    Mel Gibson, Confidential Informant
    Bill Murray, Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania
    Franco Nero, The Pope’s Exorcist
    Sylvester Stallone, Expend4ables

    Worst Screen Couple
    Any 2 “Merciless Mercenaries,” Expend4bles
    Any 2 Money-Grubbing Investors Who Donated to the $400 Million
    for Remake Rights to The Exorcist
    Ana de Armas & Chris Evans (who flunked Screen Chemistry), Ghosted
    Salma Hayek & Channing Tatum, Magic Mike’s Last Dance
    Pooh & Piglet as Blood-Thirsty Slasher/Killers (!) in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

    Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel
    Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania
    The Exorcist: Believer
    Expend4bles
    Indiana Jones and The Dial of…Still Beating a Dead Horse
    Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

    Worst Director
    Rhys Frake-Waterfield, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
    David Gordon Green, The Exorcist: Believer
    Peyton Reed, Ant Man & the Wasp: Quantumania
    Scott Waugh, Expend4bles
    Ben Wheatley, Meg 2: The Trench

    Universal

    Worst Screenplay
    The Exorcist: Believer
    Expend4bles
    Indiana Jones and the Dial of…Can I go home now?
    Shazam! Fury of the Gods
    Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey

    The Worst Razzie Nominees in History

    The Razzies honor the worst in movies. But sometimes, their picks are even worse.

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    Matt Singer

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  • For Producers Will Ferrell and Jessica Elbaum, It’s Ladies First

    For Producers Will Ferrell and Jessica Elbaum, It’s Ladies First

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    Watch the closing credits of May December, and a surprising name stands out. How did Will Ferrell, king of the eminently quotable bro comedy, wind up producing Todd Haynes’s moody melodrama? The short answer: It was Ferrell’s Gloria Sanchez Productions that acquired the script, long before Haynes or stars Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore were attached.

    But the long answer starts around a decade ago, when Jessica Elbaum, Ferrell’s former assistant, pitched the comedian on starting a company focused on female-driven projects. At the time, Ferrell was making movies and TV shows with longtime partner Adam McKay through their Gary Sanchez Productions banner. “Honestly, it was a bit of a selfish moment,” Elbaum tells Vanity Fair. “We had done Bachelorette, and I had such a good time working with all of those women. At that point in time…there weren’t a ton of movies like that being made, so I was like, I want to make more with my female friends and female creators. But I also want to do it with Will, because I can’t imagine working with anybody else.”

    Thankfully, Ferrell agreed. “I’ll toot her horn,” he says. “She really had this foresight of where there was this need—and this was well before the MeToo movement.”

    With Ferrell and Elbaum having assembled, in just under a decade, a slate that includes Booksmart, Hustlers, Theater Camp, and May December, it’s unlikely that their efforts would have stayed under the radar for long. But their ambitions—and profile—grew a few years ago, when Ferrell and McKay dissolved Gary Sanchez and the former moved all his projects under the Gloria Sanchez umbrella. It’s there, with a team of nine women led by Elbaum, that Ferrell now produces starring vehicles like Netflix’s Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga and the Apple TV+ miniseries The Shrink Next Door, while also using his years of experience to help up-and-coming filmmakers get their projects made.

    When it comes to that, the comedian is learning the power of staying silent. “It is really exciting to be able to lend whatever currency I still have in this business to new voices,” Ferrell says. “In so many ways, the biggest job I have is really just listening.”

    That’s largely what he did when Elbaum brought in writer Samy Burch’s May December spec script. “Samy’s such an exciting original voice, and we read it and we were so drawn to her and the story and the tone,” Elbaum says. Initially, they gave the script to Portman in the hopes that she would direct. But as Portman told VF ahead of the film’s Cannes premiere last year, she couldn’t imagine the film in the hands of anyone but Haynes because it needed “a vision to match the subtlety and nuance of the script.”

    May December has a few laugh-out-loud moments, but Ferrell says that has little to do with him. “The sign of being a good producer is to be somewhat open with our involvement,” he says. “It just coalesced, in a way, with the collection of performances and with Todd’s direction and his scoring.” Adds Elbaum, “Our goal was just to protect Samy’s vision, and the good news with this team was that everybody wanted to make the same movie. The creative marriage of all of these different groups could not have been better.”

    With the Netflix film hot on the awards trail—it picked up four Golden Globe nominations, three Critics Choice nominations, and a Gotham Award win for supporting actor Charles Melton—Ferrell now finds himself experiencing all the red carpets and dinners and awards shows not as a star, but as a producer. “Jess and I both pinch ourselves that we’re actually supporting things that are getting looked at in a creative light,” he says. “To have this as a moment where we get to sit at a table for a film like May December, they’re kind of special moments because they don’t happen all the time. So we’re trying to soak it all up.”

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    Natalie Jarvey

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  • Collision Awards Launch Honoring Animation and Motion Graphics (Exclusive)

    Collision Awards Launch Honoring Animation and Motion Graphics (Exclusive)

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    Underscoring growth in the animation field, the organizers of The Telly Awards and additional industry entities are launching The Collision Awards, a global program to honor excellence in animation and motion design in areas including film, TV, games and XR.

    It will be run by the Telly Awards, and partners includes Animation Magazine, Animation World Network, Animation Nights New York, Motion Plus Design, SIGGRAPH ACM London, Skwigly, Stash, VIEW Conference and WeTransfer.

    Randeep Katari has been named general manager of the Collision Awards. He most recently served as a creative manager at Netflix, overseeing animated film and series. Earlier, he worked for companies including Walt Disney Animation Studios, Nickelodeon and NBC/Universal.

    Founding jurors include Ramsey Naito, president of Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation; Andrew Millstein, co-head of Annapurna Animation; Maureen Fan, CEO of Baobab; Sarah Cox, executive creative director, Aardman; Marge Dean, head of Skybound and president of Women in Animation; Julie Lockhart, co-founder of Locksmith Animation; Melinda Dilger, global head of animation production, film/TV at Riot Games; Ronnie del Carmen, co-director/writer of Pixar’s Inside Out; Jinko Gotoh, producer, Finding Nemo; and Jorge Gutierrez, writer/director Maya and the Three. 

    Categories are grouped across six areas: marketing and communications, commercials, TV, film, experiential and games and XR. Within each, there will be categories for crafts — such as 2D, character animation and storyboarding — and varied audiences such as preschool.

    A call for entries begins Monday (early bird deadline is March 8) and the winners of the first awards are set to be announced in July.

    Said Katari in a statement: “Helping lead an organization that’s dedicated to celebrating animation, motion design and the community of creatives within it allows us to spotlight undiscovered stories and under-recognized talents all around the world. The Collision Awards is collaborating with leaders in the industry to set a standard of excellence and share how animation can inspire, connect and entertain on a truly global scale.

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    Carolyn Giardina

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  • Inside the Fascinating World of New York City Psychics

    Inside the Fascinating World of New York City Psychics

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    Lana Wilson sees a lot of similarities between making a documentary about Taylor Swift and a documentary about psychics. “We all want to be understood—it’s very easy to watch people and to look at them and to judge them, but to really witness someone is unique,” the Miss Americana filmmaker says. “It’s what I get to do as a filmmaker a lot of the time.” Watching her poignant new film Look Into My Eyes, premiering next week at the Sundance Film Festival, it’s easy to see the connection play out. Wilson makes movies with uncommon intimacy, paving cinematic paths of self-actualization. How natural, then, that she’d look to the world of psychics for her next topic.

    Look Into My Eyes, which has been in the works for more than seven years, also signals an exciting step forward for Wilson, as she expands her gaze toward an entire community. Crafted as a unique portrait of contemporary New York, the doc bounces from apartment to apartment, park bench to park bench, and holds the camera on groups of people desperately seeking answers about themselves—both clients hoping to connect with what they’ve lost, and psychics grappling with loneliness and grief themselves. As Wilson follows seven unique, rigorous psychics across the city, she gains fascinating insights into why they’re suited to this work, how their personal experiences inform their approach to readings, and exactly what their lives look like. The final shot both literalizes the movie’s title and rather heartbreakingly demonstrates the power of a little person-to-person connection.

    Does the film come to any answers about whether the psychics really do connect with the other side? As Wilson explains in a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair, that question is very much beside the point.

    Vanity Fair: What made you want to make this movie? Where did it start?

    Lana Wilson: It’s been a long time. I’ve actually never worked on a movie this long. The idea came the day after Trump was elected in 2016. It was the morning after the election, and I was working as a TV writer, so I was waiting for my ride to go back into the city. It was like 8:00 AM and I was just feeling so devastated, heartbroken, grieving. I noticed this sign in the strip mall where I was standing, it said, “$5 psychic reading.” Without even thinking, I walked in. Never been to a psychic before. I pulled back this curtain and the room was empty. There was just a table and two chairs, but no one was there. I sat down and I immediately felt very emotional. I really felt like I was looking in a mirror at my desperation at that moment. And it was very powerful. And then, this woman came in. She gave me a reading. She was very comforting and kind. I don’t remember what she said, but I remember it was brief, but that I felt better afterwards. And I paid her five bucks.

    As I was leaving, she was like, “What do you do for a living?” And I said, “I’m a documentary filmmaker.” She said, “Oh, what are you making movies about?” And I said, “Well, I’m finishing this one about a punk rocker turned Zen priest who tries to convince people who are suicidal to keep on living, but he kind of destroys him in a way.” And she was like, “Sounds like my life.” I was like, “What?” And she said, “Yeah, you wouldn’t believe the situations people come in here with. People come at these real crossroads in their lives.” That was the light bulb moment for me. I never would’ve expected that of a psychic. I didn’t know how serious and profound it could be.

    You follow a group of psychics in their lives. How did you build that network?

    It was when the pandemic began when I started to think maybe this is the moment to make the psychics movie that I had in the back of my mind for so long. It was coming from this very powerful place of being in New York during the pandemic—it was a scary place to be, of course, but then, it was quickly an amazing place to be because people were really there for each other. It was just incredible. I thought, probably, psychics’ business is going up, and I’m sure we’re less certain about the future than ever. During the pandemic, I started meeting psychics. We saw over 100 psychics as a [production] group. Eventually, maybe it was like four people total, five people total getting readings.

    We started out with the idea of maybe this would be storefront psychics, but I quickly gravitated towards people who do these longer sessions that are more at the intersection of psychotherapy. I just loved the long, deep sessions. The short ones felt more like someone reading a weather report; I loved what could be possible for an hour and a half. At the beginning, I thought, Maybe it’ll only be sessions, this kaleidoscope of humanity in New York during the pandemic. But as I got to know the psychics better, I became more and more curious about them. I learned about their own origin stories with being a psychic, which often began with them being a psychic’s client and having their life changed in some way—I realized they had a lot of shared experiences of loss and loneliness, and that I wanted more of that in the film. It became this kind of collective story of these seven psychics. There’s much more of the psychics in the film than I ever would’ve anticipated starting out.

    In the edit, you can see the way that their perspectives and their experiences are informing these sessions—and maybe even the way they’re understanding the people that they’re working with.

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    David Canfield

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  • Oscar Nominations 2024: See Our Final Predictions

    Oscar Nominations 2024: See Our Final Predictions

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    When the Oscar nominations 2024 are announced on Tuesday, January 23, from the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles, so many of the biggest film stories of 2023 will get their latest, most thrilling twist. Can Barbie and Oppenheimer ride their box office dominance to equally huge Oscar nomination tallies? Can Cord Jefferson and Celine Song pull off the exceedingly rare feat of getting best-picture nominations for their first-ever features? And hey, how will the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fare?

    One thing’s for certain: Oscar records will be broken, surprises will be in store, and we’ll be here to watch it all happen. Read below for a complete list of our Oscar predictions.

    BEST PICTURE

    American Fiction

    Anatomy of a Fall

    Barbie

    The Holdovers

    Killers of the Flower Moon

    Maestro

    Past Lives

    Poor Things

    Oppenheimer

    The Zone of Interest

    Usually, we would warn ourselves against predicting that the Oscars will choose the same 10 films as the Producers Guild of America, an organization that often makes room for a rogue blockbuster (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Crazy Rich Asians, Deadpool) that doesn’t end up on the Academy’s final list. But this year the producers zagged in the other direction, including international offerings Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, which suggests those films are in an even stronger position than we thought to edge out more populist Hollywood productions like The Color Purple and Air.

    But that’s what’s happening near the bottom of the lineup; let’s start at the top. Oppenheimer is holding firm to its presumed-front-runner status following its high-profile wins at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, and though it still has a road to travel to a win, a nomination is assured. Same goes for its summer box office twin, Barbie, and Killers of the Flower Moon, both of which have had strong showings with every imaginable precursor. If we’re making a top five of this category, we’ll round it out with Poor Things—the Globe comedy winner over Barbie, and a PGA and Directors Guild nominee—and American Fiction, which got a major boost from its SAG ensemble nomination.

    From there we have some strong contenders with a few caveats that shouldn’t keep them out of this 10. The Holdovers has been warmly received all season, and star Da’Vine Joy Randolph is steamrolling the supporting-actress category; its small but mighty ensemble missed the top SAG nomination, but we can’t imagine the film missing out here. Maestro has been driven more by buzz for its lead performances than by director Bradley Cooper’s achievements, but a film this gorgeously mounted and moving ought to get a best-picture inclusion too. And Past Lives has been steady as the season’s heartfelt indie that could, with that Producers Guild nomination proving it has the attention of a wide swath of the industry.

    Which brings us back to where we started. Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall has been a strong contender from its Cannes premiere, which makes it very likely to follow fellow Palme winners Triangle of Sadness and Parasite into this lineup. That leaves just a single slot—just one!—that’s felt up for grabs for weeks now. It really comes down to looking at the PGA industry support for The Zone of Interest versus the SAG industry support for The Color Purple, which earned a best-ensemble nomination. In this case, we’re just going with our gut—and with what Oscar voters around Los Angeles keep emphasizing—and predicting that Zone rounds out the 10. —Katey Rich

    BEST DIRECTOR

    Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest

    Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things

    Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

    Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon

    Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall

    This is a very competitive year at the Oscars, with major films coming from major directors. Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Yorgos Lanthimos, Alexander Payne—these five have all been nominated in this category before, make up the group recognized this year by the DGA, and arguably represent the strongest contenders for best picture right now. So, easy enough to predict, right? Not so fast. Few Academy branches are as predictably unpredictable as that of the directors, and indeed, it feels unlikely that this international-skewing group will recognize five American films, however popular they prove to be in the overall nominations.

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    Katey Rich, David Canfield, Richard Lawson, Kara Warner, Hillary Busis

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  • Phil Lord, Chris Miller Reveal Themselves as Writers of Golden Globes “Studio Executives” Bit

    Phil Lord, Chris Miller Reveal Themselves as Writers of Golden Globes “Studio Executives” Bit

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    When Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse voice actors Hailee Steinfeld, Daniel Kaluuya and Shameik Moore took the stage to present best screenplay at the Golden Globes earlier this month, the trio claimed their intro had been written by studio executives.

    But, instead, it was Spider-Verse writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller who crafted the memorably stilted dialogue, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

    “We were really happy that they wanted to have Hailee, Shameik and Daniel present and present a prestigious award,” Lord tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I think it’s a nice acknowledgment that the cast of our movie is full of Oscar nominees. Hailee is an Oscar nominee and an Academy member. Kaluuya is an [Oscar] winner. And we wanted to make sure they looked great. It’s a fun show, but you want to make sure you don’t go up there and whiff on a bit. So I think our objective was: How do we make something for them that makes them look great, that honors the category, that is still playful?”

    In coming up with the segment, the duo — who have a history of writing for the Lego and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs franchises and for Apple TV+’s The Afterparty but who admit they’re “not professional variety show writers” — came up with eight options, trading ideas and soliciting suggestions from friends even as late as the Friday before the awards show. The Spider-Verse team ran through the options in rehearsal, and they knew the “studio executives” bit was a winner.

    “It was very clear anytime it was pretend banter, it just always felt canned,” Lord says. “At least with the three of them, the thing that they gravitated toward and really were able to lean into and felt really confident about was the thing where they could play it really straight but still be in on the joke.”

    The segment also offered one of the show’s few allusions to last year’s writers strike, which was appreciated by the head writers for the Globes, who explained they hadn’t yet found a way to acknowledge the strike, Lord and Miller recall. “They were excited about the bit because it was a way to do it with a friendly touch,” says Miller.

    The moment was a hit with the star-studded audience, which included the executives who supported Spider-Verse who were sitting next to Lord, Miller and Spider-Verse directors Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson and Joaquim Dos Santos, who spoke with THR about the bit at the National Board of Review Awards last Thursday.

    All three directors, who were on hand to receive the best animated feature award, said they enjoyed the intro, adding that they were “cracking up” at the “hilarious moment.”

    Powers elaborated that he thought that segment reflected the film.

    “I think that speaks to the spirit of the film that we made and the characters that we had them portray,” Powers told THR. “It was great to have our actors in our film, who are great personalities in their own right, highlighted.”

    As for why they attributed the speech to studio executives and not AI, Miller calls the technology “comedy clam,” or something a bit “hackneyed.”

    “We certainly have no love for AI and don’t want it anywhere near script-writing,” he added.

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    Hilary Lewis

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