Hey, remember me? I’m the girl who, right before the 2022 Game Awards, said Xbox head Phil Spencer dresses like my dad when he goes on a Sunday morning bagel run. (We squashed the beef at Summer Game Fest, don’t worry.) Though I was being playful and pointed with my fashion critiques, I wasn’t just speaking to the style (or lack thereof) on display at gaming’s biggest night, but how it’s indicative of a larger identity crisis within the industry. On nights like The Game Awards, this multi-billion-dollar industry tries its hardest to ape Hollywood, with a glitzy production, A-list actors, and, bizarrely, men in sweatshirts.
It begs the question: Who are we? Are we all wealthy industry leaders wearing denim jackets in an attempt to look more approachable, more pedestrian? Or are we wannabe fashionistas from Long Island leaning too hard into living in Brooklyn? Or schleppy gamers who throw on whatever is on top of their clothes chair in the morning? The answer is simple: We’re all of it. This is an increasingly diverse industry (despite its inability to name women), and the more that diversity is reflected in the people who attend these events, the better the fashion will be by default—because we’ll get more variety, more personality, and more cultural backgrounds on display.
This year, I’ll be attending The Game Awards (no, you can’t see my outfit yet). Since I was so passionate about fashion last year, and now I’ll be there in person, I feel it is my civic duty to provide unsolicited advice on how to look good for gaming’s Oscars.
Let me be clear: You don’t have to spend a lot of money to look good. There are tons of ways to ball out on a budget, from renting the runway, to borrowing from friends or family, to combing through thrift stores for long-lost treasures (which is how we found my fiance a 1970s-era Yves Saint Laurent military trench for $150 in Italy). Whether you’re attending The Game Awards or you just have a semi-formal event in your future, here are some tips to ensure you don’t draw the gaze of my fashionable Eye of Sauron.
Also, I’m offering personalized fashion advice, so reach out in the comments, via e-mail, or my DMs.
It will be a few more months before we have a true 2024 Oscar ballot—voting for nominations begins on January 11, with nominations announced on January 23. But thanks to festival buzz, critical assessments, and a few early awards, we have a pretty good sense of which films and performances are most likely to show up on those ballots when they’re ready.
Below, we’ve got the long list of contenders in the six top Oscar categories, including best picture and all four acting races. We can’t guarantee you that every single nominee will come from this list—every Oscar year has its surprises, of course—but if you want to start catching up on contenders, this is an ideal place to start.
BEST PICTURE
Air All of Us Strangers American Fiction Anatomy of a Fall Barbie The Color Purple Ferrari Killers of the Flower Moon The Holdovers The Iron Claw Maestro May December Napoleon Nyad Oppenheimer Origin Past Lives Poor Things Priscilla Rustin Saltburn The Taste of Things The Zone of Interest
BEST DIRECTOR
Ben Affleck, Air Blitz Bazawule, The Color Purple Bradley Cooper, Maestro Sofia Coppola, Priscilla Sean Durkin, TheIron Claw Ava DuVernay, Origin Emerald Fennell, Saltburn Greta Gerwig, Barbie Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers Todd Haynes, May December Tran Anh Hung, The Taste of Things Cord Jefferson, American Fiction Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things Michael Mann, Ferrari Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer Alexander Payne, The Holdovers Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon Ridley Scott, Napoleon Celine Song, Past Lives Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, Nyad George C. Wolfe, Rustin
BEST ACTRESS
Fantasia Barrino, The Color Purple Annette Bening, Nyad Aunjanue Ellis, Origin Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon Greta Lee, Past Lives Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall Carey Mulligan, Maestro Natalie Portman, May December Margot Robbie, Barbie Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla Emma Stone, Poor Things
BEST ACTOR
Bradley Cooper, Maestro Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon Colman Domingo, Rustin Adam Driver, Ferrari Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers Barry Keoghan, Saltburn Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer Joaquin Phoenix, Napoleon Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Erika Alexander, American Fiction Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer Juliette Binoche, The Taste of Things Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple Penélope Cruz, Ferrari Viola Davis, Air America Ferrera, Barbie Jodie Foster, Nyad Taraji P. Henson, The Color Purple Sandra Hüller, The Zone of Interest Julianne Moore, May December Niecy Nash-Betts, Origin Rosamund Pike, Saltburn Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction Willem Dafoe, Poor Things Matt Damon, Oppenheimer Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon Colman Domingo, The Color Purple Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer Ryan Gosling, Barbie Glenn Howerton, BlackBerry John Magaro, Past Lives Charles Melton, May December Chris Messina, Air Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
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Matteo Garrone presented his film Io Capitano, Italy’s contender for the 2024 best international feature Oscar, to a packed theater of European parliamentarians and attendees on Nov. 15, for an event titled “Europe Seen by Others.”
The refugee drama, which follows two Senegalese men who travel across Africa and the Mediterranean in an effort to reach Europe, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where star Seydou Sarr won the Silver Lion award for best young actor. Garrone and his Io Capitano co-writers Fofana Amara and Mamadou Kouassi — whose real-life trials were the basis for the film’s story — attended the parliamentary screening. The 600 spectators gave the film a long-standing ovation after the screening.
The members of European Parliament (MEPs) were impressed, with several taking to social media to praise the film and its message. “[Io Capitano is] a tremendously important and powerful work that should be screened in all schools across the continent,” Spanish MEP Domènec Ruiz Devesa posted on X shortly after the event.
Speaking after the screening, Garrone said his goal with the film was to provide “a reverse shot” of the usual Euro-centric narrative of the migration crisis. “We are used to our perspective [looking] from Europe to Africa; I wanted to narrate the journey from another angle, from [the African] point of view, pointing the camera from Africa towards Europe,” he said. “We tried to offer the audience the chance to relive the experience of this odyssey. This film is a document of contemporary history, and I believe it touches consciences.”
The issue of illegal migration is one of the most politically explosive topics in Europe today, with fierce debates in the EU parliament over whether member countries should take in more migrants or pay coastal nations in Africa to block people from attempting the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean.
“Political debate does not interest me,” noted Garrone, pointing to the more basic principle of the protection of human life. “It is always right to save lives at sea [it’s] a fundamental, universal principle.”
In a statement, Amara and Kouassi made their position clear. “The suffering to reach Europe is immense,” they said. “The only way to avoid it is to have safe entry channels, without giving more money to Libya and Tunisia that trample on human rights.”
Only a handful of films are granted EU parliamentary screenings, with the majority shown in the context of the Lux Audience Award, a prize given annually by the EU Commission and the European Film Academy, in collaboration with exhibitors group Europa Cinemas, which aims to raise awareness of social, political, and cultural issues in Europe.
The Io Capitano screening, however, was the direct initiative of European parliamentarians, including Italian MEPs Pietro Bartolo, Massimiliano Smeriglio and Brando Benifei. The screening was sold out, with some 400 guests left outside the packed hall.
Viewers of Gianfranco Rosi’s Oscar-nominated documentary Fire at Sea (2016) will remember Bartolo as the emergency physician who worked on the Italian island of Lampedusa, giving first care to migrants who landed there after the journey over the sea. After 25 years as a physician, Bartolo was elected to the EU parliament in 2019. At the screening, he called Io Capitano a “masterpiece” that finally shows “the phenomenon of migration from the migrants’ perspective, not ours.”
Io Capitano is also a contender at next month’s European Film Awards, where it has picked up nominations for best film and best director. The movie has sold worldwide but is still looking for a U.S. distributor. Io Capitano was produced by Archimede with Rai Cinema and Tarantula in collaboration with Pathé and Logical Content Ventures as an Italian-Belgian co-production.
Jimmy Kimmel will return to the Oscar stage once again.
The ABC late night host has signed on to host the 96th Academy Awards, marking his fourth time in the role. The appointment is hardly surprising, of course, as Kimmel has decades of live TV experience and a longstanding relationship with Disney.
His announcement follows the mid-October news that the Academy set a producing team, a returning director and a first-time showrunner in Raj Kapoor, a live TV and go-to Las Vegas residency producer, who’s worked on the Academy Awards telecast for the last seven years. Kimmel’s wife and Jimmy Kimmel Live co-head writer Molly McNearney is also back as an executive producer for the telecast.
Though there were rumblings about a potential Oscar date move during the darker days of Hollywood’s dual strikes, such a thing is no longer necessary and the town’s top talent is already back in full campaign mode. Many have been scrambling to make up for lost time. In fact, Kimmel’s ABC show is poised to benefit from the parade of A-listers hungry to promote this year’s Oscar hopefuls.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! was off the air for the duration of the writers strike, though Kimmel himself maintained a presence through his popular “Strike Force Five” podcast with his fellow late night hosts. Proceeds from the latter went to the shows’ out-of-work staffs. Kimmel revealed on one of the episodes that he had been “very intent on retiring” prior to the strike, but he formally re-upped with Disney last year and his ABC show will continue through season 23.
The 96th Oscars will air live on ABC, Sunday, March 10, 2024, from the Dolby Theatre.
In a surprising twist, France has selected charming culinary romance The Taste of Things as its submission for the Oscars international-feature race this year, over expected pick Anatomy of a Fall.
Both films were breakouts when they first debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The Taste of Things, helmed by French-Vietnamese filmmaker Trần Anh Hùng, won the best-director prize at the festival, while Anatomy of a Fall, from Justine Triet, took the top prize, the Palme d’Or.
At the time, The Taste of Things was called The Pot-au-Feu. The 1885-set film stars Oscar winner Juliette Binoche as a cook whose bond with her fellow chef and boss (Benoît Magimel) turns into a tender romance in the kitchen.
While The Taste of Things earned critical acclaim and a Cannes prize, and was scooped up by IFC out of the festival, Anatomy of a Fall has arguably had the stronger journey since its debut. The Palme d’Or winner was bought by Neon, and played very well at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. The courtroom drama centers on a woman (Sandra Hüller) who comes under suspicion for her husband’s death. While set in France, the story’s dialogue moves back and forth from French to English.
While the choice of the French committee—whose members included director Olivier Assayas, producer Patrick Wachsberger, and composer Alexandre Desplat—may raise some eyebrows, we’re looking at it as the best of both worlds. The Taste of Things now has a prime spot in the Oscar competition, while it’s a real possibility that Anatomy of a Fall will contend in categories outside of international feature, including best picture and best actress for Hüller.
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More than 18 months after Will Smithslapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, celebrities are still speaking about the fallout. Following Sean Penn’s claim that the incident “never would have happened” had actor turned Ukrainian presidentVolodymyr Zelenskyy been present for the Oscars telecast, Leslie Jones has offered some insight about how Rock dealt with the slap’s aftermath.
“That shit was humiliating. It really affected him,” Jones put it plainly in a recent People interview. “People need to understand his daughters, his parents, saw that. He had to go to counseling with his daughters,” she continued, referencing Rock’s children Lola, 21, and Zahra, 19.
Rock himself has spoken about the slap, which occurred after he made a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith. “I’m not a victim,” Rock said in his Netflix comedy special Selective Outrage. “You will never see me on Oprah or Gayle crying, saying, ‘I couldn’t believe it. I love Men in Black.’” Jones applauded Rock, who wrote the foreword to her new memoir, for speaking about the altercation onstage. “Everybody got pissed off about him doing a special. That’s what comedians do,” Jones said. “Instead of us going crazy we fucking go talk about it on the fucking stage. Thank God we’ve got the stage.”
Jones then expressed her own reaction to the slap, which resulted in Smith’s resignation from the Academy and the actor being banned from attending the ceremony for the next decade. “It made me so infuriated. You don’t know that I was going to jump in my car and roll up there [to the 2022 Oscars],” Jones said. “I was so fucking mad on so many levels. For a long ass time I was just mad. Chris Rock did a fucking joke. I know Will, too…I was like, you couldn’t handle that shit afterwards. This is the Oscars. The whole world is watching.”
She later told Rock, “I was like, ‘Chris, when he got up, why didn’t you run?’ I would’ve been running around that stage like, ‘Will, calm down. Jada, call your man!’” Jones maintained that Smith “could have still fixed it” when he returned to the podium to accept the best actor award for King Richard. According to Jones, Smith should have said, “‘I shouldn’t have did that. Bring Chris out. I can not accept the Oscar right now because that was fucking wrong.’”
Rock hasn’t expressly shared his family’s reaction to the slap, but Rose Rock, Chris’s mother, has offered her blunt reaction: “When he slapped Chris, he slapped all of us,” she said shortly after the incident, adding, “he really slapped me. Because when you hurt my child, you hurt me.” In his July 2022 apology video, Smith directly apologized to Rock’s mother and Rock’s brother, Tony Rock, who called the slap “foul” in a series of tweets. “We had a great relationship,” Smith says about Tony. “Tony Rock was my man. And this is probably irreparable.” A source told People at the time that Chris Rock was “assessing” the incident, but that “the stress of the slap and the aftermath has not taken over his life. Quite the opposite.”
Sean Penn is promoting the new documentary he co-directed, “Superpower”, which focuses on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the stand taken by the Ukrainian people to defend their homeland, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In a new interview with Variety about the film, Penn admits he’s still irked that efforts to bring Zelenskyy to speak at the 2022 Academy Awards, shortly after Russia launched its invasion, were refused.
“The Oscars producer thought, ‘Oh, he’s not light-hearted enough.’”
“The Oscars producer thought, ‘Oh, he’s not light-hearted enough,’” Penn recalled.
“Well, guess what you got instead? Will Smith!” he added, referencing Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock.
During a 2022 appearance on “The Drew Barrymore Show”, Amy Schumer — who co-hosted that year’s Oscars alongside Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall — confirmed that she was among those who wanted Zelenskyy to be a part of the telecast.
“I actually pitched, I wanted to find a way to have Zelenskyy satellite in or make a tape or something just because there are so many eyes on the Oscars,” she said, but explained that producers nixed the idea.
“I am not afraid to go there,” she added, “but it’s not me producing the Oscars.”
The Academy is bolstering its support for theatrical moviegoing with a major change requiring best picture contenders to play in more theaters across the country.
Starting next year, any film eligible for best picture will have to play in 10 of the top 50 U.S. markets, a major expansion from the current rule, which requires just a week in a theater in just one of the six biggest cities in the U.S. The new rules will also require an expansion into those 10 cities no later than 45 days after the initial release in 2024. “It is our hope that this expanded theatrical footprint will increase the visibility of films worldwide and encourage audiences to experience our artform in a theatrical setting,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang in a joint statement.
How will the rules affect anything worldwide? Turns out that screening in two of the top 15 international markets — London, Paris, etc. — can count toward the requirement, as can a release in the film’s home territory.
Rumors have been swirling that the Academy was leaning towards increasing the theatrical requirements for Oscar contention, though initial reports had suggested the change would be much more aggressive, with 15-20 markets required. It’s a clear effort by the Academy to support movies being seen in theaters, with the exhibition industry still in a post-Covid state of uncertainty.
The new rules will affect a number of major players in the Oscar race. Netflix, for example, often limits its films theatrical release to theaters it owns and operates in New York and Los Angeles, a practice that will now have to expand. And Sony Pictures Classics has had great success with films that are released on an extremely limited number of screens at the end of the year, but only expand to broader audiences in January or February, just in time to take advantage of the buzz from a nomination. Those kinds of delayed runs won’t be totally eliminated in the future — planned expanded runs must be completed no later than January 24 in 2025, the first year the new rules will go in effect, and the distributors must submit release plans to the Academy for verification.
“Based on many conversations with industry partners, we feel that this evolution benefits film artists and movie lovers alike,” adds the statement from Kramer and Yang.
While this new rule will provide a boost for theatrical moviegoing, there could be one group that struggles as a result: smaller independent films that don’t have the budget for a larger theatrical release. Last year’s To Leslie — which, despite only earning $27,000 at the box office, became the story of the season because of Andrea Riseborough’s surprise nomination — is a prime example of the sort of film that might not be able to make the new requirement.
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Few actors ever reach the Academy Awards, let alone before hitting the legal driving age. But that was exactly where Hailee Steinfeld found herself when she earned a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for the Coen brothers’ True Grit in 2011 at age 14.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Take it all in,” people once advised Steinfeld, now 26, as she tells People in her new cover story. “Of course, at 13, I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely. For sure. I’m taking it all in.’ And while I do feel like I remember just about everything, I only now realize what people meant by that,” she continues. “It was such a rare experience, everything about it: the timing, the places I got to go to and the people I got to work with. I was experiencing so many firsts, and I was surrounded by the best people that really took me under their wings and guided me every step of the way. I just remember being young and curious and so overexcited about absolutely everything.”
Her True Grit co-star Jeff Bridges has been a particularly major influence, both professionally and personally. “Jeff has so much fun with what he does,” Steinfeld said. “With True Grit, I had a lot of dialogue, and the circumstances weren’t always smiley and bubbly. Yet somehow, in between takes, he managed to keep up an energy that made me feel so at ease and comfortable… If we had 10 minutes in between takes, he would pull out this game called Pass the Pigs, which became a crowd favorite very quickly with the Steinfeld family.”
Although the actor says she “had moments of [feeling like I was missing out] when friends would send me pictures from winter formals and proms and homecomings,” she still had a chance to experience some typical teenage milestones—by filming a homecoming scene on 2015’s Barely Lethal and joining a sorority in the Pitch Perfect franchise. Plus, 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen allowed Steinfeld to “let a little bit of teen angst go that I didn’t even know I had.”
In recent months, Steinfeld has been touched by the personal battles both Bridges, who is currently in remission for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and her Hawkeye co-star Jeremy Renner, who survived a near-fatal snowplow accident, have endured. “I haven’t really talked about it, but it is a weird thing because I would be so moved by what has happened to them in any other case, and here I am lucky enough to have a personal connection,” she tells the outlet. “I’m just so beyond grateful that they’re both here.”
Welcome to Look Back At It, a monthly column where some of the most iconic Black actresses in Hollywood reminisce and reflect on the roles that made them stars. For this month’s installment, Mary J. Blige breaks down her career—from Mudbound and How to Get Away With Murder to her current Starz series, Power Book II: Ghost.
In 2018, the musician and actress Mary J. Blige became the first Black woman to be nominated in multiple categories in the same year at the Academy Awards. She earned two nominations for her work in Dee Rees’s Mudbound—one for Best Original Song and the other for Best Supporting Actress. “Those were complete surprises,” says Blige as she reflects on the moment. “I wasn’t even confident about my acting [at that time], but that let me know, ‘You can act.’”
Throughout her career, Blige has honed her skill while playing an array of iconic women like Dr. Betty Shabazz in Betty & Coretta and Dinah Washington in Respect. She’s also guest-starred on the popular television shows Black-ish, Empire, and How to Get Away With Murder. Now, she’s Monet Tejada, the fierce matriarch at the heart of Power Book II: Ghost.
“One thing that threads through all of my characters is that they’re all no-nonsense,” she says. “They’re all strong women. I have to play characters like that to be able to pull from a real place. Can I play a weak woman? Probably. But right now, this is what it is.”
Now, she’s setting her sights behind the camera. Her production company, Blue Butterfly, already has two movies with Lifetime, and she says there’s more to come. “Maybe I’ll direct one day, but I don’t know if I have the patience to deal with people,” Blige adds with a laugh.
Below, Blige takes us through her most iconic roles to share the deep friendships she’s made on set, the joys of acting with people she admires, and the ways she’s evolved onscreen.
Tanya in I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2009)
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Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself – trailer
“This was the first time that I officially met Taraji [P. Henson]. We acted together and then became friends. I Can Do Bad All By Myself reminds me of her and our friendship.”
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“I got to work with one of the most amazing actresses in the business and an amazing woman. I felt so proud and grateful to stand beside Angela Bassett while working on Betty & Coretta. She’s one of the best. I mean, she’s right there with Meryl Streep for me. I watched Angela transform her face and everything on this film. It was the most unbelievable thing to watch. I still go to her for inspiration.”
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Annalise Goes to the Hair Salon – How To Get Away With Murder
“It was an honor to do Viola Davis’s hair in How To Get Away With Murder, which was one of the biggest shows at the time. Being her hairstylist was crazy, but also amazing.”
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“Wow, what a historical moment. This was amazing on every level. I was completely caught off guard and surprised by how much the critics and the audience loved this film. And the Oscar nominations were a big surprise. Mudbound was challenging because I was going through so much in my life and was so insecure. And for the film, I had to peel back the things that were making me feel secure. You couldn’t wear weaves and you couldn’t wear lashes and you couldn’t wear nails. You had to have on old-timey clothes. I had be that person. That was a challenge because it kind of hurt my feelings a little bit, but it also gave me confidence in just looking like that. That’s who I am.”
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“I had a blast. The word fun comes to mind when I think about The Umbrella Academy. We lived in Canada for five months and I met some great people. And, of course, I learned how to shoot guns and do martial arts.”
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Power Book II: Ghost | Official Trailer | Season 3
“Now, I’m comfortable with just falling into [acting]. Monet has given me so much confidence and she’s one of my favorite roles that I’ve played. For this character, I have to visit dark places in my real life. I have to go back to those places and grab that stuff to get those emotions to Monet. But this show is so much fun. The cast is amazing. The writing is amazing. It’s a blessing. I’m just so grateful to Courtney [A. Kemp, the show’s creator] and 50 [Cent, the show’s producer].”
We’ve spoken ad nauseum about the return of Y2K/90s fashion — with Gen Z spearheading this revival, the precise decades are blurred. But those eras weren’t all teeny tops and low-rise jeans. They’re also known for the formation of grunge, pop-punk, and absolutely filthy dirtbag style.
Before there were e-boys, there were emos. Before there was the Weird Girl Aesthetic, there were the riot grrrls and grunge girlies. And amidst all the saccharine and sparkly trends coming back from the turn of the century, there’s also an alt-aesthetic revival happening all across pop culture: from music to fashion to celebrity trends.
And, of course, leading the charge, Lady Gaga is the absolute zeitgeist. Her Oscars performance of her nominated song “Hold My Hand” from Topgun Maverick on March 12th proved that dirtbag style is back and alternative aesthetics are about to be the next big thing. Again.
Lady Gaga – Hold My Hand (Live From The Oscars/2023)www.youtube.com
Where do the 90s grunge and 2000s pop-punk aesthetics come from?
The 90s was a crazy decade. It was an era of rapid change — even compared to today’s standards. One minute everything was analog, the next everyone had a pager, then a phone. Not to mention the internet’s emergence on the scene. It was a brave new world. One filled with JNCO jeans and frosted tips.
Pop culture was at its peak. MTV was king and music was religion. So it makes sense that musical tastes dictated many societal aesthetics. Now, we all listen to everything. Spotify playlists defy genre and predilections are predicated by TikTok cores rather than community building.
But back in the day, you went to a record store and perused a certain section as a music and cultural signifier. So when genres like grunge came onto the scene, they also were aestheticized. People gleefully adopted the ripped jeans, flannels, and dirtbag style sported by rock heroes like Kurt Cobain.
Then, in the early 2000s, when grunge gave way to emo music and pop punk, it was all side bangs and ripped black skinny jeans. Vans had such a chokehold on the culture they sponsored Warped Tour — a mecca for alternative adolescents.
So, when the Oscars 2023 stage lights came up on to reveal Lady Gaga perched on a stool wearing all black — t-shirt, ripped jeans, and converse, we thought: wait. We’ve seen this look before. On everyone at Warped Tour.
Why is this aesthetic back?
Every ten years, everything comes back in style. Each new generation gets their hands on artifacts from the past, from music to fashion to movies, and revives them. Grunge came back in 2013, a year filled with flannel shirt dresses and spiky sneaker heels — shudder — and now it’s peeking its head back into the mainstream.
TikTik tutorials are flooded with teenagers introducing each other to vintage trends of the 90s while millennials watch in horror. I mean, there’s a 90s American Girl Doll. That should speak for itself.
And it’s not only the clothes that are back. It’s the music.
When they made the latest Batman film with Rob Pattinson, the film’s theme song wasn’t some original new pop song. It was “Something in the Way” by Nirvana. A whole new generation of kids discovered this iconic band through that trailer, that film, and the aesthetic of emo Batman — for better or for worse.
Plus, many of the 2000s-era bands that defined the alternative scene are making a comeback. Paramore has recently released music. So do Fall Out Boy, The Arctic Monkeys, and more. And don’t get me started on the prominence of pop-alt aesthetics — Pete Davidson, MGK, and Travis Barker’s heartthrob status says enough.
People are gravitating toward edgier, darker material. Maybe it’s because everything else is so saturated with cotton candy content — pretty, but lacking substance.
And if Gaga, who is always at the forefront of trends, is telling us to return to our alt basics, who are we to deny her?
How to dress like an absolute dirtbag
I, for one, am all for the return of dirtbag style. Materialism is at an all-time high with the over-aestheticizing of everything on TikTok, the reign of the fashion industry, and even the goddamn Ozempic discourse. Sometimes, I don’t want to be perceived. This adolescent angst, of course, has led me to gravitate back to adolescent aesthetics.
I recently bought a pair of Vans for the first time since high school. Converse, too. Just stepping back into my old staple kicks took me back to a simpler time — when the whole world felt like it mattered, but nothing actually did.
So, perhaps, part of this revival is nostalgia-based. We’re 3 years post-Covid and still itching for comforts that remind us of the past. Maybe leaning into dirtbag style reminds us that the superficial stuff we used to cope during the pandemic isn’t all there is. Or maybe it’s a cry for help from our collective trauma trying to reveal itself, finally. Who knows.
Either way, I’m reveling in feeling like a dirtbag these days. Here’s a definite dirtbag starter pack that Gaga would approve:
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A funny thing happens when you award Oscars to a group of well-liked films, give emotional acceptance speeches some time onstage, and make some history in the process: more people tune in to watch.
That seems to be what happened, at least, at the Oscars 2023, which according to early Nielsen ratings published by Variety drew 18.7 million viewers, a 12% boost from last year. Once accounting for time-shifted viewing the awards could get to nearly twice the ratings the 2021, pandemic-affected Oscars had, a record low for the ceremony. And the ceremony easily bested its biggest Sunday night competition: the season finale of The Last of Us, which drew 8.2 million viewers according to HBO.
These numbers, of course, only capture a very small part of the picture, not only ignoring the reality of time-shifted viewing but the online methods through which so many people experience the Oscars these days. Brendan Fraser’s best actor acceptance speech, for example, has been watched 1.2 million times on ABC’s official YouTube clip; who knows how many of those viewers are also included in the official Nielsen ratings, or how many more may be added in the days to come.
The Oscars have a contract to air on ABC through 2028, though, which means we have five more years — and up to the Oscars’ 100th anniversary — to discuss their linear TV ratings and how much they matter. For now, we’ll take the public interest in a slap-free ceremony as a sign that the Oscars themselves are still a draw in and of themselves.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is the third movie in Oscar history to win three acting Oscars, following 1976’s Network and 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire. It is the first movie to do so and win best picture. The film fielded the first Asian woman and second woman of color to ever win best actress, in Michelle Yeoh, and the third duo to win best director, in Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan. It won the most Oscars (seven) for a best-picture winner in over a decade, going back to 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire. And it led the charge in an especially unprecedented night for its scrappy studio, A24, which completely swept the big six categories in picture, directing, and all four acting categories (Brendan Fraser rounded that out with his best-actor win for A24’s specialty box-office hit The Whale).
It’s worth zooming out a bit to consider the performance of Everything Everywhere All at Once at Sunday night’s Academy Awards—a dominance of truly historic proportions for this nearly 95-year-old awards show. It wasn’t even that much of a surprise, after the movie achieved similar success with various industry guilds over the past few months. As we discuss in our annual Little Gold Men Oscars postmortem (listen above), this film—with talking rocks and hot dog fingers and multiverses—was the overwhelming industry favorite. Yes, these are very much not your parents’ Oscars. Inside the Dolby Theatre, evidence of just how much has changed, even since Green Book, was, well, everywhere.
But I keep going back to the groups beyond the Oscars. The unions of tens of thousands of film and TV professionals who have often leaned more conservative than the arty Academy, guilds whose sheer size often leads to bland consensus. Organizations for actors, directors, producers, writers, and more resoundingly decided on Everything Everywhere All at Once. The Academy has made great strides to diversify and expand its membership, but if we look back at how this season has evolved, it’s Hollywood as a whole that tells the real story of transformation, and maybe evolution, here. The Oscars merely sealed that envelope.
In its own way, this year’s Oscars felt like a vote for Hollywood’s future. Everything Everywhere All at Once was a box-office phenomenon for A24, grossing over $100 million globally on an indie budget and achieving a full theatrical run, to say nothing of its robust life on digital since the summer. On the campaign trail this season, Guillermo del Torosaid in a conversation moderated by Deadline, “When I see a film like Everything Everywhere All at Once, and I realize how much it is impacting the generation of my kids, and how they embrace it in the same way I embraced The Graduate when I was their age, I love that.” I think many of his peers agreed with that sentiment, that the film signaled a more inclusive, emotionally resonant path for (wild) originality in Hollywood going forward.
Beyond it, rather than a crafts sweep like we saw last year with Dune, the Oscars spread the wealth—more accurately representing what, for most, the year in film looked like. Take the two biggest movies of the year, neither of which went home empty-handed: Top Gun: Maverick won for its roaring sound design, while Avatar: The Way of Water was rewarded for its astonishing visual effects. The last big best-picture nominee, Elvis, was snubbed despite a strong nominations haul—my biggest surprise of the night. That can mostly be attributed to the surging affection for All Quiet on the Western Front, the German war film that played its own unique role this season, organically capturing the hearts of craftspeople as it sat on Netflix’s backburner, while the streamer’s most heavily campaigned contenders fizzled out. At this point, even if an unusual choice—I wouldn’t exactly call All Quiet the most acclaimed or buzziest streaming movie of the year—the Academy cannot and should not ignore streaming, given the sizable chunk of the industry it now represents. (In that sense, last year’s win for CODA felt forward-looking as well.)
The only movie to win an above-the-line award outside of Everything Everywhere and The Whale’s Fraser was Women Talking, for Sarah Polley’s superlative adaptation. Surprisingly, given its tough road on the circuit, the UAR-MGM release was the only indie of a certain prestige class to nab any gold at all on Sunday. I found it particularly fascinating that Polley met such an enthusiastic standing ovation, given the smallness and divisiveness of her movie. Her story in Hollywood, from traumatized child actor to highly regarded filmmaker—challenging the way sets and productions are run—got a real moment, and this felt in its own way like a vote for a brighter Hollywood future, as Polley alluded to in her speech.
Less optimistically, perhaps: The respectful admiration for critically acclaimed box-office duds The Fabelmans, Tár, and The Banshees of Inisherin remained just that—of the 22 nominations between them, not a single win to show for it. The applause was notably tepid for the trio as they kept coming up on nomination rolls, relative to other movies, and you have to wonder about the town’s temperature for this sort of filmmaking right now. Each movie, in this writer’s opinion, is tremendously worthy and exciting. But just as they did with the broadcast itself, the Academy seemed to listen to its critics and try to meet a rapidly changing moviegoing public where it’s at. They could’ve done worse than deliver a historic night to the movie that, in more ways than one, defined American cinema in 2022.
For some, like the Daniels, Sunday’s Oscars 2023 was a night where lifelong dreams came true. But not everyone had the night of their life. As the dust settles on this year’s awards season, various accounts of acrimony have bubbled up on social media—from grumblings about who was left out of the annual In Memoriam montage to ire about who was (and wasn’t) handed an Oscar statuette. Want a quick rundown of what all the ruckus is about? Below, a guide to who, exactly, is mad about what right now, Oscars-wise.
Who’s Mad? The Oscar attendees sitting behind best original song nominee Tems, or at least onlookers imagining how they’d feel if they had been sitting behind Tems.
Why? Tems, cited for cowriting Rihanna’sBlack Panther: Wakanda Forever anthem “Lift Me Up,” looked absolutely gorgeous at the ceremony in a white gown with a large white headpiece—but good luck seeing the stage if you were sitting directly behind her. It must be noted here that it’s unclear whether anyone who actually attended the Oscars is mad at Tems; it seems more likely that Oscar viewers are the only ones who got mad, either at Tems’s outfit or (in proper internet-outrage-machine fashion) at those who got mad at Tems’s outfit.
Who’s mad? The nation of Ireland.
Why? Ireland was a force to be reckoned with coming into this year’s Oscar ceremony. Five acting nominees—a quarter of all actors cited in those four categories—hail from the Emerald Isle: Colin Farrell, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Brendan Gleeson, and Paul Mescal. The first four were nominated for The Banshees of Inisherin; Mescal was up for Aftersun. But all five wound up being blanked, with Inisherin failing to win any of the nine Oscars for which it was nominated. Farrell also got a bit salty during the ceremony when Jimmy Kimmel made a crack about the accents in his movie, pointing out that Saturday Night Live had made a very similar quip the night before.
At least the Irish can take solace in the filmmakers of An Irish Goodbye: they won best live-action short film and took the stage for one of the night’s most charming acceptance speeches.
Who’s mad? Marvel fans.
Why? Angela Bassett—onetime front-runner in the best-supporting-actress race, and the first actor to ever get nominated for a Marvel film for her work as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever—ultimately did not do the thing, falling short to “OG nepo baby” Jamie Lee Curtis. Sadly, Marvel fans will have to wait another year—at least—to see one of their favorite superheroes crowned by the Academy.
Who’s mad?Elvis fans.
Why? Despite racking up an impressive eight nominations, Elvis also walked away from last night’s ceremony with zero statuettes. That must have been particularly hard for star Austin Butler, who famously grew so attached to the project that he continued speaking in an Elvis-esque voice throughout his campaign. Then again, his journey wouldn’t have been true to Presley if it didn’t have a semi-tragic end. Luckily, Butler was holding Angela Bassett’s hand when he found out he lost the Oscar to Brendan Fraser, which is probably the best way to receive bad news.
Who’s mad? A whole lot of people about the In Memoriam segment.
Why? This one’s always tricky for the Oscars: How does the Academy decide whom to include, and which order to put them in? Should they encourage clapping, or ask the audience to remain respectfully silent? So as usual, despite best efforts and a lovely performance by Lenny Kravitz, this year’s In Memoriam ruffled a few feathers—largely due to who didn’t end up making the final cut.
Emmy nominee Anne Heche died tragically after a car accident in August and was not included in the montage. Neither were Triangle of Sadness star Charlbi Dean, Saving Private Ryan’s Tom Sizemore, Magnolia’s Philip Baker Hall, or Goodfellas star Paul Sorvino—much to the disappointment of his daughter, Oscar winner Mira Sorvino.“It is baffling beyond belief that my beloved father and many other amazing brilliant departed actors were left out,” tweeted Sorvino after the ceremony. “The Oscars forgot about Paul Sorvino, but the rest of us never will!!”
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“I am Megan Fox,” said Megan Fox by way of introduction to the cameras in her dressing room ahead of the Vanity Fair Oscars night party. “Although you might not realize that because of my hair.”
Gone was her signature raven mane, and in its place was something altogether Fox-ier—hair the color of copper.
Fox told V.F. that she drew Sunday night’s look from Greek mythology, especially Persephone’s annual escape from Hades.
“If all the fire and brimstone from hell was in your hair and you were the Queen of the Underworld,” Fox posed. “What would you look like walking the red carpet?”
The dreamy, dark Underworld dress is by Miss Sohee Couture, chosen because it “was giving, I don’t know, a new girl—with red hair,” according to her stylist Maeve Reilly.
Finally, Fox’s look seems to say, spring may commence (thank goddess.)
If you thought Paul Mescal was good in Aftersun, then just wait until you see him at an afterparty!
The 27-year-old Irish actor didn’t hear his name called at the Oscars, losing the Best Actor trophy to The Whale star Brendan Fraser, but that didn’t stop Mescal from being in a celebratory mood when he arrived at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party.
Speaking on the blue carpet to Tik-Tok correspondent Amelia Dimoldenberg, the Normal People alum appeared ready to be one of the best party people, even threatening to dance on some tables.
Even if he didn’t go home with an Oscar, Mescal still had good reason to be gettin’ jiggy with it. The critically-hailed Aftersun, in which he played a father on holiday with his young daughter, earned him widespread awards notice and positioned him as one of Hollywood’s hottest young actors, with directors like Richard Linklater and Ridley Scott lining up to cast him.
And, who knows, table-dancing might be part of his Gladiator 2 training.
Elvis star Austin Butler didn’t bring home the Oscar for best actor, but that wasn’t for a lack of support from the Presley family.
Riley Keough, granddaughter of Elvis Presley and daughter of the late Lis Marie Presley, attended the Vanity Fair Oscar party Sunday—and there was one person she couldn’t wait to run into. “I’m excited to see Austin,” the actress said, before revealing the duo had already interacted earlier that day. “I texted him this morning and said good luck, and I’m so happy I’ll see him tonight.”
Butler broke out as a bona fide movie star thanks to his performance as the King in director Baz Luhrmann’s best picture-nominated biopic Elvis. Having won multiple prizes in the leadup to the Oscars, the 31-year-old actor was viewed as one of the frontrunners for best actor. In the end, The Whale star Brendan Fraseremerged victorious on Sunday night.
“Playing Elvis made me think about the fact that you can have seemingly everything and yet still feel empty,” Butler previously told Vanity Fair. “You can have all your dreams come true and still be searching for something deeper and feel very alone. You experience a ton of public love, then you’re back in a silent room.”
Keough, at least, was far from alone when she walked the blue carpet at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. She was joined by a few of her costars from the new Amazon Prime series Daisy Jones & The Six, with Suki Waterhouse even interrupting her interview live—“just because I love you so much,” she told Keough.
One month to the day after performing a medley of her biggest hits at Super Bowl LVII—and revealing her second pregnancy in the process—Rihanna took the stage at the Oscars 2023 to perform “Lift Me Up,” her nominated song from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
The ballad, an elegiac ode to Chadwick Boseman—the original Black Panther star, who died of colon cancer in 2020—marks Rihanna’s first solo vocal effort since the release of her last album, Anti, in 2016. She shares writing credit (and the Oscar nomination) with Nigerian singer-songwriter Tems, Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler, and composer Ludwig Göransson, an Oscar winner for his work on the first Black Panther film.
Draped in jewels, the Grammy winner performed her soaring song on a platform that gradually rose as the music swelled.
Rihanna and her cowriters face stiff competition in the best original song category: they’re up against previous winner Lady Gaga, who’s nominated with Bloodpop for “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick; David Byrne, Ryan Lott, and Mitski, who joined forces for Everything Everywhere All at Once’s “This Is a Life;” honorary Oscar winner and 14-time nominee Diane Warren, for “Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman; and the buoyant “Naatu Naatu” from international sensation RRR, written by Kala Bhairava, M. M. Keeravani, and Rahul Sipligunj.
Fans hoping to see another celebrity at the Dolby Theatre, though, were destined to be disappointed. Rihanna revealed in a tweet earlier this month that her eldest child with A$AP Rocky—whose name has still not been publicly revealed—would be sitting out the ceremony. But evidently, the infant is still a fan of “Lift Me Up.”
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The 2023 Oscars air on Sunday, March 12, on ABC. You can watch the ceremony live on TV at your local ABC affiliate, or online at abc.com (or through the ABC app) by signing in with a participating television provider. (Details on various providers can be found here.) If you’ve cut ties with cable, streaming options include Hulu + Live TV, YouTubeTV, AT&T TV, Sling TV, or FuboTV, many of which come with free trial options. Best news of all? This year, Roku is offering the Oscars for free on the ABC news channel—no subscriptions required.
Where to Watch the the Oscars Red Carpet
The Oscars are a marathon, not a sprint. As such, awards festivities begin hours before the actual telecast. ABC’s On the Red Carpet Live! Countdown to Oscars 95 begins at 1 .p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT on the ABC News Live website. Then, Ashley Graham, Vanessa Hudgens, and Lilly Singh will join forces to host the Countdown to the Oscars lead-in, which begin sat 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT on ABC. Over on E!, Live From the Red Carpet coverage with host Laverne Cox will start at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT.
How to Watch the Oscars Postshows
After the trophies are handed out, the real fun can commence with the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, which will celebrate all of the 2023 Oscar nominees with a night of glamour and gossip. To start, at 9 p.m. PT, Hollywood Black List founder Franklin Leonard will join VF’s Katey Rich and Mike Hogan for an Oscars livestream complete with A-list celebrity interviews and analysis of Oscars 2023. That show, titled After the Awards With Vanity Fair, will air on VF.com as well as Vanity Fair’s YouTube and Twitter channels.
Then, at 10:30 p.m. PT, tune in to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party Live show, which will feature star-studded red-carpet coverage with the night’s biggest nominees and winners. Come for candid interviews and fashion commentary on Vanity Fair’s TikTok channel and vf.com/oscarparty the morning after and beyond for exclusive content. To stay up to speed on all things Oscars 2023, sign up for the “HWD Daily” newsletter, and follow Vanity Fair on Instagram and Twitter.
When Do the Oscars Start?
The 95th annual Academy Awards begin at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on Sunday, March 12. This year’s telecast will air live from the Dolby Theatre.
