Oscar Volleys: Best Picture is all about Narratives

Here’s Cláudio Alves and Ben Miller on the Best Picture race...

THE BRUTALIST, Brady Corbet | © A24

CLÁUDIO: Hello Ben, it's time to discuss the biggest category of them all - Best Picture.

This year, I'm sad to say I'm not especially passionate about the top contenders. Indeed, taking a glance at my rankings, it's likely that not a single nominee even cracks my top 25. Then again, miracles do happen once in a while, even when all seems said and done. Even so, imagining an AMPAS lineup without Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, or Wicked seems increasingly difficult. In those times before the category's re-expansion to ten nominees, these would be the five I figure most folks would be predicting. Do you concur? 

BEN: I am really enjoying the variance in this year's race…

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Oscar Volleys: Best Adapted Screenplay is a confusing mess!

Lynn Lee and Christopher James discuss the race for the Adapted Screenplay Oscar...

EMILIA PÉREZ, Jacques Audiard | © Netflix

LYNN: Another year, another head-scratcher over what counts as “adapted” for Oscar purposes.  To be sure, this season there doesn’t seem to be any classification controversy on the level of last year’s Barbie kerfuffle. But, as ever, there’s some pretty transparent strategic positioning – such as the decision to campaign Emilia Pérez in adapted instead of original, which was likely driven by an assessment that adapted is the less competitive of the two this year.

Does that calculation seem right to you, and will it pay off? And does this mean we might have two musicals nominated for adapted screenplay this year, if Wicked also gets in (as I think it will)? Has that ever happened before?

CHRISTOPHER: I love the ever changing definition of “adapted,” which just seems to be “can you point to any written source that kinda relates to your film.” This year is such a strange year, as all of the frontrunners would be considered odd picks in past years...

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Weekend Awards Wrap-Up: Opening Pandora's Box

by Cláudio Alves

The FFI's treatment of ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT will go down as THE awards season fumble.

The awards season continues to heat up, though we're about to hit a bit of a pause or a slump as the holidays tend to mark a decrease in such activity. As if to make up for that incoming quieting, the outpour of film honors only grew stronger the past week. This included the Pandora International Film Critics, an unofficial initiative spearheaded by the Filmotomy site – they also organize the Femme Filmmakers Festival every year – that gathers writers and film buffs from all over the world. This year, they invited me to be part of the voting body, and I am delighted to share the results, even if I don't necessarily agree with all of them…

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Weekend Awards Wrap-Up: Regional Critics Groups Galore

by Cláudio Alves

Adrien Brody is on his way to his second Oscar nomination. Maybe his second victory.

When those critics honors start coming, a trickle quickly turns into a tsunami. There's so much to go over, but here's the general state of the race. Best Picture is a mess, with at least four contenders nabbing multiple top prizes this past week. Still, Anora and The Brutalist lead the pack. Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison are the critical frontrunners of their respective races, but Colman Domingo and Marianne Jean-Baptiste are trailing closely behind. Kieran Culkin is sweeping the Supporting Actor awards (even though he's a co-lead), but it's not a Da'Vine Joy Randolph-style sweep. After all, Maclin, Borisov, Pearce, and Washington have all won something. In Supporting Actress, chaos reigns…

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A nice boost for "Nickel Boys" at the Gotham Awards and NYFCC

by Nathaniel R

This year’s small Gotham juries and the recurring members of the 40+ member New York Film Critics Circles have named their “bests” of 2024 in the past couple of days. The only film that managed to get kudos from both is RaMell Ross’s cinematic adaptation of the Pulitzer winning novel “The Nickel Boys”.

Winners and a few comments after the jump…

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