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      25 Biggest Oscar Snubs of All Time

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      Every year since the Academy Awards were invented, somebody has been overlooked, ignored, passed over, disregarded or brushed off. You know what they say about beauty and beholders.But perceived Oscar omissions — snubs, as we have come to call them — have grown into a frenzied annual conversation, with people left off the nomination list, or nominated but denied a statuette, sometimes receiving as much attention, or more, as those who win.These are the 25 true snubs and unjust losses that Times film critics, columnists, writers and editors still can’t get over. Read more →‘Do the Right Thing’ for Best Picture (1990)Actual winner: “Driving Miss Daisy”Spike Lee and Danny Aiello in the Brooklyn-set drama.Universal PicturesSome people hated this movie. Others, more ominously, feared it, or claimed to. News articles and reviews imagined riots sprouting in its wake (they never came), seeing in the character of Mookie — who, in a fit of righteous fury, smashes a pizzeria window in the film’s famous climax — confirmation of Lee’s insidious intent. Did academy voters have similar misgivings? Lee, who was shut out of the directing category, did receive a nomination for his screenplay, suggesting at least one branch of the organization had his back. (Danny Aiello was also nominated for supporting actor.) But it’s hard to look at the eventual best picture winner, “Driving Miss Daisy” — a film in which Morgan Freeman plays Hoke Colburn, the patient chauffeur of a bigoted, elderly white woman — and not see a statement of preference. In 1990, it was the Hoke Colburns of the world, not the Mookies, who were welcome on the academy’s biggest stage. REGGIE UGWU, pop culture reporterWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Bordwell, Scholar Who Demystified Filmmaking, Dies at 76

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      Roger Ebert called him “our best writer on the cinema.” His scholarship focused on how movies work.David Bordwell, a film studies scholar whose immersive, accessible writing transcended the corridors of academia and illuminated the mechanics of moviemaking to a generation of cinephiles and filmmakers, died on Feb. 29 at his home in Madison, Wis. He was 76.The cause was interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, said his wife, Kristin Thompson, a prominent film scholar who frequently collaborated with him.Dr. Bordwell taught at the University of Wisconsin for 30 years and wrote or co-wrote more than 20 books, including “Film Art: An Introduction” (1979), a textbook written with his wife that is widely used in film studies programs. After retiring in 2004, he and Dr. Thompson analyzed movies on his blog at davidbordwell.net and in videos for the Criterion Channel.Hailed as “our best writer on the cinema” by Roger Ebert, Dr. Bordwell’s film analysis avoided ivory tower theories on the social and political undertones of movies in favor of clear, frame-by-frame examinations of scene structure, shot angles and other elements of filmmaking.In a blog post about “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s 2010 film about the founding of Facebook, he analyzed the facial expressions of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield) during a scene when Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) blindsides him.Dr. Bordwell used a single frame that he cropped into several images.In the first image, only Eduardo’s eyes are visible. “Certainly they give us information — about the direction the person is looking, about a certain state of alertness,” Dr. Bordwell wrote. “The lids aren’t lifted to suggest surprise or fear, but I think you’d agree that no specific emotion seems to emerge from the eyes alone.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      9 Musicians Who Play a Role in This Year’s Oscars

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      Hear songs by Dua Lipa, Jarvis Cocker and yes, Bradley Cooper.Dua Lipa striking a “Barbie” pose.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDear listeners,Only two days until the Academy Awards! In Tuesday’s newsletter, we looked back at Oscar history and heard some tracks that won best original song. Today, we’re focusing on this year’s contenders — and the many musicians who make appearances in Oscar-nominated movies.I first had the idea for this playlist months ago, when I noticed how many musicians have roles in Martin Scorsese’s epic American tragedy “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The Americana icon Jason Isbell has a surprisingly major part, holding his own in scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro; the country crooner Sturgill Simpson also makes a memorable cameo.But then, as I caught up on the year’s most acclaimed films, I kept seeing — and hearing — musicians everywhere. That bowl-cutted court monitor who comes to assess a young boy’s safety in “Anatomy of a Fall”? That’s Jehnny Beth, a brooding solo artist and leader of the spiky rock band Savages. Is that guy sitting at the hotel desk for a fleeting moment in Wes Anderson’s whimsical “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” actually … Jarvis Cocker? (Yep, it was.)Consider today’s playlist a who’s who of musicians with connections to this year’s Oscar nominees. Some show off their acting chops; others, like Mica Levi and Jon Batiste, contributed indelible music to the recognized films. This marks the first time, though perhaps not the last, I have bemoaned the fact that Paul Giamatti (my personal best actor choice) was never in a band.You can’t make an entrance if you keep missing your cue,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Children’s Movies to Stream Now: ‘Soul,’ ‘Luca’ and More

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      This month’s picks include a space adventure from Richard Linklater and two critically acclaimed tales from Pixar.‘Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood’Watch it on Netflix.Stan (Milo Coy), a Texas fourth grader, is rounding the bases while playing kickball at recess one day when two NASA agents pull him off the playground to tell him they’re sending him to the moon. This being 1969, in a world before Apollo 11 took flight, Stan’s new mission is an extremely big deal. The agents, played by Glen Powell and Zachary Levi, tell Stan they were impressed by his science papers and by the fact that he won a Presidential Physical Fitness Award “three years running.” They need a kid to test an “accidentally smaller version” of the lunar module immediately, and so Stan is sworn to secrecy as he prepares for space. It’s tough for him to keep the training and planning from his mother (a droll Lee Eddy) and father (Bill Wise), and his gaggle of siblings, but he tries his best to act like a regular kid while covertly preparing for a lunar landing.The writer-director Richard Linklater uses similar dreamy rotoscope animation as his earlier films “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly,” and this nostalgic tale is narrated by Jack Black, who tells the story from the point of view of a grown-up Stan. The wall-to-wall narration and lack of fast-paced action may not hold every young viewer rapt, but older kids with a thing for space might fall under the film’s spell.‘The Willoughbys’Watch it on Netflix.Tim (voiced by Will Forte), Jane (Alessia Cara) and comically creepy twins both named Barnaby (voiced by Seán Cullen) are magenta-haired siblings who have the worst parents. Their mother (Jane Krakowski) and father (Martin Short) are selfish, narcissistic and neglectful. The couple sees their brood as a pure nuisance. The Willoughby kids devise a scheme to send their parents away on vacation in hopes of finding new parents who actually feed them.That might sound dark, but the cast and the writer-director Kris Pearn (“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 “) bring so much humor, wackiness and heart to the film that it never feels like a downer. The story is narrated by a paunchy blue Cat (Ricky Gervais), and Maya Rudolph voices Linda, the kind nanny who watches them when their parents leave. Terry Crews plays Commander Melanoff, a loving, lonely bloke who owns a candy factory.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An Oscar-Winning Concert Documentary That Speaks Volumes About America

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      “Woodstock” involved filmmakers who figure in this year’s awards ceremony.The best documentary award became part of the Oscars in 1942, and the list of winners is genuinely fascinating. In the category’s early years, the State Department and various branches of the U.S. military were routinely nominated, and even won. As time wore on, films critical of the government and its policies — whether the focus was labor, nuclear war or the surveillance state — were more likely to take home the prize. At the Oscars, the documentary category might tell us more about America than any other.One of my favorite winners is from 1970: Michael Wadleigh’s “Woodstock” (for rent on major platforms). It ran more than three hours when it was first shown; a 1994 director’s cut stretched to nearly four. The film is a document of the seminal 1969 music festival near Woodstock, N.Y., which has in the decades since taken on almost mythic proportions in American culture, a touchstone for boomers and everyone after.What’s clear from the movie is how Woodstock was very nearly a catastrophe, logistically speaking. Far more people showed up for the three-day festival than anyone had expected. There wasn’t enough food to go around, and the whole unsheltered crowd nearly fried in an electrical storm. It’s easy to imagine violence breaking out, or some other terrible event that would consume cultural memory. In fact, that did happen a few months later, when a teenage Rolling Stones fan was stabbed and beaten to death at the Altamont Speedway, an event captured by Albert and David Maysles in their 1970 film “Gimme Shelter.” (“Everything that people feared would happen (but didn’t) at Woodstock happened at Altamont,” the New York Times critic Vincent Canby wrote of that film.)“Woodstock” is a mesmerizing watch, as the cameras roam from the stage to the organizers’ chaotic approach to managing the crowd to the many ways that attendees figured out how to take care of one another. (And there is, of course, the music.) Just as the festival threatened to veer out of control at any moment, the filming was a skin-of-the-teeth operation, with a team populated by many young and relatively inexperienced filmmakers. Perhaps that’s why it ended up working.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Watch the Oscars: Date, Time and Streaming

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      An earlier airtime and an unusual presenter approach are among the changes at this year’s ceremony.Watching the Oscars doesn’t usually require an instruction manual.But this year, to make sure you catch the goodness of Ryan Gosling performing “I’m Just Ken” — in what we can only hope will be a faux fur coat — there are two crucial steps you must take.One: Be in your preferred watching position — popcorn popped, possibly in a “Dune” bucket, Snuggie on — an hour earlier on Sunday. In a break from the traditional 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific start, this year’s ceremony is scheduled to kick off at 7 p.m., an effort by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to stick to prime-time hours.And two: When we say 7 p.m., we mean what-was-until-2-a.m.-on-Sunday 6 p.m., because — that’s right — daylight saving time is here once again. Don’t forget to set your clocks — if you still have clocks — forward an hour.You may have heard that “Oppenheimer,” with a pack-leading 13 nominations, is a lock to win best picture. This is accurate. But even if we’re certain how the night will end, the getting there is the fun part. Here’s everything you need to know.What time does the show start and where can I watch?In a perk for those who like going to bed early, this year’s show begins at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Sunday is also the start of daylight saving time, so remember to set your clocks an hour forward before you go to bed on Saturday night.On TV, ABC is the official broadcaster. Online, you can watch the show live on the ABC app, which is free to download, or at abc.com, though you’ll need to sign in using the credentials from your cable provider. There are also a number of live TV streaming services that offer access to ABC, including Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV and FuboTV, which all require subscriptions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      When the Oscars Were Held Amid Another Divisive War

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      Three days before the 2003 ceremony, the United States invaded Iraq. Despite pleas to delay the awards, the academy went ahead with what became a politics-suffused evening.On March 23, 2003, as the rest of the world watched televised images of captives and corpses identified as American soldiers, limos carrying high-fashion-clad celebrities rolled up outside what was then known as the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.The United States had invaded Iraq just three days before, and, until that morning, there was still the possibility that the Oscars wouldn’t go on.As A-listers like Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry and Steve Martin — the host — were herded through metal detectors amid a large law enforcement presence, a few blocks away, police officers holding clubs faced off with demonstrators trying to get closer to the theater (none did).This year, another war is in the headlines as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences mounts another Oscars. So far, almost no one has spoken out at precursor awards shows, but it was very different in 2003.“It felt weird to dress up and go to this thing while our fellow Americans were all overseas about to get involved in something that was very dangerous,” the director Chris Sanders recalled in a recent interview. Sanders was nominated that year for best animated feature film for directing “Lilo & Stitch.”Newly minted winners like Adrien Brody and Nicole Kidman, front left, joined past winners onstage in 2003. Kevork Djansezian/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Imaginary’ Review: Bear Necessity

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      An imaginary friend causes real trouble in this creepy haunted-house picture.Past and present trauma fuse in Jeff Wadlow’s “Imaginary,” the latest in the Blumhouse catalog of reliably creepy horror movies whose fans typically expect well-executed jump scares, fun plot twists and the occasional rubbery monster. What they probably don’t expect is the sophisticated allegory that “Imaginary” appears to be flirting with — and comes close to pulling off — before losing its nerve.Or maybe it’s my imagination gone supernova alongside that of little Alice (a delightful Pyper Braun) and her stepmother, Jessica (DeWanda Wise), a writer and illustrator of children’s books. After Jessica’s father is settled in a care facility, she and her family — including a rebellious teen (Taegen Burns) and a guitar-playing husband (Tom Payne) who smartly buzzes off on tour when things get hairy — move into her childhood home. Almost immediately, Alice is conversing with a stuffed teddy bear she finds in the basement, an imaginary friend whose increasingly sinister games stir memories Jessica has long suppressed.On one level, then, we have a mildly embellished haunted-house picture, entertainingly realized mainly with puppets and other practical effects. There’s also the familiar eerie neighbor (here played by the wonderful Betty Buckley) whose job is to help us make sense of the story’s woo-woo logic. What’s also playing out, though, are the lonely struggles of a stressed-out second wife, who is Black, to connect with the distant, sometimes resentful white stepdaughters whose mentally ill birth mother is not entirely out of the picture.In that sense, the movie’s devolution into, by my count, at least three attempted endings suggests some dithering over whether to deliver the logical conclusion to Jessica’s sacrificial trajectory, or ease the transition to a possible sequel. As to which prevails, you’ll have to use your imagination.ImaginaryRated PG-13 for weaponized scissors and a gargantuan spider. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More