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      Why These Oscars Mean So Much to Brazil

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      The best picture and best actress nominations for “I’m Still Here” have inspired national pride in a country whose culture has long been overlooked.The streets of Rio de Janeiro have been littered with Fernanda Torres imitators.They drink beer, clutch plastic Oscars and deliver the impromptu acceptance speeches that they hope their idol, the Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, will give on Sunday night at the Academy Awards.“It’s the peak of fame in Brazil: to become a costume of Carnival,” Ms. Torres said at a film festival in California this month, referring to her many impersonators during pre-Carnival celebrations over the past several weeks.Ms. Torres was already widely famous in Brazil, but now she has become the nation’s star of the moment for achieving something that has long eluded most of her peers and predecessors here: international recognition.Since winning a Golden Globe for best actress last month, she has been on an international Oscars campaign for “I’m Still Here,” the Brazilian film about a mother of five navigating the disappearance of her husband during Brazil’s military dictatorship.Ms. Torres is nominated for best actress while the film is up for best international feature and — in the first such nomination for a Brazilian movie — best picture.Breno Consentino, 21, dresses up as “Fernanda’s Oscar” during a street party in Rio de Janeiro. The year’s hottest Carnival costume in Brazil is Fernanda Torres, who is nominated for an Oscar for best actress.Maria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York TimesWe 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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      Oscars 2025: There’s Something Weird About the Best Picture Nominees

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      It’s entirely probable that scandal, gossip, politics and a general sense of “never heard of it before” have obscured something obvious and important about this year’s 10 best picture Oscar nominees. They’re weird — every single one. They take weird forms. The people in them do weird stuff. They induce weirdness in you.Demi Moore jabs herself with a goop known as “The Substance,” and out of her split-open back climbs Margaret Qualley, who refuses to obey the goop’s rules and proceeds to ruin their life. I paid to see this movie in a packed theater on a Saturday afternoon, where we laughed, screamed and almost threw up.Believe it or not, that movie’s a fairy tale, a funny one. So’s “Anora.” Here, the would-be princess is a Brooklyn stripper who marries a Russian nitwit whose oligarch father dispatches a goon squad to procure an annulment. If I told you “The Brutalist” ran for more than three hours and pitted a recent Holocaust survivor against his moneybags employer, maybe you’d ask which Oscar lab cooked this thing up. Then I’d have to tell you that the scale of this thing is so strangely intimate, so redolently personal, that it feels as much eavesdropped on as its premise sounds familiarly epic.A sugarless Brazilian dictatorship melodrama (“I’m Still Here”) is up against a sugar-encrusted American dictatorship musical (“Wicked”). “Conclave,” the pick-a-pope nail-biter, relies on so much shanking that it feels like a prison movie and features more cafeteria grandstanding than “Mean Girls.” For a spell, the front-runner had been “Emilia Pérez,” a musical fairy tale whose songs flout rhythm and melody, and whose Mexican cartel overlord mistakes her transness for sainthood. Then its star’s bigoted old tweets and some harsh comments by its mighty French director (about Mexicans and the Spanish they speak) turned the Oscar race into “Conclave.”Stellan Skarsgard plays the vindictive Baron Harkonnen in “Dune: Part Two,” a pretty weird blockbuster.Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.Then, there’s “Dune: Part Two,” a movie so expensive looking, so smoothly, tastefully, artfully done that it’s easy to remain passive in the face of all that’s weird about it. But look! It’s Stellan Skarsgard, plumped, pursy and a-vape, as a baron whose kink, in part, arises from stadium-size gladiatoring. When this series is complete, many hours will have been spent watching Timothée Chalamet as the Chosen One amid a war over seasoning. It’s “Lawry’s of Arabia,” “Lost in Spice.” The race delivers double-feature Chalamet. In “A Complete Unknown,” he boldly reimagines Bob Dylan as a figure of tremendous petulance. Otherwise, it might be the most conventional thing you could hope to see about a once-in-a-lifetime weirdo; and that counts as kind of weird.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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      Oscar Nominees Makeup Got Real in 2025: “The Substance,” “Wicked” and More

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      This year’s Oscar nominees for makeup and hairstyling, for movies such as “The Substance,” “Wicked” and “A Different Man,” showcased prosthetics and special effects.Actors may deliver impassioned speeches about achieving their “childhood dreams,” but we don’t often hear about how those sculpting wounds with clay and bubbling skin with latex are fulfilling their lifelong fantasies.“Teenager treats” is how Pierre Olivier Persin, the special effects designer nominated for an Oscar for makeup and hairstyling for “The Substance,” described his work on the film, which involved two full-body prosthetics and countless other pieces and puppets. Mike Marino, the makeup designer for Sebastian Stan in “A Different Man,” nominated in the same category, described his childhood bedroom as a sort of cabinet of curiosities, filled with “jars of experiments and screaming Siamese twins.”It’s a particularly exciting year for makeup and hairstyling nominees: buckets of blood and pus-filled injections in “The Substance”; face tumors sloughing off like jelly in “A Different Man”; green witches and blue horses in “Wicked”; a vampire shriveling away in “Nosferatu”; and a menacing drug lord created with facial prosthetics in “Emilia Pérez.”“She wanted to see her hands. She wanted to get that reaction” from the other cast members, said Frances Hannon, the hair and makeup designer for “Wicked” about Cynthia Erivo, who played the green-skinned witch Elphaba in the film and has been vocal about her preference to be physically painted rather than having the hue added in postproduction.Universal Pictures, via Associated PressWhile in years past the category has sometimes leaned toward honoring the subtle transformations of delicately coifed period hairstyles, these nominees reflect a year that relied heavily on the use of makeup to create practical special effects.Once upon a time, most special effects were achieved with makeup. Think “An American Werewolf in London” (1981), “The Fly” (1986), “Beetlejuice” (1988): All the various monsters, mutations and marvels in these films were largely created with latex, foam and human hands. Then, in the early 2000s, studios became more reliant on computers to digitally generate these effects.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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      In Zoe Saldaña, a Choreographer Finds His Dream Dancer

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      The Academy Award-nominated actress discovers her inner dancer in “Emilia Pérez” with the help of the choreographer Damien Jalet.Zoe Saldaña is an actress, but buried inside her is a highly trained dancer. This has always been obvious to me; the film “Emilia Pérez” has made it clear to the world. Finally, Saldaña — a devoted ballet student through her childhood and teenage years — can be recognized for the force that she is: an extraordinary mover.All actors use their bodies, but Saldaña has long been on another plane. She doesn’t just interpret characters, she moves through them with such salient physicality that her body often has as much to say as the dialogue she speaks. Even in the TV series “Lioness,” in which she plays a fierce Central Intelligence Agency officer, her body guides her like a coiled spring — a taut, muscular vessel of strength and sensitivity.In Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” with choreography by Damien Jalet, Saldaña’s dancing is front and center. And it is a meaningful part of why her portrayal of Rita, a Mexican lawyer helping a cartel boss with gender confirmation surgery, earned an Academy Award nomination.Jalet should have been nominated, too, but there are no Oscars for choreography. Yet his contribution is immeasurable. The story of “Emilia Pérez” is unorthodox enough; even more unconventional is the way it unfolds through music and dance. The songs’ merit is questionable; they employ, at times, employ the worst kind of Broadway-musical talk-singing. But Jalet’s choreography — sometimes invisibly, sometimes clearly — grounds the film.In “Emilia Pérez,” dance is the pathway for Saldaña’s character to become more outspoken, more comfortable in her body.Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 — WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS — PATHÉ FILMS — FRANCE 2 CINÉMA 2024.Jalet has a partner in Saldaña whose speed and exactness in gestural vocabulary electrify scenes without falling into the sketchy territory of mime. In a film about physical transformation, dance is the pathway for Saldaña’s character to become more outspoken, more comfortable in her skin. And dance has accomplished another transformation for Saldaña, the actress, by opening eyes to her range and radiance. Her precision is stunning.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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      A Guide to the Documentary Oscar Nominees

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      A quick guide to the nominated films and why you should watch them.Since the best documentary feature category was first established at the Oscars in 1942, the nominees have been like a snapshot of the year: wars and social concerns, heroes and headlines. This year is no exception. On paper, each of the five nominees look as if they’re ripped from the headlines, chosen for some metric like “urgency” or “timeliness.”But these are no ordinary documentaries. In the past decade, the Academy has gotten much better about nominating nonfiction films that stretch and push at their boundaries, challenging audiences in how they convey their subject matter. Most opt to confront world events through intensely personal stories, and all of them carefully show why their individual stories have far-reaching implications.So, as the 2025 Oscars are upon us, here’s a quick guide to the nominated films and why you should watch them.With “Black Box Diaries” (streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime), the director Shitori Ito takes a courageously personal approach to her biting critique of the handling of sexual assault cases in Japan. In 2017, Ito held a news conference to announce allegations that a prominent Japanese journalist had raped her. In the documentary, she chronicles the fallout of that accusation. The film is both intimate and enraging. As Manohla Dargis wrote in her review, it’s “a tense and tangled crime story, one in which Ito is at once the victim, lead investigator, dogged prosecutor and crusading reporter.”My colleagues and I have written about “No Other Land” (in select theaters) a lot during the past year. It’s probably the most acclaimed documentary of the year, centering on the lives of families who have witnessed their homes, in the occupied West Bank region of Masafer Yatta, be demolished over and over again. Despite its obviously timely story and a directorial team of two Palestinian and two Israeli filmmakers, it hasn’t been able to secure a distribution deal in the United States, which is why it isn’t available to stream here. If you can see it in a theater, don’t overlook how well it’s made, mixing home video archives, journalistic footage and conversations between the filmmakers to powerful effect.“Porcelain War” (in select theaters) has picked up a raft of awards from guilds and critics this season. It, too, looks through the lens of the personal to tell an urgent story — this one about the war in Ukraine. The film centers on Slava Leontyev, who directed the film with Brendan Bellomo, and who is a ceramist as well as a member of a Ukrainian special forces unit. Art and warfare blend in the film, which melds GoPro footage from the battlefield with looks at Leontyev’s work, finally landing on a hopeful note about the value of beauty in darkness.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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      The Search Warrant Affidavit in Gene Hackman Death Inquiry

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      other image(s) documented on any media, photography and/or videography
      equipment, photography and/or videography accessories and/or devises apparently
      used to facilitate photography and/or videography.
      7. Clothing belonging or worn by Eugene “Gene” Allen Hackman or Betsy Arakawa.
      8. Photographs of the residence, including the interior and exterior.
      9. Latent and/or visible print(s), including but not limited to fingerprint(s) and
      footwear impression(s).
      10. Material(s) apparently used and/or intended for use in administering aid and/or
      assistance to injured people.
      11. Any weapon(s), tool(s) and/or instrument(s) capable of causing sharp force trauma
      to the human body. Document(s) that establish or tend to establish ownership,
      possession, use, transfer and/or the right to ownership, possession, use and/or
      transfer of the herein-described item(s), to be seized.
      12. Any weapon(s), tool(s) and/or instrument(s) capable of causing blunt force trauma
      to the human body. Document(s) that establish or tend to establish ownership,
      possession, use, transfer and/or the right to ownership, possession, use and/or
      transfer of the herein-described item(s), to be seized.
      13. Any item(s) and/or material(s) that have what appear to be impression(s), mark(s),
      and/or defect(s) on said item(s) and/or material(s).
      14. Any record documented in any media, which appears to be a password, personal
      identification number, item(s) and/or information used to access and/or facilitate
      access of said item(s), to be searched.
      15. Biological fluids, to include DNA, blood, or trace evidence.
      16. Telephones and/or cellular telephones.
      17. In order to ensure that a complete and thorough investigation, investigators may be required
      to examine the entire, above-mentioned premises, including, but not limited to, the
      examination of furniture, walls, plumbing equipment, or gas lines in or around the
      residence.
      AND THAT THE FACTS TENDING TO ESTABLISH THE FOREGOING GROUNDS
      FOR THE ISSUANCE OF A SEARCH WARRANT ARE AS FOLLOWS:
      Affiant, Detective Roy Arndt, is a full-time, certified peace officer in the State of New
      Mexico who has attended the Mexico Law Enforcement Academy. He is currently
      commissioned and salaried by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, where he serves as a
      Detective in the Criminal Investigations Division. Affiant has conducted numerous
      criminal investigations that led to the arrest and conviction of person(s) and currently has
      over 15 years of law enforcement experience.
      The facts set forth in this affidavit are based upon Affiant’s personal observations,
      training and experience, and information obtained from other law enforcement officers
      and civilian witnesses. This affidavit is made for the sole purpose of demonstrating
      probable cause for the issuance of the requested warrant and does not purport to set forth
      all Affiant’s knowledge of, or investigation into, this matter. All times depicted in this
      writing are approximate.
      STATEMENT OF FACTS KNOWN TO AFFIANT:
      At approximately 1:43 p.m. on Wednesday, February 26th, 2025, Santa Fe Regional Emergency
      Communications Center (RECC) received a call for service regarding a reporting party (RP)
      locating two (2) deceased individuals inside the residence of 1425 Old Sunset Trail, Santa Fe,
      New Mexico 87501.
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      Scattered Pills Found Near Body of Gene Hackman’s Wife as Inquiry Continues

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      The sheriff’s office in Santa Fe County, N.M., is investigating after the actor Gene Hackman, his wife and one of their dogs were found dead inside their home.The actor Gene Hackman was found dead in a mud room in his New Mexico home and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, was found dead on the floor of a bathroom on Wednesday, according to a search warrant affidavit. An open prescription bottle and scattered pills were discovered near her body on a counter in the bathroom.A dead German shepherd was found between 10 and 15 feet away from Ms. Arakawa in a closet of the bathroom, the affidavit said. There were no obvious signs of a gas leak in the home, it said, and the Fire Department did not find signs of a carbon monoxide leak. The maintenance workers who found them said they had not been in contact with the couple for two weeks.The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that “there were no apparent signs of foul play.”Autopsies on Mr. Hackman and Ms. Arakawa were performed on Thursday, the sheriff’s office said. There was no initial sign of external trauma to either of them. Carbon monoxide tests and toxicology tests were requested for both of them, it said, but the results were still pending and the causes of their deaths had not been determined.“This remains an open investigation,” the sheriff’s office said.Detective Roy Arndt wrote in the search warrant affidavit that Ms. Arakawa was found lying on her side on the bathroom floor with a space heater near her head, the affidavit said. The deputy who found her said he suspected that the heater could have fallen with Ms. Arakawa, the filing said.Ms. Arakawa’s body showed signs of decomposition, the affidavit said, as well as “mummification in both hands and feet.” The dead dog was found near her in a closet, and two other dogs were found alive on the property. Mr. Hackman’s body was then found, and showed signs of death “similar and consistent” with his wife’s body.Read the Search Warrant Affidavit in the Gene Hackman Death InquiryAn affidavit from a Santa Fe County detective described how deputies found the bodies of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, on Wednesday.Read DocumentWe 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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      Gene Hackman’s Smile Could Give You Shivers

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      In “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Unforgiven,” the actor used his charm to great disarming effect, flashing a smile before abruptly shifting to a sneer.When Clint Eastwood needed a performer who could persuasively go boot-toe to boot-toe with him in his brutal 1992 western “Unforgiven,” he needed an actor who was his towering equal onscreen. Eastwood needed a performer with strange charisma, one who could at once effortlessly draw the audience to his character and repulse it without skipping a beat. This actor didn’t need the audience’s love, and would never ask for it. He instead needed to go deep and dark, playing a villain of such depravity that he inspired the viewer’s own blood lust. Eastwood needed a legend who could send shivers up spines. He needed Gene Hackman.Hackman, whose death at 95 was announced on Thursday, was one of the defining actors of New Hollywood, that roughly decadelong, feverish period of artistic ferment that began with films like “Bonnie and Clyde,” Arthur Penn’s 1967 gangster drama. The era was famously defined by directors who helped rejuvenate the industry but was also known for male stars who didn’t conform to old studio ideals. With their unfixed noses and rough edges, these were men who once would have been largely confined to character roles. The glamorous-looking Warren Beatty played the male lead in “Bonnie and Clyde,” but it was Hackman’s striking supporting turn as Clyde’s brother, Buck, that heralded something new.Hackman holds your gaze the moment that Buck jumps out of a jalopy in “Bonnie and Clyde” into his brother’s arms; Buck is soon in Clyde’s gang, too. Buck is an outsized character, given to flailing and whooping, and Hackman delivers a suitably full-bodied, demonstrative performance that instantly gives you a sense of the character without once edging into scene stealing. His slight whine thickened with a deep-fried accent, Hackman also smiles a great deal as Buck, which humanizes the character so wholly that it lulls you into brief complacency, leaving you unprepared — almost — for the violence that rapidly engulfs him.Hackman, left, and Warren Beatty as thieving brothers in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967). Screen Archives/Getty ImagesHackman’s smiles were one of his signature moves, and he used them to great disarming effect, deploying them to put other characters (and you) at ease before he abruptly shifted gears. It’s one reason he was such an effective villain. (His restraint as a surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller, “The Conversation,” is one reason the film is so unnerving.) Hackman used smiles to charm and seduce, but also to obfuscate. Some actors let you see the rage boiling in their characters, the throbbing veins of hate. If you made a study of Hackman’s work, you might note that when one of his characters draws you to him with an upward curve of his mouth, something bad might happen soon. You would also divine that, thanks to his superb control, you could never predict when that false front would drop.There’s something sublimely fitting then in the fact that Hackman is dressed as Santa when he appears in his star-making role in William Friedkin’s “The French Connection,” the 1971 thriller that earned him a best actor Oscar. Hackman plays Popeye Doyle, a New York detective helping to bring down a heroin-smuggling outfit. Popeye is undercover in the opener, watching a suspect while ringing Santa’s bell and charming some kids with his patter, a smile peeping out from under his ill-fitting white beard. All of a sudden, Popeye and another cop (Roy Scheider) are chasing the suspect through the city’s derelict, litter-strewn streets. As soon as the detectives tackle the runaway in an empty lot, Popeye begins hitting the guy savagely. “I wanna bust him,” he says repeatedly, blood smeared on his Santa sleeve.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