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Sex and Silence: What This Awards Season Tells Us About Hollywood
Whether it’s the return of steamy scenes or the lack of political speeches, the road to the Oscars holds a lot of clues about the state of the industry.We’re heading into the final stretch of this awards season, but you needn’t wait until the Oscars on March 10 to begin drawing conclusions about what’s transpired.To me, awards season has always offered a useful opportunity to take the film industry’s temperature. What can be gleaned about Hollywood’s current state from the movies and moments that have factored into this year’s race? Here are a few of the telling trends I’ve noticed so far.Prestige cinema has become less chaste.Paul Mescal, left, and Andrew Scott in “All of Us Strangers.”Searchlight PicturesOne of the first films I watched last year was “Passages,” a bisexual love-triangle drama that features one of the most bracing sex scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. That encounter between two men (played by Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski) is revealing not simply because the actors strip down to so little, but because over the course of this surprisingly lengthy and explicit scene, we come to know so much more about the characters from the power dynamics they negotiate while making love.Though I assumed “Passages” would be an anomaly, 2023 proved to be a sexually forthright movie year, producing a crop of awards contenders more interested in the joys of sex than any recent season I can remember. Emma Stone spent much of “Poor Things” on an uninhibited journey of desire, convening with a series of men in a way that surely tested the boundaries of the movie’s R rating. In “All of Us Strangers,” the sexual chemistry between Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal was so potent that I felt myself blushing. Even the director Christopher Nolan broke with convention, filming the first sex scenes of his career for “Oppenheimer.”If there had been a chill in the air while Hollywood learned how to navigate the new inclusion of intimacy coordinators on set, that’s gone now: Movie stars and prestige filmmakers are once again game for the sort of sex scenes that had lately been consigned to premium television. When I spoke with the “Poor Things” director Yorgos Lanthimos in November, he sounded hopeful that attitudes had changed.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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‘Oppenheimer’ Wins Producers Guild Award. Is the Best-Picture Oscar Next?
With the victory, the Christopher Nolan biopic has swept the guild prizes, a strong predictor of its chances at the Academy Awards.There’s simply no stopping “Oppenheimer.”On Sunday night, the Producers Guild of America gave its top film award to Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, completing a clean sweep of major industry prizes that suggests “Oppenheimer” will cruise to a best-picture victory at the Oscars next month.“We’ve never won this before,” Nolan noted in his acceptance speech, though the PGA had previously nominated his films “Dunkirk,” “Inception” and “The Dark Knight.” Nolan, who produced the film with Emma Thomas, his wife, and Charles Roven, continued, “Every time we found ourselves invited into this room, we felt such support for whatever leaps we’ve taken or whatever risks we’ve taken from a group of people who understand how difficult it is to get anything made.”The PGA Awards are often considered a dry run for the Oscars’ best picture race since the guild shares significant member overlap with the academy and uses the same preferential ballot to pick its winner. (This year the PGA nominees matched exactly the Oscar best-picture list.) Since 2009, when both groups expanded the number of best-film nominees from five, the PGA winner has repeated at the Oscars all but three times.Can “Oppenheimer” be beat? Only one film has ever taken top prizes from the producers, directors and actors guilds, as “Oppenheimer” has done, and still lost the best-picture Oscar, “Apollo 13” (1995). Nolan’s film is far better situated than that one was with two acting wins possible for stars Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. So the question now isn’t whether “Oppenheimer” will triumph at the Oscars, it’s how many statuettes it will earn before taking the top prize.Elsewhere at the PGA Awards, which were held at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, the documentary prize went to “American Symphony,” while “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” was named the best animated film. The top TV prizes went to season-long sweepers “Succession” (best episodic drama), “The Bear” (best episodic comedy) and “Beef” (best limited series).Here’s the complete list of winners:FilmFeature Film“Oppenheimer”Animated Feature“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”Documentary“American Symphony”TelevisionEpisodic Drama“Succession”Episodic Comedy“The Bear”Limited or Anthology Series“Beef”Television Movie or Streamed Movie“Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea”Nonfiction Television“Welcome to Wrexham”Live, Variety, Sketch, Stand-up or Talk Show“Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”Game or Competition Show“RuPaul’s Drag Race”Sports Program“Beckham”Children’s Program“Sesame Street”Short-Form Program“Succession: Controlling the Narrative”New MediaInnovation Award“Body of Mine” More
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SAG Award Winners: Updating List
Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) are competing in what could be a preview of the Oscars.The 30th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards are being handed out tonight live on Netflix. Will Lily Gladstone prevail for “Killers of the Flower Moon” or is Emma Stone of “Poor Things” on a roll after the BAFTAs last weekend? Will “Oppenheimer” take the top prize as it did at the Directors Guild earlier this month? These and other questions, which could have implications for the Oscars, will be answered when the ceremony gets underway at 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Pacific) at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Here’s more information on how to watch. We’ll be updating the winners as they’re announced. More
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How a Domestic Scene Creates Dread in ‘The Zone of Interest’
The director Jonathan Glazer narrates a sequence from his Holocaust drama.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.This sequence from “The Zone of Interest,” which is nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture, observes a weekday at the home of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the concentration camp Auschwitz. That home is positioned directly next door to the camp. In the kitchen, Rudolf’s wife, Hedwig, sits and gossips with friends. In another room, Rudolf meets with the engineers of a crematory. But the scene primarily follows Aniela, a young Polish girl who works in the home, preparing a glass of schnapps to celebrate the commandant’s birthday, and delivering boots to him during his meeting.Discussing the scene, the film’s director, Jonathan Glazer, said that he chose to follow Aniela, rather than the main characters, “because it’s really one of the only times in the film where we can see and connect and spend time with, essentially, a victim of these atrocities.”He explained that he chose to use multiple cameras to shoot the scene, and the film overall, because “I really didn’t want to have sort of the artificial construction of a conventional film to tell this story. Rather, to view them anthropologically, as if we were a fly on the wall.”Read the “Zone of Interest” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More
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How to Watch the 2024 SAG Awards: Date, Time and Streaming
The awards, which are streaming live on Netflix for the first time, will offer a preview of some key Oscars races. Barbra Streisand will be on hand, too.Cord-cutters rejoice: Normally, watching an awards show involves subscribing to a live TV service (or remembering which of your email addresses you haven’t already used for a free trial).But on Saturday, for the first time, Netflix will be streaming the annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, potentially bringing them to a much wider audience.The 15 awards, which are voted on by actors and other performers who belong to the SAG-AFTRA union, honor the best film and television performances from the past year. They can be a bellwether for the Oscars, happening this year on March 10. (Since 1996, 83 of the 112 stars and films that won Oscars for best picture or acting first won a SAG Award.)This year’s ceremony is shaping up to be a “Barbenheimer” rematch: The two summer blockbusters — “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic about the physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb, and “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s unique spin on the Mattel doll — each picked up a pack-leading four nominations and will be competing for the guild’s top prize, best ensemble.There’s also intrigue in the best film actress race: Lily Gladstone, who plays an Osage woman married to a white man involved in a murderous conspiracy in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” has blazed a trail through awards season, taking home honors from the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. But Emma Stone, who plays a grown woman with the mind of a child in the “Frankenstein”-inspired black comedy “Poor Things,” came out on top at the BAFTAs and the Critics Choice Awards (and won her own Globe in the musical or comedy category).Now, on Saturday night, we’ll get our strongest indication yet as to which way academy voters are leaning. We’ll also get an appearance from Barbra Streisand. Here’s how to watch.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 This Heroes’ Tale, Real People Risk Their Lives to Get to Europe
Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated feature “Io Capitano” dramatizes the harrowing journeys made by thousands of Africans each month looking for a better life in Europe.At the end of “Io Capitano” (“I Captain”), Matteo Garrone’s harrowing contender for best international film at next month’s Academy Awards, a map tracks the journey taken by the film’s two teenage protagonists: over 3,500 miles from Dakar, Senegal, to Sicily, via the scorching Nigerien desert, horrific Libyan prisons and a nerve-racking Mediterranean crossing aboard a rickety vessel.Such perilous voyages, taken each year by countless Africans seeking a new life in Europe, is “one of the great dramas of our times,” Garrone said in a recent interview, and “Io Capitano” is framed as an epic, modern-day Odyssey, with protagonists no less valiant than Homer’s hero.“It’s a journey that’s an archetype so that anyone can identify with it,” said Garrone, who is best known to international audiences for the hyper-realistic 2008 drama “Gomorrah” and his dark and fantastical “Pinocchio” (2019).“Io Capitano” is also, he said, a “document of contemporary history.” This month alone, over 2,000 people reached European shores by crossing the Mediterranean, while at least 74 died, bringing the number of people who have gone missing in that sea in the last decade to more than 29,000, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency.Many Europeans learn of these landings, and deaths, from short news segments, often accompanied by clips of lawmakers pledging to stop illegal migration. Garrone’s film, which won the Silver Lion for best directing at last year’s Venice Film Festival, goes beyond the statistics with a plot based on stories of real people crossing the Mediterranean.Garrone said that the migrants’ stories he heard called to mind the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad.via Cohen Media GroupWe 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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Which Oscar Snubs Still Make You Mad? We Want to Know.
Greta Gerwig wasn’t the first omission to tick us off. Are you still stewing over “Pulp Fiction” losing to “Forrest Gump” or Marilyn Monroe never getting a nod? Tell us more.As the film editor overseeing movies coverage for The New York Times, I follow Oscar races for a living, so I knew that Greta Gerwig wasn’t a shoo-in for a best director nomination for “Barbie.” Still, when she was snubbed, I was surprised, then somewhat miffed, then truly annoyed as I thought more about it. She brought vision, artistry and both humor and gravitas to what could have been a forgettable summer confection. How could the academy not see this?Of course, as it turned out, I wasn’t alone in my outrage; thank you, Hillary Clinton. If the reaction seemed especially outsized, so has everything about “Barbie,” from the box office haul to the number of think pieces (guilty). And when you throw the Oscars, essentially the Super Bowl of Culture, into the mix, the response is bound to be big.But the truth is that this is only partly about “Barbie.” Most of us have strong opinions about what performances and films are and are not worthy of an Academy Award. We love to get mad when the Oscars mess up. And looking back on movie history, I know they have messed up. So. Many. Times.That got me to wondering: What snubs are you still mad about? It could be a performance, film, director, song, score — you get the idea — that wasn’t nominated. It could be one that was nominated but lost on the big night. Fill out the form below, and we may feature your response in an upcoming story. We will not publish or share your contact information outside the Times newsroom, and we will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. More
