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    It’s Ariana Grande vs. Selena Gomez at the Oscars (in Fans’ Minds)

    Anyone who follows the Oscar race knows it can get nasty. Over the long arc of awards season, films can fall in and out of favor, villains can emerge, and campaigns can be ferocious in their pursuit of gold statues. But movie fans aren’t used to the vitriol that comes along with pop music. Now, they are getting a taste.This year two major pop stars have big roles in notable movies, both of which happen to be musicals. Ariana Grande is the pink-clad mean girl Glinda in “Wicked,” and Selena Gomez plays a cartel boss’s wife in “Emilia Pérez.” While these women have been nothing but nice to one another in the press, their stans, or armies of supporters, have been going to war and drawing unsuspecting bystanders into the battle.Pop music fans are notoriously ruthless — far more so than movie lovers. Their loyalty is unwavering to the point that they take aim at anyone who dare criticize their beloved stars. Perceived slights have resulted in threats and doxxing. And now they have a stake in the Oscars. It’s causing chaos.It’s not as if pop stars have never competed for movie prizes. Cher and Barbra Streisand might have something to say about that. More recently Lady Gaga was nominated in 2019 for her role in “A Star Is Born.” But rarely have two pop idols gone head to head in the way Grande and Gomez are. The notion of a rivalry gained even more fuel this week when they both landed in the same supporting actress category in the Golden Globe nominations.Not that Grande and Gomez seem to have any personal beef. In an October red carpet interview, Gomez said she was “just excited to see Ariana’s movie.” Grande then posted on Instagram: “and we cannot wait for Emilia Perez,” adding a message to Gomez, “I just adore you.”But you would not know that these lovely words had been exchanged if you look at how their fans are acting on X.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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    Golden Globes Snubs and Surprises: Jon M. Chu, Danielle Deadwyler, ‘The Substance’ and More

    Female directors were well-represented, while “Dune: Part Two” and “Sing Sing” didn’t do as well as expected.The 82nd Golden Globes nominations were announced Monday morning and the unconventional musical “Emilia Pérez” had plenty to sing about: The Netflix film topped all movies with 10 nominations, followed by “The Brutalist” and “Conclave.” Here are some of the most notable takeaways from this year’s field.Ryan Reynolds rebuffedRyan Reynolds wasn’t nominated for “Deadpool & Wolverine.”20th Century Studios/MarvelBefore a series of recent scandals prompted the Golden Globes to diversify its voting membership, you could count on this show to favor celebrity over critical consensus: Every year, the list of nominees included A-list megastars who were recognized even when their projects were not up to par. The old Globes voters, for instance, would have been eager to nominate the “Deadpool & Wolverine” star Ryan Reynolds for best actor in a comedy or musical, if only to lure Reynolds and his wife, Blake Lively, to their red carpet. The new Globes voters proved more resistant to his charms, though they did find room for the Marvel blockbuster in their dubious box-office achievement category, added last year.A ‘Sing Sing’ setbackClarence Maclin, left, and Colman Domingo in “Sing Sing.”A24Just last week, the A24 prison drama “Sing Sing” had a strong night at the Gothams, picking up wins for lead performance (Colman Domingo) and supporting performance (Clarence Maclin). The Globes proved less enamored: Only Domingo scored a nomination, and both Maclin and the film were snubbed. After an acclaimed but quiet run in theaters earlier this summer, the “Sing Sing” awards-season relaunch just took its first notable hit.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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    Kieran Culkin Could Rule Oscar Season. He’d Rather Be at Home.

    One of the many eccentricities of a modern-day awards campaign is that it can last much longer than the film shoot that put you in contention in the first place. In 2010, I spoke with Mark Ruffalo partway through a monthslong awards campaign for “The Kids Are All Right” and he said, with some astonishment, “Kyle, I spent six days on this movie.”Still, most actors are happy to decamp to Los Angeles and stump for their film for several months. (It worked out pretty well for Ruffalo and his movie, since both were Oscar-nominated.) And that’s why I’ve recently seen a lot of Kieran Culkin, who’s considered the supporting actor front-runner for “A Real Pain”: To tout the movie, he wooed film critics at an intimate dinner at Spago, worked the ballroom at the starry Governors Awards and, on a recent evening in November, met me for coffee at the Sunset Tower bar in West Hollywood.All of this appears as easy as breathing for Culkin, who is chatty and clever and charming — gifts that were put to good use during his Emmy-winning run on the HBO series “Succession,” which concluded last spring. But on the day I met up with the 42-year-old actor, he was nevertheless frustrated: His most recent press tour meant that he would have to miss a parent-teacher conference back home in New York.“My wife was like, ‘We can postpone it and do it over Zoom,’ and I was like, ‘No, no, do it the right way, when they scheduled it. Go,’” he said. “I want to be the one that can go off for a weekend and do work but also be the parent-teacher guy. But I think I’m getting to the place of having to accept that I can’t always get home.”Family is important to Culkin, who grew up in New York with seven siblings (including his brother Macaulay, of “Home Alone” fame) and now lives there with his wife, Jazz Charton, and their two children. He readily confesses that he tried to pull out of “A Real Pain” when its shooting dates were changed, since the revised schedule meant that his wife and children would be able to visit only at the beginning of the Poland-set production, leaving him without them for nearly a month.“I was like, ‘I can’t be away from the family for that long,’ and I had a flip-out,” he said.It’s fortunate that Culkin was convinced to stay since it’s hard to imagine “A Real Pain” without him. Starring opposite Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film, they play once-close cousins who reunite for a trip through Poland in an effort to better understand their late grandmother, who grew up there. Since her death, Culkin’s Benji has been unmoored, and he was never all that moored to begin with: Benji is charismatic and confounding in equal measure, given to wild mood swings that vex his cousin David (Eisenberg).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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    Gotham Awards Go to ‘A Different Man’ and ‘Sing Sing’

    The kickoff to awards season has a mixed record but can help lift small films like the two surprise winners.“A Different Man,” a dark indie comedy starring Sebastian Stan, was the surprise best-feature winner at the 34th annual Gotham Awards, which took place Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.Directed by Aaron Schimberg, the film stars Stan as an actor with neurofibromatosis who undergoes an experimental surgery to remove tumors from his face, giving him a more conventional appearance. That makeover puts him in danger of losing a leading role to a local bon vivant (Adam Pearson) who also has neurofibromatosis but owns his appearance without shame.Though “A Different Man” is distributed by the hot studio A24, it was considered the lowest-profile contender in its category. Most pundits expected the Palme d’Or winner “Anora” to cruise to victory here and even Schimberg was caught off-guard by the win. “I think I’m not the only person in the room who’s totally stunned by this,” the director said onstage, admitting he had not prepared a speech in advance, fearing it would be “hubris” to do so.In a very fluid Oscar season, the Gotham win could raise the chances of Stan, who also stars in the Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” and Pearson, a dark-horse supporting-actor candidate. Though the Gothams’ effectiveness as an Oscar bellwether can fluctuate, three of the four most recent films to triumph there — “Past Lives,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Nomadland” — also went on to be nominated for best picture at the Oscars.The Gothams are most valuable when it comes to helping smaller films like “A Different Man” that rely on an awards-season run to stay in the conversation. Though the ceremony recently lifted its $35 million budget cap for eligible contenders, its nominating juries, which are mostly made up of a handful of film journalists, still tend to favor movies that were made on a shoestring.That includes “Sing Sing,” a prison drama that won the night’s lead and supporting-performance honors for Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin. (The Gothams are gender-neutral.) “Let’s keep doing work that really matters, that makes a difference,” Domingo, who starred in “The Color Purple” and “Rustin” last year, told the audience. “That’s what we can do right now. That can be a light in the 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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    Quincy Jones Receives Posthumous Oscar, and Daughter Gives His Speech

    At the Governors Awards, Rashida Jones spoke on behalf of her father, who died earlier this month at the age of 91.Before his death two weeks ago, the musician and producer Quincy Jones wrote a speech he intended to deliver at the Governors Awards, where he would receive an honorary Oscar at the ceremony created by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.On Sunday night in Hollywood, his actress daughter Rashida Jones delivered that speech on his behalf before a rapt audience.“As a teenager growing up in Seattle, I would sit for hours in the theater and dream about composing for films,” she said while channeling her father, who was a Black trailblazer in Hollywood: “When I was a young film composer, you didn’t even see faces of color working in the studio commissaries.”Nominated seven times, Jones was given a different honorary Oscar — the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award — in 1995, back when these awards were still part of the televised Oscar broadcast. To shorten that show, the honorary awards were spun off into their own event in 2009.“He has so many friends in this room,” said Rashida Jones, center, of her father, Quincy Jones.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThough the Governors Awards are not televised, they still attract an A-list crowd that rivals any major ceremony. An early stop on the awards-season circuit, the event offers plenty of unfettered face time with Oscar voters during its cocktail hour and post-dinner break and serves as the season’s starriest schmoozefest.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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    Ridley Scott on ‘Gladiator II,” Denzel Washington and Joaquin Phoenix

    It’s been 24 years since the director Ridley Scott scored one of the biggest hits of his career with “Gladiator,” a swords-and-sandals epic starring Russell Crowe that won the Oscar for best picture. Now 86, Scott still works at a prodigious pace, sometimes even directing two films in the same year.His latest is “Gladiator II,” which picks up two decades after Crowe’s character, Maximus, died heroically in the arena. In the years since, Lucius (Paul Mescal) — Maximus’s secret son — has been shuttled to North Africa where he, too, has become a capable fighter. But war waged by the Roman general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) will draw Lucius back to his birthplace, where the clever arms dealer Macrinus (Denzel Washington) will try to manipulate the young man to further his own ambitions.In October, I met Scott at his Los Angeles office, which was decorated with posters of some of his memorable films like “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and “The Martian.” True to form, while gearing up for the Nov. 22 release of “Gladiator II,” he was already deep into preproduction for his next movie (a Bee Gees biopic set to shoot in February) and had even begun storyboarding the one after that (a sci-fi adaptation).“I feel alive when I’m doing something at this level,” he said. “I don’t call it stress, I call it adrenaline. And a bit of adrenaline is good for you.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Paul Mescal in “Gladiator II.” Scott said spotting talent is crucial to directing, and added: “To me, a casting director is as important as a good camera.”Paramount PicturesA sequel to “Gladiator” had been in the works for over two decades, making it by far the longest film you’ve ever developed. What made you want to see it through?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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    Teri Garr’s Life in Pictures

    Teri Garr, who died on Tuesday at 79, will be remembered for her strong comedic chops and for her ability to act with her eyes, displaying a wide range of emotions.In 1983, she earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her performance in “Tootsie” opposite Dustin Hoffman. That movie, like many others on Garr’s résumé, showed that she could command attention alongside her male counterparts. If her best-known roles could had a common thread, it was the erratic behavior of the men in her characters’ lives.Offscreen, Garr faced hurdles related to her health and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, after more than a decade of symptoms. She eventually became a spokeswoman for research into the disease, making appearances in her wheelchair.Here are some snapshots from her life and career.Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty ImagesIn “Young Frankenstein” (1974), Garr played a beautiful but ditsy German lab assistant.CBS, via Getty ImagesGarr and Frankie Avalon in 1965.CBS, via Getty ImagesGarr’s eyes were perhaps one of her most recognizable features as an actress. They could show pain, sympathy, vulnerability and intrigue.Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesAmy Irving, Carrie Fisher and Garr in 1977.Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank, via NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesA regular on the talk show circuit, Garr was a favorite guest of both David Letterman and Johnny Carson.Columbia Pictures/Getty ImagesGarr as Ronnie Neary in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), directed by Steven Spielberg.ShutterstockGarr, with Jackie Gleason in “The Sting II,” hailed from a show-business family. Her father was a vaudevillian.Columbia Pictures, via AlamyBy the mid-1960s, Garr had appeared in four Elvis Presley movies. She eventually took on more serious roles, earning an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her performance as Sandy Lester in “Tootsie” (1982).Sherwood ProductionsEntertainment Pictures, via AlamyIn a departure from her ditsy roles, Garr played an overconfident ad-agency workaholic opposite Michael Keaton in “Mr. Mom” (1983).Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank, via NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesGarr’s comedic chops made her stand out against a crowded backdrop of Hollywood actresses during the 1970s and ’80s. She hosted “Saturday Night Live” three times.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesMichael Westmore, Garr and Zoltan Elek at the Academy Awards in 1986.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc., via Getty ImagesGarr married John O’Neil in 1993 and later welcomed a daughter, Molly O’Neil.Getty ImagesGarr played Phoebe Abbott in three episodes of “Friends” over the show’s third and fourth seasons.Rusty Russell/Getty ImagesWhile making films, Garr noticed troubling physical symptoms and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999. She later became a spokeswoman for M.S. research and support.Valerie Macon/Getty ImagesGarr with Leonard Maltin, Mel Brooks and Cloris Leachman. More

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    Aubrey Plaza Goes for Broke in ‘Megalopolis’ and ‘Agatha All Along’

    “I bleed for movies,” Aubrey Plaza told me on an August morning, just seconds before the ground began to tremble.We had met for brunch at Little Dom’s, a hip Italian restaurant in Los Angeles that was unusually quiet until that low rumble began. Frozen, we stared at each other as the windows rattled — bum-bum-BAM — and then quieted. It was quick and violent, as though someone had seized the place and given it a brisk, get-yourself-together shake.Plaza’s eyes, already open and avid, got even wider. “I think that was an earthquake,” she said. A Google search revealed it to have been a 4.7 temblor out of nearby Pasadena, which prompted us to wonder: If something more severe were to occur, would we know what to do instead of just sitting there blankly?“What if it’s the small one before the big one?” she asked.These days, only a natural disaster could force Plaza to pause. She has spent the last decade working at a nearly nonstop pace, determined to show there’s more to her than April Ludgate, the disaffected intern she played on six seasons of the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” Though Plaza’s point has by now been proved — in particular, the 2022 double-header of “The White Lotus” and “Emily the Criminal” amply demonstrated her range — that drive has not yet abated.In fact, Plaza has stayed so prolific that her three newest projects have all come out within days of each other. The first was the charming time-travel comedy “My Old Ass” on Sept. 13, followed by the Marvel series “Agatha All Along,” in which she plays the romantic antagonist to Kathryn Hahn’s “WandaVision” witch. Friday saw the long-awaited release of “Megalopolis,” from the 85-year-old director Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather”), which features Plaza in a grabby role unlike anything she’s played before.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