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    ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ Review: Trouble in Juniper City

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    Jack Black’s Po faces a new adversary, a chameleon voiced by Viola Davis, in the latest installment of this popular animated franchise.“Kung Fu Panda 4,” like previous installments of this DreamWorks franchise, punches above its weight.Once again starring Jack Black as the gullible martial arts master Po, the animated film melds together wisecracking comedy and sprightly action sequences with a message of kindness, inner peace and self-discovery.In this movie, directed by Mike Mitchell, Po grapples with his new responsibility as the spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace, taking the place of his mentor Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). Shifu urges Po to name a successor, but Po is reluctant to give up a life of butt-kicking in exchange for doling out wisdom.The halfhearted search for Po’s replacement is cut short with the arrival of a thieving fox, Zhen (Awkwafina). Threatened with jail time, she offers information on a mysterious new villain, the Chameleon (Viola Davis), who threatens to take over the Valley with the power of Po’s previous adversaries combined.As Po and Zhen set out for the Chameleon’s palace in faraway Juniper City, Po’s two guardians — his biological father, Li Shan (Bryan Cranston) and adopted father, Mr. Ping (James Hong) — follow him in comical pursuit.Witty gags abound (there’s a standout “bull in the china shop” sequence), and Black and Awkwafina make a charming lead duo, particularly when Po encounters the sights, sounds and bountiful food of Juniper City. The art direction is also a step above the typical animated blockbuster. But what’s missing are the antics of Po’s “Furious Five” compatriots from the earlier films, like Angelina Jolie’s Tigress and Jackie Chan’s Monkey, who are written off in this installment.Still, don’t expect a total downgrade: This is an enjoyable “Kung Fu Panda” movie, even if it’s missing some of the pizazz of the earlier ones.Kung Fu Panda 4Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      How the Oscars and Grammys Thrive on the Lie of Meritocracy

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      Despite all the markers of excellence, contenders like Danielle Deadwyler, Viola Davis and Beyoncé weren’t recognized for the highest honors. Niche awards don’t suffice.I didn’t see it coming, but maybe I should have.That refrain has been popping into my head repeatedly since learning that neither Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) nor Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”) was nominated for the best actress Oscar and that Andrea Riseborough and Ana de Armas had emerged as this year’s spoilers.It came to mind again on Sunday night when the Grammys awarded Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” album of the year, not Beyoncé’s “Renaissance.” Though she made history that night as the most Grammy-winning artist of all time, this was Beyoncé’s fourth shutout from the industry’s most coveted category and another stark reminder that the last Black woman to take home that award was Lauryn Hill — 24 years ago. This time the message was loud and clear: Beyoncé, one of the most prolific and transformative artists of the 21st century, can win only in niche categories. Her music — a continually evolving and genre-defying sound — still can’t be seen as the standard-bearer for the universal.The music and movie industries differ in many ways, but their prizes are similarly determined by the predominantly older white male members of the movie and recording academies. Though both organizations have made concerted efforts in recent years to diversify their voting bodies in terms of age, race and gender, Black women artists, despite their ingenuity, influence and, in Beyoncé’s case, unparalleled innovation, continue to be denied their highest honors.This trend is no indication of the quality of their work but rather a reflection of something else: the false myth of meritocracy upon which these institutions, their ceremonies and their gatekeepers thrive.It is true that Black women, dating to Hattie McDaniel for “Gone With the Wind” (1939), have won the Academy Award for best supporting actress. And while it took a half-century for Whoopi Goldberg to receive an Oscar in the same category (for “Ghost”), over the past 20 years, seven Black women have won in this category, including Davis, and this year, Angela Bassett is a front-runner as well.Viola Davis in “The Woman King.” Because of the film’s critical and commercial reception, Oscar watchers thought she would be nominated. Instead, she was snubbed. Sony PicturesBut, in a way, this is an example of rewarding the niche. What’s being honored is a character whose function is in service to a film’s plot and protagonist. She is neither a movie’s emotional center nor primarily responsible for propelling its narrative. Such heavy lifting is why I think it made sense for Michelle Williams, whom many considered a lock for an Oscar for best supporting actress for “The Fabelmans,” to campaign as a lead instead. “Although I haven’t seen the movie,” she told The New York Times, “the scenes that I read, the scenes that I prepped, the scenes that we shot, the scenes that I’m told are still in the movie, are akin to me with experiences that I have had playing roles considered lead.”Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.In the past, academy voters might have said there weren’t enough Black women in leading roles to consider. But “Till” and “The Woman King” disprove that. So we’re left with other, more traditionally meritocratic arguments about who deserves to be nominated for best actress — the quality of the individual performance, the critical response to a film, and a decent budget to market and campaign for Oscar consideration. Yet this year, even those measures suddenly seemed to be thrown out the window.Instead, in the case of Andrea Riseborough’s surprising nod for “To Leslie,” we saw a new Oscar strategy playing out before our eyes. A groundswell of fellow actors, including A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and even Cate Blanchett, who would go on to be nominated herself, publicly endorsed Riseborough’s performance on social media, at screenings and even at a prize ceremony. Since only 218 of the 1,302 members of the academy’s acting branch needed to rank a candidate first to secure a nomination, in time, that momentum translated into a nomination upset. That, in turn, led to a backlash, a review by the academy to make sure none of its campaign guidelines had been violated, and a backlash to the backlash, with Christina Ricci and Riseborough’s “To Leslie” co-star Marc Maron calling out the academy for its investigation. “So it’s only the films and actors that can afford the campaigns that deserve recognition?” Ricci wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. “Feels elitist and exclusive and frankly very backward to me.”What fascinated me, however, was that what was being framed as a grass-roots campaign to circumvent studio marketing machines revealed another inside game. A racially homogeneous network of white Hollywood stars appeared to vote in a small but significant enough bloc to ensure their candidate was nominated.And while that explains how an Oscar campaign can be both nontraditional and elitist, it also underscores the other obstacles that Black actresses, in particular, and actresses of color in general, have to surmount just to be nominated, let alone win. Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” was so critically praised for its filmmaking and masterly performances and was such a commercially successful film that Davis was expected (at the very least) to garner her third nomination in the best actress category.Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde.” The film was widely panned.NetflixIn contrast, Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde,” starring de Armas, was so heavily panned for its brutal and sexist depiction of Marilyn Monroe that I assumed the prerelease chatter about her performance would have dampened by the time Oscar voting began. For more than any other film with a best actress contender this year, “Blonde” raises the question: Shouldn’t a protagonist have depth or multidimensionality for that actor’s performance to be noteworthy? As conceived by Dominik, Monroe merely flits from injury to injury, all in the service of making her downfall inevitable.Such representations reveal another pattern: Oscar voters continue to reward women’s emotional excess more than their restraint. In most films with best actress nominations this year, women’s anger as outbursts is a common thread. “Tár” and even “To Leslie” examines the dangerous consequences of such fury; “The Fabelmans” positions it as a maternal and artistic contradiction for Williams’s character; and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” brilliantly explores it as both a response to IRS bureaucratic inefficacy and intergenerational tensions between a Chinese immigrant mother and her queer, Asian American daughter. “Blonde” is again an exception, for de Armas’s Monroe expresses no external rage but sinks into depression and self-loathing, never directing her frustration at the many men who abuse her.Within that cinematic context, I wondered if it was possible to applaud Deadwyler for playing a character like Mamie Till-Mobley. Unlike the main characters of the other films, Till-Mobley, in real life, had to repress her rational rage over the gruesome murder of her son, Emmett, to find justice and protect his legacy. Onscreen, Deadwyler captured that paradox by portraying Till-Mobley’s constantly shifting self and her struggle to privately grieve her son’s death while simultaneously being asked to speak on behalf of a burgeoning civil rights movement. If words like “nuanced,” “subtle,” “circumspect” or “introspective” garner leading men Oscar attention (how else do we explain Colin Farrell’s nod?), female protagonists are often lauded for falling apart.Deadwyler and Whoopi Goldberg in “Till.” The lead’s repressed rage stands in contrast with the emotional outbursts of the nominated performances.Lynsey Weatherspoon/Orion Pictures, via Associated PressBut even that assumes that all women’s emotions are treated equally, when the truth is that rage itself is racially coded. Both “Till” and “The Woman King” depict Black women’s rage as an individual emotion and a collective dissent, a combination that deviates from many on-screen representations of female anger as a downward spiral and self-destructive.Commenting on such differential treatment, the “Till” director Chinonye Chukwu critiqued Hollywood on Instagram for its “unabashed misogyny towards Black women” after the academy snubbed her film. Likewise, in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Prince-Bythewood asked, “What is this inability of Academy voters to see Black women, and their humanity, and their heroism, as relatable to themselves?”It’s been over 20 years since Halle Berry won the best actress Oscar for her “Monster’s Ball” performance as a Black mother who grieves the loss of her son through alcohol and sex. The fact that she remains the only Black woman to have won this award is ridiculous. “I do feel completely heartbroken that there’s no other woman standing next to me in 20 years,” Berry reflected in the run-up to the Oscars last year. “I thought, like everybody else, that night meant a lot of things would change.”The difference between then and now is that there are far more Black women directors and complex Black women characters on the big screen than ever before. Maybe, next year, the academy members will get behind one of those actors. Then again, maybe I should know better. More

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      Beyoncé Makes History at a Star-Powered Grammy Ceremony

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      LOS ANGELES — Beyoncé made Grammy history on Sunday night, setting a record at the awards’ 65th annual ceremony for the most career wins by any artist, after picking up a string of trophies for “Renaissance,” her hit album that mined decades of dance music.But she was once again shut out of the major categories, winning all four of her prizes for the night in down-ballot genre categories. Harry Styles took album of the year for “Harry’s House,” Lizzo won record of the year for her retro dance anthem “About Damn Time,” and song of the year went to Bonnie Raitt for “Just Like That.” It was Beyoncé’s fourth career loss for album of the year.Styles seemed at a loss for words as he accepted his Grammy, opening his remarks with a stunned profanity.Still, Beyoncé’s accomplishment resonated throughout the evening. Accepting her 32nd career award, Beyoncé thanked God and her family, and honored her “Uncle Jonny,” a gay relative whom she has described in the past as her “godmother” and as the person who exposed her to L.G.B.T.Q. culture.“I’d like thank the queer community for your love, and for inventing the genre,” she said to roars of applause from the crowd at the Crypto.com Arena as she won best dance/electronic music album for “Renaissance,” which was widely seen as a love letter to gay culture. (Even so, Beyoncé faced a backlash recently when she performed a private concert in Dubai, in United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is illegal.)With her latest wins, Beyoncé surpassed Georg Solti, the Hungarian-born classical conductor who died in 1997 and had long held the title of the most career wins by any artist.Even Beyoncé’s competitors cheered her on. Accepting record of the year, Lizzo told a story of being inspired by seeing Beyoncé in concert (while skipping school).“You clearly are the artist of our lives!” she shouted. (In 2017, when Adele beat Beyoncé for album of the year, she said almost the same thing.)Beyoncé also won best dance/electronic recording (“Break My Soul”), traditional R&B performance (“Plastic Off the Sofa”) and best R&B song (“Cuff It”). She had been the most nominated artist of the evening, with nine nods.Gender freedom was a theme running through the night. Not long before Beyoncé’s win, Sam Smith, a nonbinary singer, and Kim Petras, a trans woman, won the award for pop/duo group performance for “Unholy,” and Petras drew cheers when she said she was “the first transgender woman to win this award.”“I hope that there’s a future where gender and identity and all these labels don’t matter that much,” Petras told reporters backstage. “Where people can just be themselves, and not get judged so hard and not be labeled so hard.”Gender freedom was a theme running through this year’s Grammys, as Kim Petras, a trans woman, and Sam Smith, a nonbinary singer, were among the night’s winners. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyAfter two years of shows that were disrupted and delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the annual Grammy ceremony returned in full swing to its home court in Los Angeles (Crypto.com is the renamed Staples Center), bringing the music world together for glitz, competition and, behind the scenes, plenty of business schmoozing.“We made it!” exclaimed its host, Trevor Noah. “We’re back!”The power of stardom was another of the night’s major underlying themes. The show opened with a blast of brass and the hip-swaying rhythms of Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who represents the music industry’s hopes — he is a young celebrity with global appeal and massive numbers, both on streaming services and on the road.Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who opened the show on Sunday night, represents the music industry’s hopes: a young celebrity with global appeal and the numbers to match.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressWalking through the aisles of the arena flanked by dancers in festive dress, he played two songs from his blockbuster album “Un Verano Sin Ti,” bringing both social commentary and party vibes, and getting stars like Taylor Swift dancing amid the bistro-style seating in front of the stage.Accepting the award for best música urbana album for “Un Verano,” Bad Bunny gave his speech in Spanish and English.“I just made this album with love and passion,” he said. “When you do things with love and passion, everything is easier.”Old-fashioned song craft remains a key touchstone for Grammy voters. Raitt, 73, was the surprise winner of song of the year — beating Adele, Beyoncé, Swift, Lizzo and Styles, whose songs were huge hits — for “Just Like That,” a tender meditation about an organ donation that had only modest commercial success. She accepted it as a recognition of the job of songwriting itself, and thanked other writers for providing her with material throughout her career.“I would not be up here tonight,” Raitt said, “if it wasn’t for the great soul-digging, hard-working people that put these songs and ideas to music.”Samara Joy, a singer who brought fresh interpretations to jazz classics, and began her career posting them online, won best new artist.In classic Grammy fashion, the ceremony also included some loving nods to the past.Stevie Wonder led a Motown revue that included Smokey Robinson and the country songwriter Chris Stapleton. One of the highlights of the night was a 12-minute celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop — the genre’s origin is tied to a birthday party in the Bronx in 1973 — that featured LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, Method Man, Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, Missy Elliott, Future, Grandmaster Flash and many others.A somber, multipart “In Memoriam” segment included the country singer Kacey Musgraves singing Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” barefoot in a blood-red dress; a tribute to Takeoff of the Atlanta rap trio Migos led by his bandmate Quavo; and Raitt, Sheryl Crow and Mick Fleetwood singing “Songbird,” one of the signature compositions by Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, with Fleetwood tapping a drum like it was a gently beating heart.Kacey Musgraves singing Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” as part of a somber “In Memoriam” segment.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersStyles performed his bubbly, pensive hit “As It Was” in a silvery sequined suit with tassels that shook as he danced. “Harry’s House” also won Styles the award for pop vocal album.Kendrick Lamar won three rap prizes: best performance and best song, for “The Heart Part 5,” and best album, for “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.” Accepting the album award, he thanked his family “for giving me the courage and giving me the vulnerability to share my truth and share these stories.”Brandi Carlile, a Grammy darling in recent years, won best rock performance and best rock song for “Broken Horses,” as well as best Americana album for “In These Silent Days.”The 89-year-old Willie Nelson, who was not present, won for best country album for “A Beautiful Time,” and best country solo performance for the song “Live Forever.”Swift ended the night with one victory, best music video for “All Too Well: The Short Film,” but lost her three other nods — including her sixth career loss in song of the year for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” an extended remake of a song she first released in 2012.The first lady, Jill Biden, announced the winner of a new award, best song for social change, which went to the 25-year-old Iranian songwriter Shervin Hajipour, whose song “Baraye” became an anthem for the women’s rights protests there last year. The prize was chosen by what the academy described as a “blue-ribbon committee.”For an industry that has lately gotten worried about the difficulty minting stars amid the fire hose of content in the age of streaming and social media, this year’s list of nominations was about as good as it gets. It guaranteed plenty of star power and some drama over winners and losers. On Grammy night, drama is a good thing.As much as the Recording Academy, the nonprofit institution behind the Grammys, promotes its mission of celebrating artistic excellence and being a supportive home for creators year-round, the Grammys is also a television show that needs to attract a large audience.As they have for all major awards shows, ratings for the Grammys have been slipping for years. But the past two years have been brutal. In 2021, when the Grammys put on an outdoor show with no audience, its viewership fell to 8.8 million, the lowest ever; last year, when the show was delayed by the spread of the Omicron variant and held for the first time in Las Vegas, the number was only marginally better, at 8.9 million.This year’s awards recognized music released between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022, and were selected by the 11,000-member voting body of the Recording Academy, which includes artists, songwriters, producers and other music professionals.Of the 91 awards this year, all but a dozen were given out in a nontelevised ceremony on Sunday afternoon.Viola Davis’s Grammy win makes her the newest EGOT — the coveted acronym for the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyThe actress Viola Davis won best audiobook, narration and storytelling recording for her memoir “Finding Me,” making her the newest EGOT — the coveted acronym for the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.Among the new categories this year was songwriter of the year (non-classical), intended to recognize the writers who work behind the scenes. It was won by Tobias Jesso Jr., who has written songs for Adele, Styles and others. Stephanie Economou was the first winner for best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media for her work on the game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok.Below the superstar level, the Grammys have the power to transform artists’ careers. The Tennessee State University Marching Band was the first college marching band ever nominated for best roots gospel album, and it won with “The Urban Hymnal.”Accepting that award, Sir the Baptist, one of the album’s producers, addressed the straitened finances of historically Black colleges and universities. “HBCUs are so grossly underfunded to where I had to put my last dime in order to get us across the line,” he said. “We’re here with our pockets empty but our hands aren’t.” More

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      in Music

      Viola Davis Reaches EGOT Status With a Grammy Win

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      Viola Davis achieved a rare distinction during the Grammys preshow on Sunday, becoming the 18th person to join the EGOT club, an acronym for those who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.At Sunday’s ceremony, she secured the feat with her first Grammy Award — for the audiobook of her memoir “Finding Me,” in the best audio book, narration and storytelling recording category. It was also her first nomination.“I wrote this book to honor the 6-year-old Viola,” Davis, 57, said at the podium. “To honor her life, her joy, her trauma, everything. And it has just been such a journey. I just EGOT!”In 2015, Davis won the Emmy for best lead actress in a drama for her role in the ABC series “How to Get Away with Murder”; in 2017, she won the best supporting actress Oscar for “Fences,” the Denzel Washington-directed film, written by August Wilson, based on Wilson’s 1985 play; and she’s won two Tony Awards, for “King Hedley II,” in 2001, and “Fences,” in 2010.The last star to earn the EGOT was Jennifer Hudson in 2022, after she won the Tony Award for co-producing the musical “A Strange Loop.” More

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      Andrea Riseborough’s Path to Surprise Oscar Nomination Is Scrutinized

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      Andrea Riseborough got the nod for the little-seen “To Leslie.” The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is reviewing whether her A-list campaign violated rules.When the Oscar nominations were announced last week, one of the most surprising was Andrea Riseborough’s inclusion in the best actress category.Ms. Riseborough’s portrayal of a former lottery winner battling addiction in the little-seen “To Leslie” had received scant recognition on the awards circuit. Few critics included the film on their best-of-the-year lists, and it made just $27,000 at the box office during its initial release in October.Yet just as voting for the Oscars began, a number of A-list actors started lauding Ms. Riseborough’s performance publicly. “Andrea should win every award there is and all the ones that haven’t been invented yet,” Gwyneth Paltrow wrote on Instagram, joining dozens of actors like Edward Norton and Susan Sarandon who lavished praise on Ms. Riseborough. Kate Winslet hosted a screening of the film, and during a virtual question-and-answer session with Ms. Riseborough and the film’s director, Michael Morris, called Ms. Riseborough’s work “the greatest female performance onscreen I have ever seen in my life.”“The thing that feels most exciting is being acknowledged by your community,” Ms. Riseborough told The New York Times on the day she was nominated. “It’s a marker by which we measure ourselves in so many ways — by those we aspire to be like, or those we admire. So it’s huge.”But what at first seemed like a story of how a grass-roots — though star-studded — word-of-mouth campaign had managed to help a respected actress crash the Oscar party quickly drew backlash.There were soon questions of whether the efforts on behalf of Ms. Riseborough had violated Oscar rules (“Was the Andrea Riseborough Oscar Campaign Illegal?” read a headline in the Hollywood newsletter by Puck’s Matthew Belloni) and whether Ms. Riseborough, who is white, had secured a nomination that may otherwise have gone to a Black actress like Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) or Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”).“We live in a world and work in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards Black women,” Chinonye Chukwu, the director of “Till,” wrote on Instagram after the nominations. Ms. Chukwu did not mention Ms. Riseborough or “To Leslie” in her post.Interviews With the Oscar NomineesMichelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Andrea Riseborough: A social media campaign by some famous friends netted the star of “To Leslie” her first Oscar nomination. Here is what she said about being nominated.Ke Huy Quan: A former childhood star, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actor said that the news of his best supporting actor nomination was surreal.Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will take up the matter of Ms. Riseborough’s nomination during a previously scheduled meeting on Tuesday. Among the issues will be whether the campaign violated any academy rules and, if so, what the repercussions should be.At issue seems to be the efforts by the actress Mary McCormack, who is married to Mr. Morris, and her manager, Jason Weinberg, who also represents Ms. Riseborough, to get her friends and acquaintances in the entertainment industry to watch the film and talk about it. Neither Ms. McCormack nor Mr. Morris is a member of the academy, though many of the actors who praised Ms. Riseborough’s performance are.Howard Stern, Ms. McCormack’s co-star in the 1997 film “Private Parts,” praised “To Leslie” on his satellite radio show, and the veteran actress Frances Fisher repeatedly posted about it on Instagram, writing on Jan. 14 that voters should select Ms. Riseborough since “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work.” Mentioning competitors or their films directly is verboten when campaigning. Voters are also not supposed to be courted directly, without the academy acting as a gatekeeper of sorts.The specter of rescinding Ms. Riseborough’s nomination has been raised, but one longtime academy member, who discussed internal matters on the condition of anonymity, considered that unlikely since she did not make the direct appeals to voters herself. An acting nomination has never been rescinded, though it has happened in other categories.Ms. Riseborough declined to comment. Mr. Weinberg did not respond to requests seeking comment from him and Ms. McCormack.The academy declined to comment for this article, but it released a statement that said, “We are conducting a review of the campaign procedures around this year’s nominees, to ensure that no guidelines were violated, and to inform us whether changes to the guidelines may be needed in a new era of social media and digital communication.”Oscars campaigning has been a blood sport for decades. The modern Machiavelli for the process was, after all, Harvey Weinstein, who became notorious for bludgeoning would-be voters with parties, screenings and not-so-subtle whisper campaigns.The process has become only more sophisticated. In 2019, for instance, Netflix rented two soundstages on a historic movie lot in Hollywood to push for “Roma.” The voters who attended “‘Roma’ Experience Day” received breakfast and lunch and there were hours of panel discussions with Alfonso Cuarón, the movie’s director, and his crew.But there are rules, many of them put into place after Oscar campaigning turned into an entire industry, employing scores of consultants and strategists and generating millions of dollars of revenue for the trade publications that accept “For Your Consideration” advertisements.Studios are permitted to send out only one email a week to Oscar voters, and they cannot send them directly. The emails must be routed through messaging services sanctioned by the academy. According to one awards consultant, who described the process on the condition of anonymity, each email blast can cost $2,000.Screenings are permitted, with “reasonable” food and drink. (The rule book doesn’t spell out the definition of “reasonable.”) Everything must be provided in the same location where the movie was shown. Lavish dinners across the street or across town are not allowed.As for individual lobbying, the academy includes only a one-line explanation of what is forbidden: “Contacting academy members directly and in a manner outside of the scope of these rules to promote a film or achievement for Academy Award consideration is expressly forbidden.”In 2010, Nicolas Chartier, a producer of “The Hurt Locker,” was barred from attending the Academy Awards after he sent emails to voters urging them to vote for his film and not “Avatar.” In 2014, the composer Bruce Broughton contacted members directly, asking them to vote for his song from the unheralded film “Alone Yet Not Alone.” He received a nomination, but the academy rescinded it. In 2017, a sound mixing nomination for Greg P. Russell (“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi”) was rescinded for a similar reason. In each case, the academy declined to add a fifth nominee.Ric Robertson, the academy’s former chief operating officer and a member for 24 years, said a failure to address the issues of personally lobbying voters could lead to more concerted campaigns.“This campaign sounds like it was organic,” Mr. Robertson, who was involved in putting many of the campaigning rules into effect, said of Ms. Riseborough’s situation. “It came about because a couple of prominent people really liked the film and the performance and used their connections to promote it. Well, it could get a lot more organized next year and institutionalized at other companies.”Though “To Leslie” was unknown to many voters before numerous stars began praising it, Ms. Riseborough is a respected British actress with a chameleonic flair. She has spent the past two decades playing complicated women in mostly independent films. She has worked for directors as varied as Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“Birdman”), Tom Ford (“Nocturnal Animals”) and Mike Leigh (“Happy-Go-Lucky”). Mr. Morris previously directed her in the Netflix series “Bloodline.”And since the questions about Ms. Riseborough’s campaign have arisen, there has been a backlash to the backlash. The “unabashed solicitation of Oscar votes,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg said, “is a tradition almost as old as the academy itself.”For the Oscars, this is the latest in a string of controversies in recent years. Some were self-inflicted, like the two consecutive years the organization nominated only white actors, which spawned the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite and led the academy to begin overhauling and diversifying its membership. The exclusion of Ms. Davis and Ms. Deadwyler, and Ms. Chukwu’s comments after the nominations, show that the issue remains a raw one.Last year, as the Oscars were trying to recover from the pandemic, Will Smith shocked a global audience by slapping Chris Rock onstage during the telecast. Shortly after, Mr. Smith returned to the stage to accept the best actor trophy. The academy subsequently barred him from Oscar-related events, included the ceremony, for the next decade.As for “To Leslie,” which barely had the funds to pay the $20,000 fee to submit it to the academy’s portal so members could watch it, all of the attention has seemed to help, a little.Momentum Pictures, its distributor, returned the film to six theaters this past weekend, betting that Ms. Riseborough’s nomination would intrigue audiences. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it grossed around $250,000. More

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      ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Leads BAFTA Nominees

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      The German-language movie received 14 nods and will compete for best film against the likes of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.”“All Quiet on the Western Front,” a German-language movie set on the battlefields of World War I, emerged on Thursday as the surprise front-runner for this year’s British Academy Film Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars.“All Quiet,” a Netflix-backed movie about the futility of war, secured 14 nominations for the awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs. Those included best film, where it is up against four higher-profile titles including “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a sci-fi adventure starring Michelle Yeoh as a laundromat owner who traverses universes; and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy about two friends who fall out while living on a small island, both of which received a total of 10 nominations.Also competing for the main BAFTA prize is Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” biopic and “Tár,” Todd Field’s drama starring Cate Blanchett as a conductor accused of sexual harassment.On its release in Britain, critics gave the Edward Berger-directed “All Quiet” rave reviews. Kevin Maher, writing in The Times of London, said that the movie was “more visceral, more spectacular and certainly more harrowing” than any previous adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel of the same title. “See it on the biggest screen possible. Then watch it again on Netflix,” Mr. Maher added.American critics were less effusive. Ben Kenigsberg, reviewing the movie for The New York Times, said that it “aims to pummel you with ceaseless brutality, and it’s hard not to be rattled by that.”Steven Spielberg Gets Personal in ‘The Fabelmans’The director’s latest movie, starring Michelle Williams, focuses on Sammy Fabelman, a budding filmmaker who is a lot like Spielberg himself.Review: “The Fabelmans” is “wonderful in both large and small ways, even if Spielberg can’t help but soften the rougher, potentially lacerating edges,” our critic writes.Michelle Williams: With her portrayal of Mitzi, Sammy’s mother, the actress moves from minor-key naturalism to more stylized performances.Judd Hirsch: The actor has been singled out for his rousing performance in the film. It’s the latest chapter in a career full of anecdotes.Making ‘The Fabelmans’: In working on this semi-autobiographical movie, Spielberg confronted painful family secrets and what it means to be Jewish in America today.The 14 nods for “All Quiet” is the highest number of BAFTA nominations for a movie not in the English language, tied with Ang Lee’s 2000 action film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” according to BAFTA officials.Michelle Yeoh, left, and Jing Li in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.Allyson Riggs/A24Most of the nominations for “All Quiet” are in technical categories. But Berger also secured a best director nomination. He will compete for that award against the directors of “Banshees of Inisherin” (McDonagh), “Tár”(Field) and “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert). Park Chan-wook, the director of “Decision to Leave,” about a policeman who falls in love with a suspect, also secured a best director nod, as did Gina Prince-Bythewood for “The Woman King,” about the women soldiers of the precolonial Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa. Prince-Bythewood is the only female director among the nominees.There was one upset among the best director nominees: Steven Spielberg didn’t get a nod for “The Fabelmans,” his semi-autobiographical tale of a budding filmmaker coping with a fractious home life, which won him best director at last week’s Golden Globes.The BAFTA nominations, which were announced in a YouTube broadcast, have long been seen as a bellwether for the Oscars because there is overlap between their voting bodies. Nominations for this year’s Academy Awards are scheduled to be unveiled on Tuesday and “All Quiet on the Western Front” has been tipped as a potential nominee in the best picture category.In recent years, the BAFTA organizers has made efforts to widen the diversity of nominees, including requiring voters to watch a variety of movies before they can make their selections.Last year, that led to several unexpected nominees in the best acting categories, many from low-budget British movies. But there are fewer upsets this year. The best actress nominees include Blanchett for “Tár,” Viola Davis for “The Woman King,” Yeoh for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and Emma Thompson for her role in “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” in which she plays a widow who hires a prostitute.They will compete for that prize against Danielle Deadwyler for her role as Emmett Till’s mother in “Till” and Ana de Armas for “Blonde,” in which she plays Marilyn Monroe.The best actor category sees Austin Butler, the Golden Globe-winning star of “Elvis,” up against Colin Farrell, for his role in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” and Brendan Fraser, for his transformation into an obese, grief-stricken writing instructor in “The Whale.” Also nominated are the rising Irish star Paul Mescal, for his role as a young father taking his daughter on holiday in “Aftersun,” Daryl McCormack, for playing the prostitute in “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” and Bill Nighy, for “Living,” about a bureaucrat given a life-changing medical diagnosis.Whether the nominations for “All Quiet” translate into trophies will be revealed on Feb. 19, when the BAFTA winners are scheduled to be announced in a ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London. 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      Inside the Oscars’ Best-Actress Battle Royale

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      Forget the men: A banner crop of leading ladies, including Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett, rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.Clockwise from top left, Margot Robbie in “Babylon”; Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”; Danielle Deadwyler in “Till”; Cate Blanchett in “Tár”; Michelle Williams in “The Fabelmans”; and Viola Davis in “The Woman King.”Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures; A24; Lynsey Weatherspoon/Orion Pictures; Focus Features; Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures, via Amblin Entertainment; Sony PicturesBy their very nature, awards shows are designed to exclude, barring all but a few from the glory of earning a nomination.Still, this year’s race for the best-actress Oscar is so stacked with contenders that I’m ready to comb the academy bylaws for a workaround. Are five slots really enough to honor a field this formidable? Couldn’t we swipe a few more from the wan best-actor category, at least?The truth is, even 10 slots would barely scratch the surface of what the best-actress race has to offer. Many of the season’s most acclaimed films, like “Tár” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” have given career-best signature roles to their leading ladies, though only one woman can collect the Oscar. Meanwhile, a vast array of up-and-comers, actresses playing against type and underdogs worth a second look will be vying simply to make the final five. Here are the women contending in this season’s most exciting category.The Front-runnersIn the fictional world of “Tár,” the conniving conductor played by Cate Blanchett has been showered with an absurd amount of awards. By the end of this season, Blanchett herself may keep pace with her character.The two-time Oscar winner’s bravura performance — she learned German, orchestra conducting and piano for the role — has netted the most notable prizes so far: In addition to nominations from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and Gotham Awards, Blanchett won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival and a pair of leading trophies from the New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. The last time Blanchett triumphed with the critics groups on both coasts, she was well on her way to winning her second Oscar, for “Blue Jasmine.”If she wins her third, the 53-year-old would be the youngest woman ever to reach that milestone. (Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand and Ingrid Bergman are the only other actresses to have won three Oscars each for their performances, while Katharine Hepburn holds the record with four.) But those laurels could also count against Blanchett in a race where her strongest competitor has never even been nominated and is angling for a historic win.Michelle Yeoh came close to snagging a supporting-actress nomination for “Crazy Rich Asians” (2018), but this time, she’s undeniable: The 60-year-old’s leading role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” as an ordinary woman who becomes the multiverse’s last hope, should earn Yeoh her first Oscar nod.The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.Rian Johnson:  The “Glass Onion” director explains the streaming plan for his “Knives Out” franchise.The role shows off everything Yeoh is capable of — including her athleticism, precise character work and sense of humor — and she has teared up in interviews while discussing how rarely a movie like that is offered to an Asian actress. In a recent awards round table, Yeoh told the other actresses, “I honestly look at all of you with such envy because you get an opportunity to try all the different roles, but we only get that opportunity maybe once in a long, long time.” Indeed, no Asian woman has ever won best actress, and after 94 ceremonies, the only winner of color in the category remains Halle Berry for “Monster’s Ball.”Can Yeoh pull off a landmark victory? It may help that she has a more sympathetic character arc: While Blanchett’s Lydia Tár compels and confounds in equal measure, Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang learns to drop her guard and let love in. But the competition in this category is fierce, and Blanchett isn’t the only heavyweight she’ll be contending with.For playing a character based on Steven Spielberg’s mother in “The Fabelmans,” Michelle Williams is likely to score her fifth Oscar nomination, which puts her behind Glenn Close and Amy Adams as the three living actresses who’ve been nominated the most times without having won. That gives Williams a potent “she’s due” narrative that could siphon votes from both Blanchett and Yeoh; it helps, too, that she gives her all to the part, playing a vivacious woman whose spirit couldn’t be contained by her marriage.The “Till” star Danielle Deadwyler won the first lead-performance trophy of the season at last month’s Gotham Awards, and she’ll need that momentum to overcome striking snubs from the Independent Spirits and Golden Globes. Still, her emotionally precise performance as the mother of Emmett Till has Oscar-friendly heft, since voters often gravitate toward an actor playing a historical figure.It’s rarer that Oscar voters make room for an action heroine in the best-actress category: Though Sigourney Weaver earned a nomination for “Aliens,” Charlize Theron found no traction for “Mad Max: Fury Road.” But there’s more to what Viola Davis does in “The Woman King” than just wielding a spear. Her fierce warrior is weary and her battle yells pack a cathartic punch. If the movie can make it into the best-picture lineup, Davis should be swept in.Damien Chazelle’s debauched Hollywood dramedy “Babylon” has earned wildly mixed reviews, but the director helmed two Oscar-winning performances — Emma Stone in “La La Land” and J.K. Simmons in “Whiplash” — and that pedigree has pushed Margot Robbie into contention for her role as a fledgling actress convinced of her own star quality. Nominations for “I, Tonya” and “Bombshell” prove that voters like Robbie in ambitious-striver mode, though the movie is stuffed so full of characters that she can’t quite dominate the proceedings like some of her best-actress competition.Oscar voters might consider an ingénue like Ana de Armas for her performance as Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde.” NetflixThe Women Waiting in the WingsCan two Oscar favorites overcome muted streaming launches in a year when theatrical contenders reign supreme? “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” hands Emma Thompson a sexually frank showcase role that had Oscar pundits buzzing at January’s Sundance Film Festival, but the film’s quiet June debut on Hulu drew fewer headlines. And despite a best-picture win this year for “CODA,” Apple TV+ still struggles to get all those “Ted Lasso” and “Severance” viewers to watch exclusive movies like “Causeway,” though the film features a strong, back-to-basics lead performance from Jennifer Lawrence.At least “Blonde” managed a streaming debut that got people talking, though the punishing Netflix drama about Marilyn Monroe had some awfully loud detractors. Can its star, Ana de Armas, rise above those pans? She managed a Golden Globe nomination, at least, and Oscar voters love to single out a rising ingénue, but the film will prove a tough sit in a year with plenty of better-received options.In the first hour of “Empire of Light,” Olivia Colman plays a movie-theater worker who opens herself up to an appealing romance, but in the second, the character goes off her meds and the movie goes off the rails. Even if those two halves don’t quite cohere, Colman definitely gets some big moments to play, and the actress has so quickly become an Oscar mainstay (over the last four years, she has been nominated three times and won once) that she should be considered a perennial option for the final five.Rooney Mara is spirited and sensitive in “Women Talking,” but the studio’s decision to campaign her as a lead actress is tenuous: In this ensemble drama about conflicted Mennonite women, Mara has scarcely more screen time than Claire Foy or Jessie Buckley, who are being positioned as supporting-actress contenders. Then again, Mara is no stranger to category high jinks: Six years ago, she was nominated as a supporting actress for “Carol,” even though she was clearly playing that film’s protagonist.Keke Palmer won a New York Film Critics Circle award for supporting actress for “Nope” even if it really was a lead performance. Universal PicturesThe Dark-Horse ContendersIf social media memes could be counted as accolades, Mia Goth would surely give Blanchett’s haul a run for her money: The young actress’s work in “Pearl,” in which she plays a farm girl who’d kill for stardom, has Twitter awash in Goth GIFs. Ti West’s technicolor horror drama isn’t the sort of thing that Oscar voters usually go for, but Goth is fearsomely committed, knocking out a tour de force, eight-minute monologue that’s topped only by a sustained closing shot of the actress smiling until she cries. At the very least, it’d make for one memorable Oscar clip.I hope that as the membership of the academy grows ever more international, more powerhouse performances will be recognized in languages other than English. In Park Chan-wook’s South Korean noir “Decision to Leave,” Tang Wei is a terrific femme fatale, while Léa Seydoux delivers her finest work as a single mother in the French drama “One Fine Morning.” And Oscar voters who regret snubbing Vicky Krieps for “Phantom Thread” could make it up to her by checking out the royal drama “Corsage,” in which she plays Empress Elisabeth of Austria with beguiling irreverence.Comedic actresses are too often undervalued by Oscar voters, but Aubrey Plaza spent 2022 proving she was capable of much more: Fans of her breakout performance in HBO’s “The White Lotus” should check out her dark, edgy work in the drama “Emily the Criminal,” which earned nominations from the Gothams and Indie Spirits. And “Nope,” which topped our critic A.O. Scott’s list of the best films of the year, boasts a charismatic star turn by Keke Palmer that recently earned a win from the New York Film Critics Circle, even if the group had to pretend she gave a supporting performance to get her out of the way of Blanchett’s leading win. Normally, I’d discourage that kind of category fraud, but in this crowded year, I sympathize with the desire to bend some rules. More

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      ‘The Woman King’ Surprises With $19 Million at the Box Office

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      The Gina Prince-Bythewood historical drama, starring Viola Davis, did at least 25 percent better than analysts had expected.It doesn’t have to be all sequels and superheroes.“The Woman King,” an original war drama starring Viola Davis, collected a strong $19 million in ticket sales for Sony Pictures Entertainment over the weekend, at least 25 percent more than analysts had expected. It was the best September opening for a similar film — pedigreed, awards-oriented, based on historical events — since Clint Eastwood’s “Sully” in 2016.Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood from a screenplay by Dana Stevens, “The Woman King” focuses on the Agojie, an all-female warrior troop in Africa in the 1800s. The trailer and other preview materials for the film prompted calls for a boycott on social media over concerns that it glossed over or ignored aspects of the slave trade. But “The Woman King” received rapturous reviews. More important, ticket buyers gave the PG-13 movie an A-plus grade in CinemaScore exit polls, which bodes well for “you’ve got to go see it” word of mouth.With little competition for older ticket buyers in the weeks ahead, “The Woman King” could ultimately generate in the vicinity of $100 million in the United States and Canada, box office analysts said. “These movies play to healthy multiples during their holdover weeks,” said David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy.“The Woman King” cost roughly $50 million to make, not including marketing, with Sony and eOne joining to pay for it.About 58 percent of the audience for “The Woman King” was over the age of 35, according to Sony, with 39 percent over 45. Black moviegoers made up 59 percent of the audience, with white ticket buyers the second-largest group.The R-rated “Barbarian” (from 20th Century Studios, a Disney division) was second at the domestic box office over the weekend, with about $6.3 million in ticket sales, for a two-week total of $20.9 million. The low-budget slasher prequel “Pearl” (A24) arrived in third place, collecting $3.1 million. More