Oppenheimer (Movie)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Oscars 2024 Predictions: Who Will Win Best Picture, Actor and Actress?

      by

      “Oppenheimer” is the best picture favorite, but the best actress race is full of suspense. Our expert predicts which films and artists will get trophies on Sunday.Best PictureOscar voters love biopics like “Oppenheimer.”Universal Pictures“American Fiction”“Anatomy of a Fall”“Barbie”“The Holdovers”“Killers of the Flower Moon”“Maestro”✓“Oppenheimer”“Past Lives”“Poor Things”“The Zone of Interest”Let’s be real: The best picture race is locked up for “Oppenheimer.” Christopher Nolan gave Oscar voters an IMAX-sized helping of their favorite genre — the great-man-of-history biopic — and after the movie made nearly a billion dollars worldwide, its path to the top Oscar was clear.Still, why not add some stakes to the situation? See whether you can sabotage the people in your Oscar pool by convincing them that a dark-horse candidate can topple Nolan’s mighty contender.Suggest, for example, that “The Holdovers” may mirror the little-film-that-could trajectory of “CODA” (though you’d better leave out that “The Holdovers” didn’t win the top prize at the Producers Guild Awards, as “CODA” so tellingly did). Note that the expansive international contingent of the academy could swing things toward “Anatomy of a Fall” (though if that were the case, we would have seen signs of it at last month’s BAFTA ceremony). Or mention that the path to best picture tends to go through the screenplay categories, and since “Oppenheimer” is in danger of losing a writing trophy to “American Fiction” or “Barbie,” maybe those movies are the real threats.Say anything you want! Have fun causing a little chaos. Just be sure to mark down “Oppenheimer” on your own ballot, because it’s winning.Best DirectorCillian Murphy, left, getting notes from his “Oppenheimer” director, Christopher Nolan.Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesJonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”✓Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”Though the 53-year-old Nolan has come to be regarded as the premier blockbuster director of his generation, one feat he still hasn’t managed is winning an Academy Award. That will finally change this weekend, completing a journey that started 15 years ago when the Oscars expanded the amount of best picture nominees after his film “The Dark Knight” was snubbed in the two top categories. Now, Nolan will win both.Best ActorMurphy has won major precursor awards for his performance. Universal PicturesBradley Cooper, “Maestro”Colman Domingo, “Rustin”Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”✓Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”Giamatti has a “he’s due” veteran narrative, and Cooper gave the sort of transformative performance that voters often flip for. But it’s the “Oppenheimer” star Murphy who is best positioned to take this Oscar for holding down the huge ensemble of the best picture front-runner. Contenders who have won the SAG and BAFTA awards, as Murphy has, don’t tend to falter at the finish line.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

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Best Picture Oscar Nominees: Behind the Scenes of ‘Oppenheimer,’ ‘Poor Things’ and More

      by

      In these videos, directors walked us through pivotal scenes from their Academy Award-nominated films.How do you go about crafting the perfect dream ballet? What is the most dynamic way to open your movie? How do you build a dance sequence centered around a character who has never danced before?These were some of the questions that faced the directors of the 10 best picture nominees for the 2024 Academy Awards, which air on Sunday. Below, you’ll hear from first-time feature directors (Celine Song and Cord Jefferson), the most seasoned of veterans (Martin Scorsese) and many others about what it took to get a scene just right.Greta Gerwig on ‘Barbie’Greta Gerwig, the co-writer and director of “Barbie,” narrates this musical sequence, including Ryan Gosling’s performance of the song “I’m Just Ken.”Warner Bros.Christopher Nolan on ‘Oppenheimer’The writer and director Christopher Nolan narrates the opening sequence from the film, starring Cillian Murphy.Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures, via Associated PressMartin Scorsese on‘Killers of the Flower Moon’The director Martin Scorsese narrates a sequence in which the character Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is cornered by investigators.Apple TV+Alexander Payne on ‘The Holdovers’Alexander Payne narrates a sequence in which two of the main characters, played by Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa, have a tough conversation in a liquor store.Seacia Pavao/Focus FeaturesCord Jefferson on ‘American Fiction’The screenwriter and director Cord Jefferson narrates a scene in which the film’s lead, played by Jeffrey Wright, comes up with an idea for a new novel.Claire Folger/Orion PicturesJustine Triet on ‘Anatomy of a Fall’The director Justine Triet narrates a sequence dissecting an argument between two of the movie’s central characters, played by Sandra Hüller and Samuel Theis.NeonBradley Cooper on ‘Maestro’The director Bradley Cooper narrates a sequence from the film in which he stars alongside Carey Mulligan. The scene involves an argument that takes place on Thanksgiving Day.Jason McDonald/NetflixCeline Song on ‘Past Lives’Two characters, played by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, reunite after many years in this scene narrated by the writer and director Celine Song.Jon Pack/A24Yorgos Lanthimos on ‘Poor Things’The director Yorgos Lanthimos narrates a sequence from the film in which the characters played by Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo share a dance.Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight PicturesJonathan Glazer on‘The Zone of Interest’The director Jonathan Glazer narrates a sequence in this Holocaust drama that takes place in the home of the lead characters.A24 More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      In ‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘The Zone of Interest,’ We Hear What We Are

      by

      Humans have spent much of history coming up with novel ways to exterminate one another, but the defining feature of modern violence is its technologization. With a chilling practicality, systems and tools designed to enhance productivity can also separate the killers from the killing, stifling pesky human impulses like empathy and conscience. But a bomb has only one purpose. So does a concentration camp.Both “Oppenheimer” and “The Zone of Interest” tangle with the psychology involved in creating highly efficient killing machines. Choosing to center on people who make and deploy lethal tools at roughly the same historical moment — an era of unprecedented technological advancement — the filmmakers faced a challenge. Viscerally depicting the psychic gulf between methods of massacre and their creators is not simple in a medium like film. Cinema tends to enforce closeness between us and the characters; we see the wrinkles in their skin, understand them as humans, feel their emotions and project our own onto them. To portray cognitive dissonance requires something unexpected.The solution, for both of these movies, lay in the second most powerful tool available to filmmakers: sound. Not the music, but the knocks and steps and whizzes and shrieks. Generally we’re used to the sound in a film supporting the images. In both “Zone” and “Oppenheimer,” though, sound plays against image in a way that draws attention to itself, disconcerting the audience. Both films are up for Academy Awards in multiple categories, including best picture, which means their nominations for sound design are easy to overlook. But the way each uses sound is striking. It’s engineered as an unsettling agent, a means to carry moral weight from the screen to the audience on a level that approaches the subconscious.THE DIRECTOR OF “OPPENHEIMER,” Christopher Nolan, has long played around with sound in his films, which are often very loud and propelled by an intense, driving score. (Watching one of his films can feel at times as if you’re immersed in one very, very long montage.) Nolan also prefers not to rerecord actors’ dialogue, leaving them mixed into the sound as they were recorded during the performance, which can make them a little hard to hear. He knows, and he doesn’t mind.“Oppenheimer,” with sound design by the frequent Nolan collaborator Richard King, is no different. Most of the three-hour movie, about the creation of the atomic bomb, is guys in suits, talking about fission and geopolitics and other brainy matters over a pulsating score by Ludwig Goransson. But right around the two-hour mark, something startling occurs.If you’ve seen the film, you know the moment. The scientists of the Manhattan Project and select military officials have gathered in the New Mexico desert for the Trinity test, the first trial detonation of a nuclear bomb. It is the wee hours of July 16, 1945. If the test goes well, two more bombs will be deployed in mere weeks to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese — and, the scientists hope, end the war.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

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Sex and Silence: What This Awards Season Tells Us About Hollywood

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Oppenheimer’ Wins Producers Guild Award. Is the Best-Picture Oscar Next?

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      How to Watch the 2024 SAG Awards: Date, Time and Streaming

      by

      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

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      BAFTA Awards 2024 Winners: ‘Oppenheimer’ Sweeps

      by

      “The Holdovers” and “Poor Things” were also honored at the British equivalent of the Oscars, while “Saltburn” and “Barbie” left empty-handed.“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie about the development of the atomic bomb, swept the board at the EE British Academy Film Awards in London on Sunday.The movie won seven awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars, including best film, best director for Nolan and best leading actor for Cillian Murphy for his portrayal of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.It beat four other nominees to the best film prize, including “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s take on a Frankenstein story and “The Holdovers,” Alexander Payne’s comedy about a boarding school teacher stuck looking after a student over the holidays. It also beat “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour epic about the Osage murders of the 1920s, and “Anatomy of a Fall,” Justine Triet’s multilingual courtroom drama about a woman accused of murdering her husband.In the days leading up to the awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs, most British movie critics predicted that “Oppenheimer” would win big. Tom Shone, writing in The Times of London, said that Nolan’s “magnum opus” was an instant classic. “Sometimes the front-runner is the front-runner for a reason,” he added.Still, the prizes were Nolan’s first director wins at the BAFTAs, despite several previous nominations for his movies “Inception” and “Dunkirk.”At the ceremony at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Nolan, who grew up in London, seemed a little overwhelmed by all the accolades. Accepting the best director prize, he called the award “an incredible honor” then reminisced about his parents dragging him to the festival hall, a major classical music venue as a boy. In fact, he said, his younger brother, now also a TV and filmmaker, had beaten him to the hall’s stage “by about 40 years” because he once took part in a performance of “The Nutcracker.”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

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Robert Downey Jr. and Christopher Nolan on ‘Oppenheimer.’

      by

      Christopher Nolan and Robert Downey Jr. have each worked on some of the most lucrative and beloved superhero films of our time, many of them with enormous star-filled casts, so how is it that the two had never worked together on a movie before now, superhero or otherwise?Their paths crossed, sort of, on “Batman Begins” (more on that later). But it took a different kind of summer blockbuster, a three-hour biopic about the triumphs and travails of a theoretical physicist working in New Mexico in the 1940s, to finally bring them together.Since its release in July, “Oppenheimer” has amassed nearly $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales, earned critical raves and been nominated for scores of awards, including 13 Oscars. Among those nominations are three for Nolan, 53, for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay, and a best supporting actor one for Downey, 58, for his performance as Lewis Strauss, the title character’s Salieri-like nemesis. The nominations are hardly their first — counting “Oppenheimer,” Downey has received three, Nolan, eight — but neither has ever won before and now they’re both considered front-runners.The day after the Oscar nominations were announced, the two got together on the Universal studio lot to talk about how they first met, what winning an Oscar would mean to them, and why so many people didn’t notice that that balding, sweaty guy who had it in for Oppenheimer was actually Robert Downey Jr.These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Nolan working with Downey on “Oppenheimer.”Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesThis is your first time working together. How did you two meet?ROBERT DOWNEY JR. Here’s what I never got to ask you. We met in a lobby somewhere. You were casting, was it “Batman Begins” or “The Dark Knight”?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