My weird little oscars
Asking friends who they would nominate (in a sunnier film landscape).
Feeling especially ambivalent about this year’s crop of Oscar nominees, I turned to my smart and savvy friends for their takes on what the Academy Awards have missed—both past and present—and what they would reward if they had the power to do so. There are lots of sweet picks that I love here, as well as some that are new to me. Enjoy reading and let me know what you would add to this lineup yourself!
Speaking of film, my interview with Gia Coppola and Pamela Anderson ran in AnOther this week! It was one of my favourite interviews to conduct because both Coppola and Anderson were so thoughtful and receptive to my questions, giving them full consideration and demonstrating their passion for the film and each other in each reply. You can read it here.
Winnie Wang, Critic/Film Programmer (@wrinkledlinen)
Relationship to the Oscars? I used to have an intense and serious relationship with the Oscars. In sixth grade, my speech arts topic was the history of the Academy Awards. (Hugh Jackman’s opening medley for the 81st edition really won me over.) In high school, I’d participate in my friend’s parents’ annual Oscar pool and for my final project in grade 12 statistics, I attempted to devise methods of predicting winners based on genre, country of production, and other award outcomes earlier in the season (SAG, Golden Globes, DGA, etc). I’d memorize winners and useless pieces of trivia too. Did you know Cate Blanchett is the only person to win an Oscar for portraying an Oscar winner?
In recent years, I’ve divested that extreme interest from the awards because while I see the value of nominations and wins for independent films, I’m wary of the fact that this legacy institution—whose voters are overwhelmingly white, male and over 60—holds so much power over the industry.
Oscars routine/tradition/plans? I used to obsessively track red carpet looks and liveblog my reactions, but my Tumblr days are sadly over. If anyone is hosting a watch party, please invite me!
Performance or technical achievement you’d go back and honour? Chloë Sevigny in The Last Days of Disco is award-worthy to me.1
Also, The Social Network for Best Picture over The King’s Speech, and Roger Deakins for Best Cinematography on Skyfall.
Your (un-nominated) Best Picture this year? All We Imagine As Light.
Dream host? Jenny Slate. I think she’s the perfect balance of hilarious, wacky, and earnest. (See here.)
Iman, Reluctant C*nephile
Relationship to the Oscars? The Oscars played a major role in shaping my relationship to film until my tastes shifted and I learned more about the economics of awards campaigning and that the first Oscars ceremony was a bid to dissuade Hollywood workers from unionizing, from then on I began to see it as an institution that limited people's ability to imagine a different industry. I'm into the theatrics of the awards cycle, the looks served and how it occasionally helps deserving talent access wider resources but the whole ordeal is largely more made up than most made up things! Which is all to say I am now squarely, #AntiOscars.
Oscars routine/tradition/plans? I have insulated myself from the Oscars best as I can by muting any related terms, and will probably put on a film or read a book, anything but watching the ceremony.
Performance or technical achievement you’d go back and honour? I love children's film performances! Some of my most fond Oscar memories are of Sunny Pawar and Alan S. Kim receiving acclaim for their roles in Lion and Minari, respectively. The earnest playfulness and respect which the press treats them with cuts through all my awards cynicism. So I would go back and honour Garry Cadenat as Jose in Sugar Cane Alley - a seminal work which deserves to take up more space in film discourses, outstanding for many reasons including the performance of one Mr. Cadenat! He plays a child acutely aware of the hopes resting on him with a moving levity and grace that beautifully emblematizes the film's themes of community and education.
Your (un-nominated) Best Picture this year? The Beast directed by Bertrand Bonello. I feel like as a whole, film has largely struggled to articulate the unique character of contemporary times post-social media. There are some notable exceptions - We're All Going to The World's Fair, The African Desperate, Anhell69, Do Not Expect Too Much from The End of the World - amongst others, but The Beast is distinct to me for creating a grammar simultaneously rooted in history, yet specific to this moment, on an epic scale. I saw it twice in theatres, the screenings only two days apart and still hold a grudge against anyone I told to watch it who didn't...
Dream host? Tsai Ming-Liang and Lee Kang-Sheng, why not?
Akosua Adasi, PhD student & writer of
Relationship to the Oscars? Growing up, I figure that the Oscars were the ultimate awards show, a genuine reflection of achievements in film. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve of course learned that the Oscars are really only a tiny reflection of the film industry (they’re local, one might say) and not exactly representative of all cinema has to offer. But I still think it’s really special when a movie you love or thought was brilliant gets recognized (RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys getting nominated for two awards this year, for example) and it’s fun to come together around it with friends.
Oscars routine/tradition/plans? Last year was the first time I really committed to sitting down and watching the Oscars. Several of my friends jammed into my living room to eat British candy (Percy Pig anyone?) and cast our ballots. I’m doing something similar this year so I guess it’s becoming a tradition. I just need to get my hands on some floor cushions.
Performance or technical achievement you’d go back and honour? I found out last year that Lana del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” (The Great Gatsby) wasn’t even NOMINATED for an Oscar which is totally baffling. That needs to be rectified immediately. I also need them to expand the costume category or add a category for most memorable/bonkers costume. There were a lot of things about The Substance that I didn’t care for. But the bright yellow coat and red gloves that Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle wears when she’s trying to be incognito? That has to be celebrated.
Your (un-nominated) Best Picture this year? Anyone who knows me knows I rode hard for Challengers and I still do. I enjoyed a lot of movies last year but it was one of the few that really lit me up and that I thought about constantly. Some filmmakers show a disdain for their audiences, whether in their work or how they talk about it after. Guadagnino, thankfully, is not one of them and it shows in his movies. Also, he’s a man who understands the importance of Josh O’Connor’s thigh!
Dream host? Baby, it’s Keke Palmer!
Maya Ayed, Corporate girly who is chronically online (@bettybo0b)
Relationship to the Oscars? Frenemy.
Oscars routine/tradition/plans? Reading
’ coverage.Performance or technical achievement you’d go back and honour? Brittany Murphy and Dakota Fanning in Uptown Girls as well as Sarah Edwards for Costume Design.
Your (un-nominated) Best Picture this year? Lisa Frankenstein.
Dream host? Ayo Edebri.
Hannah Ziegler, Writer
Relationship to the Oscars? I remember the Melissa Leo speech and some of the gowns. I used to watch with my family and the ceremony felt big and important in ways that baffled and delighted me. I feel much the same now.
Oscars routine/tradition/plans? Every year, my cousin organizes an Oscars ballot contest. I have won exactly once and my prize was seeing The Batman with him and his wife. I am still figuring out my Oscars tradition in London, where the awards start streaming at 11 p.m local time. This year, I am thinking of going to my local cinema’s screening party or watching at home with my roommates.
Performance or technical achievement you’d go back and honour? Nicole Kidman in To Die For! Her most formidable and funniest role. Ran so I, Tonya could walk.
Your (un-nominated) Best Picture this year? I like gentle movies, the ones that quietly seize you. All We Imagine As Light lingered in my mind for weeks; it’s painfully beautiful. A real shame that it went un-nominated this year, but reviews like this make me hopeful that it will be watched widely.
Dream host? Ayo Edebri.
Saffron Maeve, Critic/Curator (@saffronmaeve)
Relationship to the Oscars? The Oscars are a bloated exercise for the Hollywood elite to affirm their status, sure, but I’m a real sucker for the petty bits… I like flouncy dresses and rivalries!
Oscars routine/tradition/plans? My partner, friends, and I have a casual Oscars ritual where we order a glut of Chinese food and drink ourselves into caring enough about the categories. (One friend is a bartender and creates themed cocktails to speed the process along.)
Regrettably, this year, I’m in Missouri for work over the weekend. I’ll maybe try to follow the festivities at a bar or hotel, or live-text the group chat through the thick border of FOMO.
Performance or technical achievement you’d go back and honour? Sayombhu Mukdeeprom for Trap!!!!
Your (un-nominated) Best Picture this year? The best case scenario is Nickel Boys—and I do hope it wins—but my Best Picture is Victor Erice’s Close Your Eyes. The Academy loves cinéma about cinéma, but only when it affirms the machine; a genuinely touching project about the gaps and falsities embedded within the medium didn’t stand a chance, I guess.
Dream host? Wallace Shawn
Abby Lacelle, Fulltime reader, parttime worrier; PhD student in English at UofT
The Oscars, to me, are about “me.” “I” carry with me my own little special interests—my peccadillos, preferences, passions—and then, because it’s award season, I can lambast anyone—particularly the Academy—for not celebrating the art that I think matters, for missing the cultural mark. The select nominations are so often unsatisfactory—they never encompass the wideness or nicheness of our thematic, narrative, and visual longings as viewers, so we have to ourselves for ourselves reach out past these subpar stand-ins and gesture toward our desires.
Well, I care deeply about reproductive justice—I love to watch visceral birth scenes, abortion scenes, sex scenes. I like to think about procreation and creation as always acting out on each other. To that end, the three films on my mind this season are April by Dea Kulumbegashvili, My First Film by Zia Anger, and The Girl with the Needle by Magnus von Horn. Only one of them—the least interesting of the three—is nominated, but each invites viewers to think about the cyclical and interrelated histories, presents, and futures of reproduction and (artistic) production. The creature/entity in April is hauntingly designed and I find it impossible to settle on a single interpretation of her; she, the eerie score, and long- drawn-out shots create a tense, pleading masterpiece. I’ll be elaborating my reading of this text in forthcoming writing, but I’ll easter egg: abortion, when represented as Kulumbegashvili does it—slowly and deliberately, with attention to speed, sound and skin—is an act of creation. My First Film, on the other hand, is snappier, a silly kind of earnest, and, in it, the necessary rehearsals for (re)production are laid bare: Anger weaves iterative re-presentations of creative processes and events in order not only to reckon with them or make them more real (or, sometimes, strategically unreal), but to become closer to the persons involved (which, like April, allows for a framing of abortion as not a termination of relationality, but an opening-up to, through the process of termination, a deeper relation to self and persons already present). The messaging in The Girl with the Needle is less clear, less hopeful, and I’ll leave it up to you whether von Horn is punishing to his female characters or cautioning the audience against the real consequences of austere reproductive care. It reminded me, visually and somewhat thematically of Persona. In any case, now more than ever, I believe the way we image our world will have direct impact on how it exists in front of us. It’s special, this invitation to pool together our ideal visions, our longed-for stories, the award-winners of our hearts.
Tia (me)
Relationship to the Oscars? I remember watching it for the first time at my grandma’s farm and being very locked in for some reason, but also complaining that the Olsen twins weren’t there, haha. Now I am generally a big fan of all the spectacle and I look forward to the night. I love a moment where a winner is really humbled by the experience of achieving a dream they worked hard for—I’m a sucker for anyone with a dream, anyone still this passionate about art and making things in these trying times. That said, I increasingly feel dispirited by the films that get nods—truly a parade of milquetoast liberalism designed to comfort the elite voters and do very little to push the form, especially this year.
Oscars routine/tradition/plans? Growing up it was spaghetti with the family. In college one year I was living in Italy and my roommates and I got up at like 4am and made pancakes with Nutella and watched very quietly so as not to disturb the other 10 girls on our floor who were still asleep. Sometimes I do the show with friends or family, but honestly I also want to be able to focus and not miss what’s going on through side conversations, so viewing parties aren’t really my jam unless it’s a small group. I feel much less invested this year as I haven’t seen a lot of the nominated films—and from what I have heard about them, I don’t care to!
Performance or technical achievement you’d go back and honour? Best actress to Angelica Huston as Morticia Addams…. or at least a nomination. Comedic performances seldom get their flowers and she nails everything from the voice, to little fluttering eye movements, whispy gestures, and creepy grins. If you (I) asked me on another day, I might have also said one of the leads from This Is Spinal Tap or Napoleon Dynamite :P
Your (un-nominated) Best Picture this year? I wrote about my top films of 2024 here, but they were La Chimera and My First Film, respectively. La Chimera seems like it would have at least got an International Feature nomination if it had come out later in the year, but My First Film is too small and meta for the Oscars… though seriously so good, both on a narrative and formal level.
Dream host? I have two answers to this: a) Keke Palmer—multi-talented, full of energy, could surely work a room even that stiff, b) Hannah Einbeinder and Jean Smart, probably because I am rewatching Hacks, but also because of the multi-generational crossover that TV execs would love. They both also have a kind of old Hollywood sensibility that magically crosses over with very contemporary humour, and that mix seems ideal for the Oscars.
I also endorse this!
How excellent is this! This is my new Oscar’s tradition