Tomorrow, the Oscar nominations will be announced bright and early for the 96th Academy Awards. It’s also the date of the primary in New Hampshire. It’s hard not to connect these two things. The Oscars are now fully merged with the Democratic Party as one organism. The same reason Trump is making them sweat the polls is why people are tuning out the Oscars.
The movie that won’t be announced tomorrow is Sound of Freedom, which landed in the top ten box office of the year, beating both Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. To Hollywood and the Oscars, however, it is like it never happened. Here’s David Mamet, one of the great writers Hollywood ever employed, on this film:
The success of Sound of Freedom is a cautionary tale that the Counterculture revolution is nearly upon us. It signals the same thing as a potential win by Trump. A shift in the public consciousness as the people who have been abandoned rise up and demand equal representation - at the box office and at the White House.
Both the downfall of the Democratic Party and Hollywood are hard to watch, as they have shaped most of my adult life. Movies used to be so good. Even the bad ones seem like masterpieces now. Great movies winning awards are a thing of the past as dogma and propaganda have overtaken free expression.
The hope is that Barbenheimer can save the Oscars as it briefly saved the box office before the actors and writers went on strike, bringing the whole thing to its knees again.
Maybe, they hope, the ratings won’t be terrible, thanks to two very popular movies. Maybe they’ll be right. Hiring Jimmy Kimmel as the host is not a great sign. Why would anyone tune in if they won’t even tune in to his late-night “comedy”?
As this chart indicates, they did better with Kimmel than with no host (at least they made that decision, which was smart). It’s easy to see how Trump’s win led to their inevitable collapse. When you treat half the country like terrorists, this is the end result. It wasn’t just Trump supporters who tuned out, though. It was anyone who didn’t want to listen to the agonizing therapy sessions awards shows have become.
The bigger problem is that the Oscars are now used as yet another propaganda arm for the Democratic Party. They believe that if someone can win an award on national television, they can get on their soapbox and give a rousing speech as Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez cheer them on.
The short film categories are particularly dire this year. Most people don’t pay attention to these, but usually, they are some of the best offerings worldwide. Now, many of them reflect the ideology and religion of the New Left because, of course, they do. They have to. Everything is politics.
Take, for example, the terrible propaganda “documentary” short called the ABCs of Book Banning. If it somehow misses tomorrow, that would mean the voters thought it was as phony as I did, dragging out these poor kids to spout the gobbledegook of the woke.
But I fear it will not only be nominated but probably win, and someone will get on stage and make a truly terrible speech and move the needle for the Democrats heading into an election year.
But the poor kids are being used as pawns in this sick little game. They sound like kidnapped hostages or children of cult members.
Here is the link to the Paramount-Plus short documentary by MTV Films called the ABCs of Book Banning.
And a clip:
Pedro Almodovar and Wes Anderson have directed Live Action shorts that might get in, with stars like Ethan Hawke, Ralph Fiennes, and David Oyelowo crowding out what is usually a category for up-and-comers. This is another sign that the film industry is in trouble if actors and directors are going back to making shorts.
Just like the Democratic Party will have to learn its lessons the hard way, so too will Hollywood have to go nearly bankrupt before it remembers why it built an industry in the first place - to serve the people.
It was the best way to escape the misery of everyday life, to disappear into the movie theater and slip into another world. It was my salvation as a kid. Well, that’s gone now. Movies are no longer a relief. They’re an exhausting drag much of the time. We can see the strings. We know what they’re doing and don’t care about us anymore.
Either they serve up badly written franchise junk, or they’re trying to fix us and turn us into them. They don’t seem capable anymore of caring about the box office enough to care about the people who really do crave a good story, like the many who turned out to see Sound of Freedom.
Thankfully, there are some movies up for the Oscar that will be nominated tomorrow that are actually good. One is Oppenheiemr, the frontrunner. The other is The Holdovers, the underdog. Another is American Fiction, which calls out the Woketopians in the best way. There’s also Barbie, which has become a cultural phenomenon.
Otherwise, though, much of what is on offer is about reflecting the ideology of the New Left. This is especially true with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which sacrifices the plot of the great book about the first case that formed the FBI into a long apology for our barbaric and genocidal past.
Killers of the Flower Moon isn’t entirely a bad movie, but it is almost four hours long and feels like it would have been a great miniseries on, say, Apple TV.
Oppenheimer Predicted to Land 10-12, But Won’t Sweep
Most people don’t know that the Academy expanded their Best Picture ballot in 2008 from five to ten because why would they? Most have long since tuned out what happens in the Oscar race, except for obsessives like me. It all goes back to Christopher Nolan, whose film, The Dark Knight, missed out on a nomination, generating so much controversy that they felt they had no choice but to expand to ten nominees.
In so doing, however, they now must use a ranked-choice ballot to find the winner. We haven’t had Oscar sweeps since then. Last year’s winner broke the record with 8. If Oppenheimer can match that total, it will be considered a sweep, even if it probably would have won 10-12 back in the day.
Oppenheimer might not even win Best Picture at all. The pattern lately is that the sweeping epics don’t win, but the smaller character dramas do. Gravity lost to 12 Years a Slave, La La Land lost to Moonlight, Roma lost to Green Book.
If Oppenheimer is to lose, it looks like the movie that could do it is The Holdovers, easily one of the year's best films. What makes this movie great is that it is a “holdover” from the days when Hollywood made movies to give something back to audiences.
I won’t complain if The Holdovers wins. Everyone should see this movie and remember what storytelling used to be like. But for Hollywood and the Oscars, Oppenheimer is the better bet. A win for a three-hour, R-rated movie about a scientist that made $300 mil here and nearly a billion internationally would show audiences that Hollywood still cares about them and that the Oscars are back.
Here are my Oscar predictions if you’d like to play along.
Best Picture
Oppenheimer
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Barbie
American Fiction
Poor Things
Maestro
Past Lives
Anatomy of a Fall
The Zone of Interest
Alt: The Color Purple, All of Us Strangers
Best Director
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Greta Gerwig, Barbie
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Alexander Payne, The Holdovers
Alt: Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest; Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall
Best Actor
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
Alt: Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon; Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers
Best Actress
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Emma Stone, Poor Things
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Margot Robbie, Barbie
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Alt: Annette Bening, Nyad; Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Origin
Supporting Actor
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Alt: Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things ; Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers; Willem Dafoe, Poor Things; Matt Damon, Oppenheimer
Supporting Actress
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Penelope Cruz, Ferrari
Sandra Huller, The Zone of Interest
Alt: Jodie Foster, Nyad; America Ferrara, Barbie; Julianne Moore, May December
Adapted Screenplay
Oppenheimer
American Fiction
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
Barbie
Alt: The Zone of Interest, All of Us Strangers
Original Screenplay
The Holdovers
Anatomy of a Fall
Past Lives
Maestro
May December
Editing
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Zone of Interest
Poor Things
The Holdovers
Cinematography
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
The Zone of Interest
Costumes
Poor Things
Barbie
Maestro
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Production Design
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Zone of Interest
International Feature
The Zone of Interest
20 Days in Mariupol
The Taste of Things
20 Days in Mariupol
The Monk and the Gun
Documentary Feature
American Symphony
20 Days in Mariupol
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
Beyond Utopia
Four Daughters
Animated Feature
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Boy and the Heron
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Elemental
Wish
Score
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Poor Things
Indiana Jones: The Dial of Destiny
Song
What Was I made For — Barbie
I’m Just Ken — Barbie
The Fire Inside - Flamin' Hot
Road to Freedom – Rustin
It Never Went Away - American Symphony
Makeup and Hairstyling
Maestro
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Golda
Sound
Oppenheimer
Maestro
Killers of the Flower Moon
Ferrari
The Zone of Interest
Visual Effects
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3
The Creator
Poor Things
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Animated Short (tentative)
Once Upon a Studio
WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko
Humo
Boom
I'm Hip
Documentary Short
The ABCs of Book Banning (terrible film but it is a religion to them)
Camp Courage
Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games
The Last Song from Kabul
Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó
Live Action Short
The After
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
The Anne Frank Gift Shop
Strange Way of Life
Can the Oscar Nominations Bring Viewers Back?