have many nominations It’s not supposed to be a favorite. Remember the recent case in the Goya of ‘Alcarràs’. ‘Everything at once everywhere’, with 11 nominations, has broken the bank in this year’s Oscar nominations, but we’ll see what the real situation of the film is once the gala ends next Sunday at the Dolby Theater in The Angels.
This mix of science fiction, fantasy, action, martial arts, comedy and adventure, with Michelle Yeoh as the savior of humanity after getting lost in a few multiverses due to an Interdimensional rupture, it has been made by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known as The Daniels. They were much more inspired by his debut feature, ‘Swiss army man’ (2016), an independent production awarded at the Sitges and Sundance festivals, starring Paul Dano and a Daniel Radcliffe obstinate –with good reason– in leaving Harry Potter behind, and remembered for the flatulent corpse that accompanies the castaway on an island.
Yeoh, who is like a fish in water in the martial arts sequences, won the Golden Globe for best actress in the comedy section, an unequivocal sign that this film can be rewarded for its humor, its conception of the multiverse or its action scenes, so it is normal that it starts as a favorite in a certainly strange year where, in reality, there is no favourite.
The Daniels favoritism
This time, academics have made a wide sampler in 10 films that touch all possible sticks: entertainment and spectacle, pacifism in war, intimate biographies, camera stories, feminist cinema, ‘biopics’ of musical stars and films denouncing abuses of power. We’ll see if the détente of the Daniels’ film will take the Oscar as in the previous edition it was taken by ‘CODA: the sounds of silence’ when everything seemed to indicate that Jane Campion would win it with ‘The power of the dog’.
‘Coda’ entered stealthily, without making noise, while ‘Everything at once everywhere’ It’s been making noise for weeks. It must also be taken into account that it is produced by A24, a company that is bidding very strongly in the current American film stock market and that has changed the face of ‘arty’ horror films (‘The Witch’, ‘Hereditary’ , ‘The Lighthouse’, ‘Midsommar, ‘X”), and ‘indie’ cinema (‘Lady Bird’, ‘Moonlight’, ‘Under Silver Lake’, ‘Red rocket’, ‘Background noise’, ‘The Whale’, ‘Aftersun’).
If the favoritism is marked by the numerical condition, it would be followed by ‘Souls in pain in Isherim’ and ‘All quiet on the front’, both with nine nominations. The first is an excellent minimal story done with a tragic sense of humor. Quite the opposite of the Daniels’ proposal. In any case, it is strange that this nominee Colin Farrell and not Brendan Gleeson, since the prominence is absolute for both and the work of one cannot be understood without that of the other. The overwhelming logic of the Oscars, which always rewards interpreters of characters with physical or mental disabilities, would slide towards another Brendan, the obese Fraser from ‘The Whale’.
The first Oscar for a Latin actress?
As for the new adaptation of the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, being German, it is true that it has an American co-production, but it is still the annual proposal of Netflix, a company obsessed with finally winning the Oscar. They had ‘Blonde’, but it hasn’t been well received and maybe it’s just Ana de Armas meets the demands in the role of Marilyn Monroe. It is also difficult for ‘All Quiet Front’ to repeat the double success of ‘Parasites’ in 2019, when the South Korean film won the Oscar for best foreign language film and; It is not even a favorite in this second category, in which ‘Argentina, 1985’ appears better positioned.
They follow ‘Elvis’ with eight nominations –perhaps too many for the film about the myth of ‘rock’n’roll’ that was devoured precisely by the Hollywood machine– and ‘The Fabelmans’ with seven. One way or another, Spielberg is always around, although he has only won the Oscar for best film on one occasion, in the distant 1993 with ‘Schindler’s List’; ‘The Fabelmans’ is more personal.
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The options for ‘Ellas hablan’ do not seem so clear, despite its feminist manifesto; nor for ‘TÁR’ and her intelligent speech about the abuses of power, although Cate Blanchett is emerging as a favorite in her fight with Michelle Yeoh or Ana de Armas. ‘Top gun: Maverick’ and ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ will sweep the technical awards, without a doubt, although it would be funny if the statuette for best film went to the returnor Tom Cruise as a fighter air pilot when the original, ‘Top gun (Idols the air)’ was settled in 1986 with a single Oscar for best original song.
The ‘outsider’ remains ‘The triangle of sadness’. Ruben Östlund’s film has slipped into the category of best film when the logical thing would have been for it to compete in the foreign film category beyond the ethyl contest of the American Woody Harrelson as the Marxist captain of the luxury liner.