In just over six weeks, an Oscars night like no other will take place in Hollywood.
In the shadow of the wildfires which are still raging and have so devastated Los Angeles, destroying 10,000 homes, the event on Sunday, March 2, will be muted, sombre and reflective when it is usually anything but.
The nominations were announced yesterday – with Demi Moore, 62, in the running for Best Actress, and poised to hit a career high few believed she’d ever reach for her role as a washed-up actress and fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance.
She comes into awards season as the clear favourite after her win – her first ever award – and that emotional speech at the Golden Globes.
There were Oscar snubs for fellow long-serving A-listers Angelina Jolie, 49, and Pamela Anderson, 57, who had hopes of landing best actress nods for their roles in Maria and The Last Showgirl respectively.
Nothing, either, for Nicole Kidman, also 57 and the hardest-campaigning patron of middle-aged sex-bombs, in the ‘feminist’ erotic drama Babygirl.
Despite a huge media campaign and surely more on-screen orgasms than any previous mainstream
cinematic release, it turns out the 10,000 voting members of the Academy were not impressed.
In just over six weeks, an Oscars night like no other will take place in Hollywood. Demi Moore (pictured), 62, is in the running for Best Actress, and poised to hit a career high few believed she’d ever reach for her role as a washed-up actress and fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance
The star of Anora, a comedy about a Russian-American sex worker, Karla Sofia Gascon (pictured), is the first trans woman to gain a best actress nomination
The bookies think Brady Corbet’s three hour 15 minute epic The Brutalist about Hungarian immigrant architect Laszlo Toth, played by Adrien Brody (pictured), is in the lead – just
A measure of how unusual the 2025 Oscars will be was the low-key response to the nominations yesterday.
It is customary for nominees to release a gushing statement around the unveiling of the list, but most responded with simple, respectful acknowledgements rather than lavish gratitude.
In fact, until yesterday morning, none of the nominees had posted on social media since the night of the Golden Globes on January 7. The fires started that day and were out of control by January 8.
La La Land is still reeling from the horror of the all-consuming wildfires, and even if the nominees and the studios are in the mood to party – there’s an awareness that it would be considered unacceptable.
The Academy has indicated that there will be no big song and dance numbers on the night unlike last year’s barnstorming ‘I’m Just Ken’ from Barbie.
Instead of razzle dazzle, there will be a focus on honouring the emergency services and paying tribute to the power of the creativity of Tinseltown.
A letter from the Academy’s CEO, Bill Kramer, and president Janet Yang, sent to all members on Wednesday, confirmed that the ceremony will ‘celebrate the work that unites us as a global film community and acknowledge those who fought so bravely against the wildfires’.
There were Oscar snubs for fellow long-serving A-listers Angelina Jolie (pictured), 49, and Pamela Anderson , 57, who had hopes of landing best actress nods for their roles in Maria and The Last Showgirl respectively
A number of well-informed observers think the bookies are missing a trick and that the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, has all the momentum necessary to pull off an upset. That film, which has just come out and stars Timothee Chalamet (pictured), is being met with enthusiasm by all of the Academy voting branches
‘We will honour Los Angeles as the city of dreams, showcasing its beauty and resilience, as well as its role as a beacon for film-makers and creative visionaries for over a century,’ the letter continued.
‘We will reflect on recent events while highlighting the strength, creativity, and optimism that defines Los Angeles and our industry.’
The nominations were delayed twice because of the fire emergency, and the Awards Nominees Luncheon, usually a key part of the campaigning, has been cancelled and its $250,000 cost donated to charity by the Academy.
The question of whether anyone will dare to throw a post-Oscars A-list party full of millionaires hosing each other down with congratulations and champagne remains moot.
Even the Vanity Fair party – the ne plus ultra of every Oscars night since 1994 – looks likely to return only in an amended, toned down form with some kind of charitable element. If at all. Organisers are still declining to comment.
It could be worse, of course: The Grammys which precede the Oscars on February 3 will be partly a telethon. The organisations which usually throw parties have all either cancelled or pivoted to turn celebrations into fundraisers.
As for what happens on stage on the night, the Best Picture race has seldom been closer.
There’s no clear favourite at this stage and, due to the wildfires, there will be limited, if any, campaigning in the last stretch.
The bookies think Brady Corbet’s three hour 15 minute epic The Brutalist about Hungarian immigrant architect Laszlo Toth, played by Adrien Brody, is in the lead – just.
Much is remarkable about the film, not least its budget of just $10 million – a bargain in a world where $100 million was spent on recreating Robbie Williams as a chimpanzee in Better Man (incidentally a huge flop).
Close behind it, according to the bookies, are Anora, a comedy about a Russian-American sex worker, and Emilia Perez, a genre-bending film by auteur Jacques Audiard about a Mexican cartel boss who fakes his death in order to be reborn as a woman following a secret sex change operation.
The star of that film, Karla Sofia Gascon, is the first trans woman to gain a best actress nomination.
Emilia Perez leads the pack with 13 nominations, the most ever for a foreign language film. It is on Netflix in the UK, US and Canada and could furnish the streamer with its first ever best picture win.
However, a number of well-informed observers think the bookies are missing a trick and that the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, has all the momentum necessary to pull off an upset.
That film, which has just come out and stars Timothee Chalamet, is being met with enthusiasm by all of the Academy voting branches.
Historically, the Oscars love a biopic and director James Mangold’s Walk The Line, the Johhny Cash story, won an Oscar in 2005. Apparently, it is particularly appealing to the older voters who were around in Dylan’s heyday.
It also has the benefit of not being prey to AI controversy. It emerged last week that The Brutalist used an AI ‘re-speecher’ to ‘perfect’ the accents of Brody and co-star Felicity Jones when they were speaking in Hungarian.
A small detail in some ways – certainly when considered in the overall context of the whole performance – but with the industry under threat from AI, and still reeling from the blows of Covid and the writers and actors strikes of 2023, who would vote for a film which uses a tool that looks certain to throw people out of work?
In terms of sweeps and numbers, The Brutalist has ten nominations, as does Wicked, the box-office smash adaptation of the Broadway show. Both of the film’s stars, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo (pictured), are nominated.
Nicole Kidman (pictured) has also missed out on a nomination in the ‘feminist’ erotic drama Babygirl
It’s possible as well to read the nominations as a rebuke from the voting liberal elites of Hollywood to the general voters who chose Donald Trump as President.
There is a Best Actor nomination for Sebastian Stan in the film The Apprentice which shows a young Trump being inducted into corruption by mentor Roy Cohn.
He’s played by Succession’s Jeremy Strong who also gets a nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category.
Trump has already denounced the film, which shows him raping first wife Ivana. He denies that ever happened and has previously said this is ‘obviously false’, with his representative calling the film ‘pure malicious defamation’ which ‘should not see the light of day’.
It took The Apprentice some months to find a distributor after the Cannes Film Festival in May.
In the shadow of the wildfires which are still raging and have so devastated Los Angeles , destroying 10,000 homes, the event on Sunday, March 2, will be muted, sombre and reflective when it is usually anything but
Until yesterday morning, none of the nominees had posted on social media since the night of the Golden Globes on January 7. The fires started that day and were out of control by January 8
The success of Emilia Perez also feels as if it may have benefited from prevailing anti-Trump sentiment in Hollywood, where many celebrities were stunned that, despite widespread endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris, she was not victorious.
The list of nominees is replete with multiple snubs, notably two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington for his role as Macrinus in Gladiator 2.
Nothing either for Daniel Craig, who had some hopes for his performance in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer – although he wasn’t nominated at the Baftas either.
And nothing for Margaret Qualley, Sue to Demi Moore’s Elisabeth, who arguably did just as much to make The Substance a success.
In terms of sweeps and numbers, The Brutalist has ten nominations, as does Wicked, the box-office smash adaptation of the Broadway show. Both of the film’s stars, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, are nominated.
A Complete Unknown has six nominations, as does Edward Berger’s papal thriller Conclave, including a Best Actor nod for Ralph Fiennes.
French director Coralie Fargeat (The Substance) is the only female director of the ten best picture nominees and also the only female screenwriter in those ten.
Her success is all the greater as Universal, the studio giant behind last year’s Oscar winner Oppenheimer, sold the film at a $5 million loss after executives saw it, hated it and refused to release it.
A source said that the company ‘had no idea’ what to do with the picture, which they viewed as ‘batsh*t crazy’.
The movie stars Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, a movie star-turned-TV fitness guru who is fired on her 50th birthday and takes a ‘substance’ which allows her to give birth to a younger, more beautiful version of herself called Sue (Margaret Qualley) with riotously bloody and horrifying consequences.
British producers Working Title, who initially bought the film off Universal, sold it on to streamer Mubi for $12 million, who distributed it to great acclaim.
Even if Oscars night has got off to a quiet start, with 2025’s line-up of films, there’s a enough controversy to ensure a must-watch night already.
