Trust us, the movie is way extra subversive and slippery than even that description implies. It’s additionally bleakly humorous and off-the-beaten-path for a lot of awards voters. Indeed, the movie was not nominated even on the Gothams for Director or Best Actor. The latter award went to Coleman Domingo for gorgeous work in Sing Sing, a placing new drama directed and co-written by Greg Kewedar concerning the theater program within the precise Sing Sing jail. Sing Sing additionally dominated the Gothams with wins within the Best Supporting Actor class, courtesy of Clarence Maclin’s efficiency, and a Film Tribute Award. Meanwhile Amazon/MGM’s Nickel Boys made an impression when it received Best Director for RaMell Ross and Breakthrough Performance for Brandon Wilson.
It ought to be famous, too, that Ross’ work on Nickel Boys is the one place of main overlap with the New York Film Critics Circle, with the celebrated critics group largely going head-over-heels for Brady Corbet’s pensive and formidable The Brutalist, one other A24 launch, this one clocking in at an astounding 3.5 hours (with an intermission). That movie additionally appears way more the velocity of the critics group that just lately awarded Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon Best Picture, with The Brutalist being an epic research of the Jewish-American immigrant expertise after World War II and the Holocaust. The Brutalist additionally received Best Actor for Adrien Brody.
Meanwhile two performances that haven’t been closely featured in rotation amongst awards watchers’ blogs, that of Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths and Carol Kane in Between the Temples, received Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. Elsewhere Kieran Culkin took Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain whereas Sean Baker picked up Best Screenplay for Anora.
Finally, and maybe most tellingly concerning the state of the Oscar race, it’s price evaluating these early wins with yesterday’s Independent Spirit Awards nominations, which like Gotham and the overall tastes of the NYFCC voting physique, celebrates impartial American cinema. While Sing Sing is nominated for Best Picture by the Spirits, neither of Gotham’s or NYFCC’s largest winners, A Different Man or The Brutalist, are. In their place is Anora and genre-fare like The Substance and I Saw the TV Glow.
Cumulatively, these movies reveal a race that’s in a whole state of flux with no apparent frontrunner.
It ought to be famous that none of those voting teams are apparent predictors of the voting tastes of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Most of the movies nominated for Best Picture by the Spirit Awards by no means get nominated for Best Picture on the Oscars. But with a single exception, 4 of the final 5 years featured one or two of the Best Picture Oscar nominees overlapping with the Spirits, and twice they shared the Best Picture winner: Nomadland and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Five of the final six Gotham Awards’ Best Picture winners likewise have been nominated for the Oscars high prize with two of the Gothams’ winners—once more Nomadland and Everything Everywhere—taking house the identical huge prize.
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