Linda Holmes
Appearances
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
Yes, absolutely. It picked up... 13 nominations. It is the most ever for a film that is not in English. Carla Sofia Gascon becomes the first out trans actor to be nominated. This is also obviously a big deal for Netflix, which has wanted for many years to get a Best Picture win. has never gotten one. I'm sure they're feeling quite good about that.
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
Amelia Perez was nominated not just in those kind of top line categories, but also for things like score and cinematography. It was just broadly embraced by the people doing the nominating. It was kind of a It's part of an increasing embrace of non-English language movies at the Oscars. You can count films like Roma and Parasite. Last year, both Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest.
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
So this is in some ways an extension of that. And we should note, by the way, that The Brutalist and Wicked all got 10 nominations each, which in any other year would be newsmaking totals also. It's just a year where a small number of movies took up a lot of the oxygen. Anything you were surprised about?
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
The only real surprise in the Best Picture category is probably I'm Still Here, which is a Brazilian drama about a woman coping with the death of her husband who was a political dissident. Voters chose that film over things that were maybe a little bit more favored, like A Real Pain, which... is kind of a road movie about two cousins with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin.
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
I was really surprised that the excellent score of the tennis movie Challengers wasn't nominated. That was my favorite score of the year. Same goes for the cinematography of the drama Nickel Boys, which is wonderfully evocative and creative and wasn't nominated. And Marianne Jean-Baptiste wasn't nominated for the Mike Lee film, Hard Truths. I think that was a heartbreaker for a lot of folks.
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
Probably my happiest, maybe surprise, was the original screenplay nomination for Sing Sing, which is a wonderful film about the theater program at Sing Sing Prison. some of the real incarcerated people who were part of that theater program appear in the film and helped work on the screenplay. And it was wonderful to see some of those names in the nominations list. Right, right.
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
That movie is great. I hope everybody will seek it out. It's wonderful.
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
And as I said about the cinematography, that's just a wonderfully creative film. They did some amazing things with the visuals of the filmmaking. Another one I hope people will seek out. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Ten Best Pictures, only five directors. Okay. So when do we find out who won? So the ceremony is on March 2nd.
Up First from NPR
Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations
And while there have been a few rumbles about whether they should go ahead with it, given obviously the fires that have been causing so much devastation in the L.A. area, it looks like that will go ahead right now. So there's a little more than a month for a fresh round of speculating about which of these nominations will actually emerge as winners.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Well, I mean, some of it is just forecasting based on, you know, awards already won and sort of critical reaction already received. But also, I think she has exactly the kind of story that often does well at the Oscars. Demi Moore has been around for a really long time. She talked about this at the Golden Globes.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
She was originally kind of pigeonholed as a like a pop movie actress, as she put it, a popcorn actress. And I think she's been really good in a number of different things for a long time, but not the kinds of things that necessarily got her awards recognition.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
You know, first of all, people tend to think it's very brave when you go through some sort of body transformation and do something that looks ugly and gross, especially if you are a woman who came up as a kind of conventionally beautiful woman. Yeah. So that tends to weigh in her favor. I also think she's just one of those people who's worked with a gazillion people over the course of her career.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Yeah. And sometimes that really helps just to have been around forever, acting with a ton of people, working in a ton of projects. I think that's going to do it. I think she will win.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Well, and I do want to add, you know, it's easy now to look at this and be like, oh, yeah, it's going to be Demi Moore, obviously, ho-hum. But, like, go back to reading this script first. Right.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Go back to the moment when this script shows up and you look at it and it's like, I mean, now it feels like she's just Demi Moore is going to cakewalk to the to the best actress Oscar for this horror movie in which she winds up as a blob of tissue by the end.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Yeah. The unlikelihood of getting recognized for horror, the unlikelihood of getting recognized for something as strange as this movie is, this is not something you would take thinking, like, I'm going to cakewalk to an Oscar for playing this part. Now, Glenn, who do you think should win the award?
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I absolutely think she's deserving, and I will be thrilled if she wins. However, in this category, I decided to go with Cynthia Erivo, and I'll tell you why. Yeah, I get that. Wicked has sort of fallen out of most of the major Oscar conversations at this point in its life. And I think that's... a shame because I don't think it's a perfect movie.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I think a lot of its charm comes from the source material and the performances. But to me, the last 15 to 20 minutes of that film, which include, obviously, Defying Gravity, which obviously became immediately a meme and a TikTok sound. And, you know, there were things of like a dog on a broomstick going up into the sky with, it's me. It's me.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I think that sequence is good enough that that is what a movie star who is a good actor is supposed to do. And when you put on top of it the fact that I think it is a hell of a performance of a really good song, like, what am I asking for, right? Like, what am I asking people for if not this? What am I rewarding if not this? I pick Cynthia Erivo. I have no regrets. None at all. I love it.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
No, I think she's wonderful. I think she is absolutely wonderful. I think the charisma that you talk about is 100% real. My issue is with the ending. I think the ending sells out the character and sells out what the movie was doing at the beginning. But it's only the ending that irritated me. I get that.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I probably had my Anora expectations raised too high. That's probably part of what happened. So that's also possible.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Listen, I like Little Timmy. I think if Little Timmy is going to win an Oscar this year for either of the two snotty little megalomaniacs that he played in movies this year, it's obviously it will be this one.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
You're kind of an a**hole. I think he plays a pretty good snotty megalomaniac, but I do think that the movie is not good enough. And I think the movie itself has too many weaknesses. But I agree with Glenn that the Brody performance is more, you know, traditionally Oscars-y. I think the Academy loves him. That's the direction I think they're going to go.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Stephen, we are going to have to have a beer sometime and discuss how you are anti-traditional Oscar movies and pro a complete unknown.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
But we're going to have a beer. It's not for today. Not for today. We're going to have a beer and have it out.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I just want to point out they're not staging Hamlet. They're staging their own weirdo show that has like a little tiny smidgen. There's mummies. There's time traveling.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I also chose Coleman Domingo. I think this is a spectacular performance. First of all, I think he's possibly our most charismatic and reliable actor working right now for me.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
He is perhaps the actor most able to elevate literally anything, but I don't actually think he has to here because I think this is a wonderful film. And I will also say we talk a lot about sort of what I would consider to be like side factors that affect not wanting to vote for things, whether it's AI or it's controversy or something like that. I will freely admit there are some side factors here.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
that make me root for this film, including a lot of the actors in it are, in fact, formerly incarcerated people who were part of this program, some of whom worked on the story.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
They also had a really interesting, and I encourage you to read about this, I won't explain the whole thing, but a really interesting compensation scheme in which everybody sort of got paid the same to work on the film, no matter who they were. So I love this movie. It should have been nominated for Best Picture. I rate that it wasn't. And Coleman Domingo rules and is king forever.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Absolutely. Conclave is a fun and twisty look at the secretive process by which a pope is replaced. Ralph Fiennes plays the cardinal leading the process.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
And world's most smooth segue. In The Substance, Demi Moore plays an aerobics instructor who wants to stay in the spotlight. So she turns to a strange black market drug.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Yeah, exactly like picking a pope. It's basically the same thing. It's pretty much the same thing. Nickel Boys is the story of two black boys who form an unshakable bond at a segregated reform school in the Jim Crow South.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
Well, I do think that these controversies are going to affect Amelia Perez. And that's partly because I think there are a lot of people who had a lot of misgivings about this movie anyway. And these controversies have sort of given them an opportunity to say, OK, cool, I'm going to rule that one out then. I think if people were more excited about the movie, it probably would have less of an effect.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
But I do think that is likely to have an effect. And that left me predicting that The Brutalist would win Best Picture. It is kind of the most traditional Oscars-y movie remaining. It is a heavy historical drama. It has a really strong lead performance from Adrian Brody, who's kind of a very beloved awards-y type of actor.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
You know, the director, Brady Corbett, has been widely praised for making it on a relatively small budget compared to its sweep. And despite the fact that there have been a couple of questions raised about use of AI, I think those things are going to fall away. And I think the Brutalist will win.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I ultimately went with Nickel Boys. It's the one that I thought was the most emotionally rich and satisfying. It's also the one that I think was the most innovative in terms of filmmaking. People have talked a lot about... the first-person point of view, camera work here from the director, Ramel Ross. I think that's really interesting.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I think there are some very interesting decisions about what to give away and what to withhold. I think you got some really wonderful work out of the actors in this film. If we're gonna have a big party where we honor people making movies, I want it to be something like this.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
You know, for me, everything else, there was some reason not to pick it, whether it was, you know, controversy or, you know, for me, the Nora thing of sex workers who sort of turn out to just want to be hugged to me is not that interesting and actually is a pretty familiar trope from film. This is what I picked. I picked Nickel Boys.