Dear Gossips,
With Oscar week upon us, it’s time once again for The Hollywood Reporter’s “brutally honest Oscar ballot”. This year, a member of the short films and animated features branch shared his thoughts on the nominees with Scott Feinberg. In the past, these anonymous ballots have gotten weirdly nasty, especially as various trades tried to top each other, but Feinberg always seems like he’s using the anonymous voter to let the general public in on the thought process of how Academy voters make their decisions, and this year is a great example of that. I don’t agree with every opinion this guy has, but I understand where he’s coming from, at least.
My official Oscar predictions are coming later today, and I completed my list before reading this, but this voter breaking for Everything Everywhere All At Once makes me feel a bit more confident in some of my picks. Plus, he shouts out Austin Butler, correctly diagnosing that Elvis is “all about the performance”. Also, “The kid literally got a new voice!” LOL, poor Austin is never living down the Elvis voice, no matter what else he goes on to achieve.
Also, let’s talk about his thought process on Best Actress, because I think this might be how the Academy is leaning overall. It’s about who’s due, and Cate Blanchett already having two Oscars versus Michelle Yeoh’s none. It’s not that Blanchett wasn’t great in Tár, she is, but she’s been celebrated so much already, and this is Yeoh’s long awaited big Hollywood moment. When you genuinely admire multiple performances, considering who won what and when isn’t a bad way of thinking about it. “It’s their time” isn’t a cop out, it’s an acknowledgment that some people get there sooner than others, and some people get there repeatedly while others are excluded. Michelle Yeoh broke through giving a phenomenal performance in a great movie after decades of going underappreciated in Western cinema, she hasn’t already won two Oscars, IT’S HER TIME.
And I love his point about Andrea Riseborough. This guy saw the social media commentating on To Leslie and her performance, and “didn’t think much of it”, but then she pulled off the surprise nomination, he wasn’t down. Kate Winslet “lied” to him about it being the “greatest [performance] of all time”, and he felt Riseborough was “muscled in” and it was “mafia-ish, like the people with the power decided that this should happen, so it did”.
This is my point! After the backlash, they tried to frame Riseborough’s nomination as a money problem, but it’s about POWER. Riseborough had no money at her disposal for a traditional campaign, but she had the powerful connections to make a grassroots campaign work. Meanwhile, Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler could not match that kind of powerful intervention even WITH studio campaign dollars behind them. Thank you, random Academy voter, for getting it.
Finally, he understands the appeal of “Naatu Naatu”. This might be the least obnoxious anonymous Oscar voter ever.
Attached - Michelle Yeoh at the Shiatzy Chen Womenswear Fall Winter show the other day in Paris.
Live long and gossip,
Sarah
