A big shock awaits viewers of the Academy Awards on March 12 — they will actually have seen some of the movies nominated for Oscars this year. Sure, there will be the usual array of high-toned art-house films on display, but in addition to those, four Best Picture nominees — Top Gun: Maverick; Avatar: The Way of Water; Everything Everywhere All at Once; and Elvis — have cumulatively made close to 1.6 billion bucks at the domestic box office.
Pushing into the mix is a tiny indie: To Leslie, made in 19 days for under a million dollars. The little-seen film nabbed a Best Actress nomination for star Andrea Riseborough as a down-and-out Texas alcoholic, squeaking past some bigger films thanks to an “advocacy campaign” that urged major names to tout the performance. Gwyneth Paltrow, Susan Sarandon, and many others dutifully did so, and Riseborough made the cut, leading to an Academy investigation into whether the campaign broke any house rules. Fortunately, it got cleared, and future tiny films are free to try to get similarly noticed.
So, the awards for ’22 should be a potent mix of the blockbusters and the ballbusters — though I suggest they lift the ban on Will Smith so he can break in and slap host Jimmy Kimmel if he gets too fresh. My predictions:
BEST PICTURE
The nominees are …
All Quiet on the Western Front
A breathtakingly done German anti-war film based on the Erich Maria Remarque novel that spawned Oscar’s third Best Picture winner, in 1930. Lightning won’t strike twice, since foreign films rarely win, but still, it’s Remarque-able (and it just swept seven BAFTAs, including Best Picture).
Avatar: The Way of Water
James Cameron (Titanic) does well with water. His Avatar sequel is an epic ride featuring more underwater scenes than a 1950s Esther Williams musical. It’s the highest-grossing film (internationally) of the Covid era, but Cameron will have to wait for the third time out to cop Best Picture. Google The Lord of the Rings.
The…
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