Most of the 23 Oscar categories are pretty much over and done. For some, thank-you speeches should be in the fine-tuning stages. For others, demonstrations of gracious defeat should be honed.
Glenn Whipp | (TNS) Los Angeles Times
The Oscars are still a month away, meaning there’s plenty of time for awards campaigners to sabotage the best-laid plans of their rivals and go through the ordeal of trying to find the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for their partner or perhaps, in lieu of that, simply throw themselves out of a second-floor window, a la “Anatomy of a Fall,” so they don’t have to A) shop for scented candles and B) endure one more awards season Q&A.
Most of the 23 Oscar categories are pretty much over and done. For some, thank-you speeches should be in the fine-tuning stages. For others, demonstrations of gracious defeat should be honed. (Paloma Diamond, I’m sure, would have some useful advice.)
But there are a handful of categories still up for grabs, which is good news for awards consultants trying to justify their retainers and columnists hard-pressed to find something — anything — to write about between now and the March 10 ceremony. (Why are the Oscars in March again? Asking for a friend.)LEAD ACTRESS
Leading contenders: Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) and Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”)
Stone’s fun, ferocious, go-for-broke turn as Bella Baxter in “Poor Things,” where she moves from ungainly adult toddler to feminist philosopher, is the kind of performance that seems undeniable when you see it. Kind of like Cate Blachett last year in “Tár,” and we all know how that turned out. But “Tár” was a chilly movie, while “Poor Things” might be the first film Yorgos Lanthimos has made in which you don’t get the feeling that he hates nearly everyone in it. Quite the contrary: His love for Bella — and, by extension, the woman playing her — is evident in nearly every frame. Also: Stone is in nearly every frame.
That’s not the case with Gladstone, who is in less than a third of the three-and-a-half-hour “Flower Moon.” One academy member told me he voted for her in supporting, not lead. “I wish she’d campaigned there,” he says. “Due respect to Da’Vine Joy Randolph, but she would have won going away.” Gladstone’s work is just as persuasive as Stone’s — only she conveys it through silences and sheer presence. That’s distinctive. She’d make history as the first Native American to win the lead actress Oscar, but voters don’t seem completely sold on the movie.
