Reporter’s notebook: A big Oscar day for musicals and ‘Succession’ bros
As we wrap an epic day of coverage of the Oscar nominations, here are some final observations:
—It’s ironic that there will be no Best Song performances at this year’s 97th Academy Awards, because music-driven movies have rarely, if ever, made such an impact. This is the first time that three music-oriented/musical films have been nominated for Best Picture in the same year: Emilia Pérez (with its chart-topping 13 nominations), Wicked (with its 10), and the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (with eight). The last times that even two musicals faced off for Oscar’s biggest prize was in 1964 with My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins and in 1968 with winner Oliver! and Funny Girl.
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—Emilia Pérez snared more noms than any foreign language film ever with 13, to lead all comers Thursday. It joins an impressive list of other 13-time Oscar nominees that includes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Gone With the Wind, Forrest Gump, Mary Poppins, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Shape of Water, From Here to Eternity, Chicago, and Shakespeare in Love along with last year’s winner Oppenheimer. Only Mary Poppins, Virginia Woolf, and Benjamin Button failed to go on to win Best Picture.
SEE2025 Oscar nominations: Snubs and surprises include ‘A Real Pain,’ Edward Berger, Selena Gomez
—What does the Motion Picture Academy have against poor Edward Berger? He’s now been passed over twice for directing films vying for Best Picture: first for 2022’s All Quiet on the Western Front and now for Conclave. Of course, there are 10 Best Picture nominees but only five Best Director slots, so by design half of the top movies are perceived to have directed themselves.
—However, another guy named Berger — Fred Berger — was nominated as a producer for A Complete Unknown. So clearly, it isn’t about the last name.
—How about that Succession grudge match? Two actors who faced off in the same category at the Emmy Awards will run it back at the Oscars: Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong are opposing each other in Best Supporting Actor — Culkin for A Real Pain, Strong for The Apprentice. The last time they met in the same bracket was the 2023 Emmys (handed out a year ago) for Drama Series Actor, both for Succession. Culkin won that battle and will be favored to win again.
—The Substance is only the seventh horror movie to be nominated for Best Picture. The other six are The Exorcist (1974), Jaws (1976), The Silence of the Lambs (1992), The Sixth Sense (2000), Black Swan (2011), and Get Out (2018). The Academy has traditionally been averse to the genre, and of those films, only The Silence of the Lambs captured the big prize.
—How will Sebastian Stan fare after being nominated for portraying a young Donald Trump? The current president of the United States is a divisive figure and not exactly a fan-favorite among the industry, but Stan does seem to have support from international voters. In the very early Gold Derby odds following Thursday’s nominations, he’s listed as the longest shot to win, at 10/1.
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