Cinema and Popcorn

A24's Everything Everywhere All At Once was the big winner of the 95th Oscars - and the biggest winner in years! It took home a total of 7 golden statuettes - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Yeoh), Best Supporting Actress (Curtis), Best Supporting Actor (Quan), Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing (Rogers) - out of its 11 nominations. I believe it will be remembered as one of the best Oscar triumphs in cinematic history! In fact, A24 also took home Best Actor (Fraser, The Whale ) and Best Makeup & Hairstyling ( The Whale ), while Netflix also had a strong showing with All Quiet On the Quiet Front winning 4 Oscars (Best International Film, Best Cinematography and the "upsets" Best Original Score and Best Production Design), while The Elephant Whisperers took Best Documentary Short and Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio won Best Animated Feature - what an accomplishment! So, it seems the Academy likes to nominate critically raved movies, but voters do...

CRITICS' CHOICE AWARDS The organization that tries too often to be an Oscar predictor rather than a critics group that really goes for their very favorites, but I must say I am quite pleased with their choices this year - I believe they show here the general consensus from critics. With Everything Everywhere All At Once winning here, beating some big favorites (and much more "made for Oscar taste" contenders) it takes the lead in the Oscar race. What a joy it is to see a small production with an early release going this far in the awards season! A note about a couple of speeches: Brendan Fraser 's acceptance speech earned him an instant Oscar nomination (moving, personal, inspiring!) and it generate even more goodwill towards him, which might lead to an actual Oscar win some months from now; and Cate Blanchett who had some negative words and made fun of prizes saying it is for competition purposes (and not for the recognition of quality)... is she too confortable t...

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE One of the greatest working actresses these days, Cate Blanchett 's performance in Tár met some of the "best of her career" kind of reviews and it has already earned the Volpi Cup for Best Actress of Venice International Film Festival and a couple of other film festival prizes - some people are already talking about a possible Oscar win since the movie is also Focus Features' top priority this awards season, so an Academy Award nomination seems locked. Next in line, there's Michelle Yeoh , the star of Everything Everywhere All at Once , who delivers her best performance since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Yeoh is not the greatest actress in the world, but her character Evelyn is simply tailor-made for her acting talent, providing her some juicy scenes while it also pays homage to her career in wuxia films. It makes audiences feel a "it's her time" when we talk about Oscar nominations. Plus: Everything Everywh...