Everything is everywhere and the Oscar – Newspaper Kommersant No. 13 (7458) dated 01/25/2023

The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the nominees for the 95th Anniversary Academy Awards. The leader among them was Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s absurd action-comedy “Everything Everywhere at Once”, nominated for awards in 11 categories, including “Best Picture”. All Quiet on the Western Front by Edward Berger and Banshee Inisherin by Martin McDona shared second place with nine nominations for each film. comments Yulia Shagelman.

This year, for the first time in six years, the nominations were announced live at the Academy Theater named after legendary producer Samuel Goldwyn. They were represented by last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Live Action Short Film, Riz Ahmed, and actress Allison Williams, who couldn’t help but giggle at the announcement of the two nominees in the category. “Best Animated Short Film”: “My Members Year” and “The Ostrich Told Me The World Is Fake And I Think I Believe It.” They also caused an attack of fun in the audience, but, of course, attention was riveted to completely different pictures.

The Daniels’ film, as Kwan and Scheinert’s directing duo is known for short, premiered at the South by Southwest (SXSW) independent and genre film festival, where the road to the Oscars usually doesn’t start at all.

However, when it was released in March 2022, the wild tale of a humble Chinese laundry owner’s journey through parallel universes became an unexpected box office hit and the highest-grossing film by independent studio A24.

And with the onset of the award season, she began to collect bundles of nominations. After the Golden Globes for starring Michelle Yeoh and her on-screen husband Ke Huy Kuan, a triumph at the Critic’s Choice Awards, and most importantly, nominations from the actor’s, director’s and producer’s guilds, there is no doubt that “Everything is everywhere and at once” waiting for success among the academicians, did not remain. Nevertheless, 11 nominations for this film, which does not meet “Oscar standards” in anything other than, perhaps, a message about the value of family and mutual love, look, to put it mildly, unusual.

In the nomination “Best movie” his main rivals will be the Banshees of Inisherin and “All Quiet on the Western Front”, which turned out to be a much larger success than predicted (it became the next picture not in English, breaking out of the ghetto of foreign films into mainstream categories). A dazzling biopic of the king of rock and roll “Elvis”, directed by Baz Luhrmann, is in third place with eight nominations, and Steven Spielberg’s confessional cinephile drama The Fabelmans is fourth with seven. Also nominated for the main “Oscar” are “Tar” by Todd Field, “The Women Speak” by Sarah Polley, “Triangle of Sorrow” Reuben Ostlund, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, and Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick are the last two, of course, in the academy’s never-ending and yet not very successful struggle for the interest of the “general audience.”

In addition, “Everything is everywhere and at once” received nominations for best director and best original screenplay for the Daniels, and in both nominations they have the same composition of competitors: “Banshee Inisherina”, “Tar”, “Fabelmans” and “Triangle of Sorrow”. It’s not just Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Kuan who are the main favorite in the category for acting awards. “Best Supporting Actor”but also Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Xu in the nomination “Best Supporting Actress”. In addition, the film is nominated for Oscars for best costumes, editing, music and song.

The film academy presented one of the surprises in the nomination “Best Actress”: in addition to favorites Yeo and Cate Blanchett (“Tar”), as well as the expected Michelle Williams (“Fabelmans”), Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) and Andrea Riseborough (“For Leslie’s Sake”) were nominated in it. If the first could still be expected after the nomination of the actors guild, then the second spent the entire award season outside the radar of experts. An interesting struggle will unfold in the category “Best Actor”. Here are three high odds favorites: Brendan Fraser (Keith

As you know, the National Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of the Russian Federation, on the initiative of Nikita Mikhalkov, this time decided not to send its candidate to the Oscars, after which the domestic Oscar committee, in fact, disbanded itself. Nevertheless, Russia is present in the nominations of the American Film Academy.

Category “Best Documentary Short Film” the Russian-British “Exit” by the Yakut director Maxim Arbugaev was nominated, and in the nomination “Best Documentary” – “Navalny” Canadian Daniel Roer, produced without Russian participation, but directly related to our country.

The Academy Awards will take place on March 12. After three years without a host and last year’s ceremony, when there were as many as three, the film academy decided to once again place the entertainer in the safe hands of the popular showman Jimmy Kimmel, who already carried out this honorable mission in 2017 and 2018. Let’s hope that this time there will be no messed up envelopes and everyone will receive their prizes according to their deserts.