How the Oscar race became as chaotic as “Conclave”

Watch me when you have seen it. A committee of August personalities is commissioned with a lot of pomp and circumstances to choose the best of their property. Air -honored rituals are observed. Unusual outfits are put on. The ogling public is kept in chess. The competitors, some represent progress, different tradition, jockey for supporters, although a complete campaign is frowned upon – and negative campaigns are taboo, although it happens in whispered parts. Non -flattering rumors whirled and the participants are made for their past sins. Secret ballot papers are poured and counted in an arcane Tally system, and a winner is announced for a large fanfare.

This is roughly the plot of “Conclave”, in which the College of Cardinals meet in the Vatican after the Pope’s death to choose his successor. However, it is also the action of this year’s Oscar race, in which “conclave” is nominated in eight categories, including the best picture. When I saw it for the first time, the film immediately reminded me of the award line season with its ceremonial customs, its flair and the little thing of the prestigious electoral bodies last autumn. (For the red robes and skull caps, sub on the red carpet.) Just like the Oscar -nominated endless pressing rounds to talk about their artistic process without showing hunger for the little gold man, the hopeful hopes of the Films that their efforts are spiritual. Nevertheless, “every cardinal, deep inside, has the name under which he wants his papacy” shower.

It was only when the Oscar nominations were announced two weeks ago that the price -shifting season “Conclave” was similar, in which it matters: in pure soap drama. As in the film, a sequence of mini scandals threatens to derail one best image candidate after the other, which corresponds to one of the most messy campaign season in the recent memory. In “Conclave” the calculation shifts every time a shaky cardinal falls out of running. The question arises in the race of the award ceremony: Is one of the nominees not made until the ceremony?

Let’s start at the beginning. (Follow “Conlaves” spoilers.) The best picture winner of the last year, “Oppenheimer”, was a widely admired favorite, similar to the beloved Pope, who dies in the first scene of “Conclave”. This year’s race has never had a stable front conductor. Instead, it is colonized by smaller, more polarized films, each of which is vulnerable under the examination of the Oscar ramp. As in “Conclave”, in which Cardinal Adeyemi from Nigeria receives the most votes for the first ballot, “Emilia Peréz”, a potentially historical participant, seemed to win the game of the numbers with thirteen nominations. However, both competitors prove to be imperfect progress. Adeyemi would be the first Pope from Africa, but under the cardinals he is known as a regressive views of homosexuality. “Emilia Pérez”, a musical about a transgender drug lord in Mexico, seems to be a cross-border best piction winner, but it was saddled with criticisms of Mexican and trans-viewers, which have accused it of the falling wrong representation. (His director Jacques Audiard is French.)

Halfway through “implied”, Adeyemi’s candidacy collapses when a nun arrives from Nigeria and revealed that he witnessed her child when she was nineteen. “Emilia Pérez” had a cascade by PR Snafus by Karla Sofía Gascón, the Spanish actress who plays the title role. When Gascón landed on the best list of actress, she became the first open transgender presentation that was nominated for an Oscar. Things immediately went sideways when she had to go back to previous comments, which she had made into a Brazilian newspaper about another Nominee, Fernanda Torres (“I’m quiet here”). “At no time I said something bad about Fernanda Torres or her film,” said Gascón Folha de S. Paulo. “However, there are people who work with Fernanda Torres who tear me down and ‘Emilia Pérez’.”

As soon as the opposite reaction “reappeared” (the word fears every public figure), in which she called George Floyd a “drug addicted swingler”, compared the 2021 Oscars with “a black demonstration of the lives matter” and With the demonstration of Lives Matter “and” and considered: “Is it just my impression or is there more Muslims in Spain? . . . Next year instead of English we will have to teach Arabic. “Gascón nuared her X account and published several excuses, although she claimed that she had been targeted by an action to” Sully “to” Sully “. Compare ADEYEMI when he is confronted with Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes): “I am the victim of a shameful act to ruin my reputation!”

Gascón was never a front manager for the best actress, but the revelations have almost scored her chances, and you may have made “Emilia Pérez” the new front leader about all injured. Maybe it is “the brutalist” who was not immune to scandal itself. Last month, the publisher announced that AI was used to optimize the Hungarian accents of their stars, Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones and to create fictional architectural plans and buildings for the closing retrospective of the main character. This touched a nerve in Hollywood, where the AI ​​for the strikes of the actors and writers of 2023 was of central importance, but the opinions were divided into the violation. “Not all AI are created the same,” wrote Sam Adams in Slate. “You can argue that The brutalist Creating concept sketches withdrawn a human architect of work – although it was an architect who decided to use them. “If” the brutalist “in” Conclave “has a corresponding character, I would say that it is Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) who is charged the obscure sin of the Simony – the purchase and sale of something spiritual, such as B. a Kirasian office. Not great, but a bit like a head scratch.

But wait, there is more! Did you see the anti -flak over Fernanda Torres, who had to apologize after a clip of her had reappeared in a comedy sketch in 2008? (More of this damn resumption!) What about the essay that is in December in December with the title “How does my divorce do it?” By Lilly Jay, the therapist, whose ex-husband Ethan Slater, now with his Is “Wicked” co-star, Ariana Grande? (“As for me, days with my son are sunny,” wrote Jay. In her pop culture newsletter, it was pretty conclave; We are all Isabella Rossellini cryptically on a outdated copier. “

Of course, the Oscar season melodrama is nothing new, although it doesn’t go back that far. In the nineties, Harvey Weinstein in Miramax led an aggressive campaign style, which made the distinction ecosystem more than a treasure off and bloated. The 1999 breed, at which Miramax ‘”Shakespeare in Love” against Dreamworks’ “Saving Private Ryan”, was the bad after Dreamworks got the news that Weinstein was poorly sample for the press. Three years later, the leader was “a beautiful mind” about the mentally ill mathematician John Nash, and in the drudge report, the members of the academy discovered that Nash discovered “shocking Jewish bait” baits in a schizophrenic episode. Everyone blamed the compression campaign on Weinstein, but someone from the “Lord of the Rings” team later admitted to having one hand over it. Nowadays you do not need a campaign strategist to dismiss Oppo research from the shadow. On their months of pressing tours, directors and actors have a lot of opportunity to get in themselves. Social media can take care of the rest.