Movies

Tom Cruise to female directors – Rolling Stone

January 25, 2023

In the too soon hours of January 24, the nominations for the 95^e The annual Oscars have been announced. Actors Riz Ahmed (The sound of metal) and Allison Williams (get out) did the honors. Unfortunately, they weren’t joined in the festivities by M3GAN, Williams’ deadly singing robot co-star, though she was surely there in spirit.

With a quartet of blockbuster films in the running – Top Gun: Maverick Avatar: the way of water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, as good as Elvis – this year’s Oscars had a golden opportunity to expand its global audience beyond the record 10.5 million viewers in 2021. So has the Academy taken advantage of it? Or did he shoot a 2009, where he failed to name The black Knight and Wall-E for best picture, resulting in rule changes and a lot of hand wringing?

The fiercely original shot from left field from directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything everywhere all at once, leading all films with 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, who made history as the first openly Asian nominee in the category (Merle Oberon was nominated in 1936 for The black Angel, but hid his Asian ancestry). Netflix’s German-Language War Drama In the west, nothing is new, meanwhile, surprises with nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. The Academy loves war movies, right? Among other delightful surprises, Angela Bassett receives a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress nod for her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Brian Tyree Henry earns his first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor, for the promoted kid Pavement, and Paul Mescal earning his first Oscar nomination, in the Best Actor category, as a tortured young father in After Sun.

Unlike last year, the Academy did a great job nominating a wide range of artists in most categories, but fell short of naming two top black contenders, Danielle Deadwyler (Up to) and Viola Davis (The female king), in the Best Actress category, and did not honor any women in the Best Director category.

Editor’s Choice

These are the five biggest snubs to emerge from this year’s Oscar nominations.

Tom Cruise

While Top Gun: Maverick received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and a surprise Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, The Man Who Makes It Happen failed to earn a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Cruise is not only the biggest movie star in the world, and maybe even the last real one, but also has a history of being screwed over by the Academy. He has never won an Oscar for his acting role, despite meritorious wins for Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, and hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar in over two decades. He only had three acting nominations in his entire career (the aforementioned two movies, plus Born July 4). Did Cruise’s Scientology shenanigans put him against the Academy? They certainly didn’t help.

Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis

This year’s Oscars have the unfortunate distinction of honoring no black actors in the Best Actress and Best Actor categories, despite a number of meritorious performances. The omissions are most evident in Best Actress, where a pair of powerful turns had to be acknowledged: that of Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till, the mother of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Up to, and the transformation of Viola Davis into warrior general Nanisca, of Agojie, in The Woman King. Deadwyler and Davis were both active during the campaign period, but neither got the nod. Deadwyler’s snub is perhaps the most shocking, given the gravity of the role and how she rose to the occasion.

Women directors

Yes, another year has passed without a woman being nominated for Best Director. I hoped that Charlotte Wells would be recognized for her skilfully restrained bar of After Sun, a heartbreaking personal story of an angsty young father (Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter (Frankie Corio) spending the last summer vacation together in Turkey, but it wasn’t. Instead, Ruben Östlund received a nod for triangle of sadness, in this writer’s opinion, one of the most ostentatious and banal films of the past year. Maybe Greta Gerwig will help right those wrongs with this summer Barbie.

Dolly de Leon

Speaking of triangle of sadness, the film has one saving grace: Dolly de Leon, who received BAFTA and Golden Globe nods for her inspired turn as Abigail, a housekeeper who becomes something of a tribal leader once a luxury yacht filled with some of the worst one percenters you’ve ever laid eyes on capsizes, and the survivors find themselves marooned on a remote island. Using his sharp survival skills, de Leon turns the tables on these pampered wimps, living in his own private abode inside the lifeboat and coaxing Carl (Harris Dickinson), an insecure male role model, into sex. exchange of special privileges. It would have been nice to see de Leon, a veteran Filipina actress of stage and screen, being recognized by the Academy for her tremendous efforts.

Paul Dano

Despite a career spanning two decades of outstanding performances, including in films as famous as Little Miss Sun, There will be blood, and Prisoners, Dano has yet to receive a single Oscar nomination. The idea was that he would do it for his loving role as Burt Fabelman, the stern but loving computer engineer father of Sammy Fabelman in Steven Spielberg’s autobiography. The Fabelmans, But it was not to be. It’s a shame, given that some of the movie’s most lyrical performances are recognized while its understated and powerful one isn’t – paired with Dano’s massive year, between her and her Riddler in The Batman. Then again, Dano was also cruelly snubbed for fully portraying Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy, who should have brought him every nomination under the sun.