craziest movie of the year

After the deluge of Dga, Pga, Sag, Wga, the pre-Oscar awards assigned by film professionals, even bettors have no doubts: to triumph at the 95th edition of the Academy Awards, scheduled for tomorrow evening at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles ( live from 11.15 pm on Sky Cinema Oscar, Sky channel 303 and streaming on NOW, on Sky Uno and free-to-air on TV8), will almost certainly be Everything Everywhere All At Once, the craziest film of the year, a half story road between reality and multiverse told, so to speak, in an adernalino style that mixes video games and fantasy, kung fu and family drama, comedy and Chinese swashbuckling. Epic masterpiece or crazy bullshit?

Oscars, tomorrow night the most coveted awards in Hollywood

In spite of this still unresolved dilemma, the film reaches the final on the strength of its 11 nominations. With all due respect to Spielberg and his family/cinephile past revealed in The Fabelmans, the irresistible black comedy Spirits of the Island, the pacifist manifesto All Quiet on the Western Front (it could, however, make up for itself as best international film), the captivating musical Elvis by Baz Luhrmann who is even last in the bookie ranking, given at 151 like the Swedish Triangle of Sadness. And just as, after the recent death of daughter Lisa Marie, Elvis’ inheritance was being challenged by widow Priscilla Presley against granddaughter Riley Keough, daughter of Lisa Marie.
Italy is a candidate with Alice Rohrwacher’s short Le Pupille co-produced by Alfonso Cuarón, a Christmas parable set in wartime in a boarding school for orphan girls run by the terrible mother superior Alba Rohrwacher, and with Aldo Sigoretti, Elvis’ make-up artist. But according to bettors, only the latter would have any chance of winning, albeit undermined by rivals from The Whale: the director risks giving the statuette to the Irishman An Irish Goodbye, the story of two separated brothers who reunite after their mother’s death .

The categories

Meanwhile Everything Everywhere All At Once could win in the main categories: best film (for which it is given 1.05), best director of The Daniels (pseudonym of Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, not even 70 years old in two), best actress Michelle Yeoh who could beat Tár’s immense Cate Blanchett, thus becoming the first Asian to establish herself as a leading lady. But the 60-year-old star of Everything Everywhere risked losing the nomination: she had in fact posted an article which underlined that for two decades only white actresses have won, an indirect boycott of Blanchett. Post deleted, disqualification foiled. As for the male protagonists, the excellent anti-hero Colin Farrell of The spirits of the island and the revelation Austin Butler-Elvis seem destined to succumb in front of Brendan Fraser who weighs 150 kilos in The Whale thanks to prosthetic makeup: the Academy jurors are sensitive to physical transformations especially since the very dramatic film by Darren Aronofsky talks about obesity, a deeply felt theme in America. Controversy? Apart from the now defused “Yeoh case”, there is a risk of mounting the #OscarSoMale protest, Oscar too male due to the absence of female directors in the final. Demonstrative actions on the red carpet or on the Dolby stage itself cannot be excluded during the ceremony with a futuristic scenography dotted with screens (for the benefit of the younger audience) presented by Jimmy Kimmel: in 2017 he could not prevent the delivery of the wrong envelope which he attributed the Oscar to La La Land instead of winner Moonlighting. John Travolta, Eva Longoria, Antonio Banderas, Sigourney Weaver, Harrison Ford, Dwayne Johnson, Halle Berry, Zoe Saldana, Andie MacDowell, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Jessica Chastain and many others will clock in as “awards”.

Songs

Musical performances will be entrusted to Best Song nominees Rihanna, David Byrne, Stephanie Hsu & Son Lux, Sofia Carson & Diane Warren. But Lady Gaga won’t sing, favorite for Top Gun: Maverick’s song Hold My Hand. For the series «if I don’t rock, I’ll give up», she is busy filming Joker 2 and she doesn’t have time to prepare properly.

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in Il Gazzettino