Tag: 93rd Academy Awards

  • Best picture for Nomadland, Best VFX for Tenet: Here’s the complete list of winners at 93rd Oscars

    By Associated Press
    Final winners at the 93rd Academy Awards:

    Best picture: ‘Nomadland’

    Best director: Chloé Zhao for ‘Nomadland’

    Best actor: Anthony Hopkins for ‘The Father’

    Best actress: Frances McDormand for ‘Nomadland’

    Original screenplay: Emerald Fennell for ‘Promising Young Woman’ 

    Adapted screenplay: Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton for ‘The Father’

    International film: Another Round (Denmark)

    Best supporting actor: Daniel Kaluuya for ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

    Best supporting actress: Yuh-Jung Youn for ‘Minari’

    Best Sound Design: ‘Sound of Metal’

    Best Makeup and hairstyling: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’

    Best Costume design: Ann Roth for ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’

    Best Live action short film: ‘Two Distant Strangers’

    Best Animated short film: ‘If Anything Happens I Love You’

    Best Animated feature: ‘Soul’

    Best Documentary short subject: ‘Colette’

    Best Documentary feature: ‘My Octopus Teacher’

    Best Visual effects: ‘Tenet’

    Best Production design: ‘Mank’

    Best Cinematography: ‘Mank’

    Best Editing: ‘Sound of Metal’

    Best Original score: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste for ‘Soul’

    Best Original song: “Fight for You” from “Judas and the Black Messiah” (Music by H.E.R. and Dernst Emile II; Lyric by H.E.R. and Tiara Thomas)

  • Oscars 2021: In a surprise, Anthony Hopkins wins best actor for ‘The Father’

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: Veteran Hollywood star Anthony Hopkins won the best actor award at the 93rd Academy Awards for his role in “The Father”. It was a surprise win for the actor as many expected the Academy to honour late star Chadwick Boseman for his performance in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”.

    In the last few weeks actor Riz Ahmed had also emerged as a challenger for his performance in “Sound of Metal”. Boseman died in 2020 after a secret four-year battle with colon cancer. Other nominees in the category were Gary Oldman and Steven Yeun.

    It is the second Academy award for the 83-year-old actor after his widely loved turn as serial killer Hannibal Lector in 1991 movie “The Silence of the Lambs”. Hopkins had earned nominations in the past for his roles in “The Remains of the Day” and “Nixon” and as a best supporting actor for “The Two Popes” and “Amistad”.

    Directed and co-written by Florian Zeller, “The Father”, is adapted from his own critically acclaimed play ‘Le Pere’ (‘The Father’), which takes a raw and unflinching look at dementia, examining how the lines between reality and delusion blur as the disease takes over.

    It revolves around an ageing man, Anthony (Hopkins) who battles his own diminishing mind. When his caring daughter (Olivia Colman) is forced to choose between the ailing parent and moving to Paris with her new found love, the duo’s bond is put to the ultimate test.

    The film also features actors Mark Gatiss and Imogen Poots. The veteran star has already won British Academy Film Awards for “The Father”. Hopkins will next be seen in indie feature film “Where Are You”, alongside his “Westworld” co-star Angela Sarafyan as well as actors Camille Rowe, Madeline Brewer, Mickey Sumner and Ray Nicholson.

    Valentina De Amicis and Riccardo Spinotti will co-direct the film from a screenplay they wrote with Matt Handy.

  • 93rd Oscars: ‘Nomadland’ bags Best Picture, Anthony Hopkins wins Best Actor for ‘The Father’

    By Associated Press
    Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland”, a wistful portrait of itinerant lives on open roads across the American West, won best picture Sunday at the 93rd Academy Awards, where the China-born Zhao also became just the second woman to win best director, and the first woman of color.

    The “Nomadland” victory, while widely expected, nevertheless capped the extraordinary rise of Zhao, a lyrical filmmaker whose winning film is just her third, and which – with a budget less than USD 5 million and featuring a cast populated by non-professional actors – ranks as one of the most modest-sized movies to win Hollywood’s top honor.

    Zhao’s next film, Marvel’s “Eternals”, has a budget approximately 40 times that of “Nomadland”. Only Kathryn Bigelow, 11 years ago for “The Hurt Locker”, had previously won best director. But “Nomadland”, as a plain-spoken meditation on solitude, grief and grit, stuck a chord in a pandemic-ravaged year. It made for an unlikely Oscar champ: A film about people who gravitate to the margins took center stage.

    “I have always found goodness in the people I’ve met everywhere I went in the world. This is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold on the goodness in other no matter how difficult it is to do that,” said Zhao when accepting best director.

    With a howl, “Nomadland” star Frances McDormand implored people to seek out her film and others on the big screen. Released by the Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures, “Nomadland” premiered at a drive in and debuted in theaters, but found its largest audience on Hulu.

    “Please watch our movie on the largest screen possible and one day very, very soon, take everyone you know into a theater, shoulder to shoulder in that dark space, and watch every film that’s represented here tonight,” McDormand said.

    Soon after, McDormand won best actress, too. The win puts McDormand (previously a winner for “Fargo” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) in rare company as a three-time acting winner. Only Katherine Hepburn (a four-time winner) has won best actress more times.

    In the night’s biggest surprise, best actor went to Anthony Hopkins for the dementia drama “The Father”. The award had been widely expected to go to Chadwick Boseman for his final performance in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”. Hopkins was not in attendance.

    The most ambitious award show held during the pandemic, the Oscars rolled out a red carpet and restored some glamour to the nearly century-old movie institution, but with a much transformed – and in some ways downsized – telecast.

    It was a year when, to paraphrase Norma Desmond, the pictures got smaller were overwhelmingly seen in the home, not in the big screen, during a pandemic year that forced theaters close and prompted radical change in Hollywood.

    It was also perhaps the diverse Academy Awards ever, with more women and more actors of color nominated than ever before – and Sunday brought a litany of records and firsts across many categories, spanning everything from hairstyling to composing to acting.

    It was, some observers said, a sea change for an awards harshly criticized as “OscarsSoWhite” in recent years, leading the film academy to greatly expand membership.

    The ceremony – fashioned as a movie of its own and styled as a laidback party – kicked off with opening credits and a slinky Regina King entrance, as the camera followed the actress and “One Night in Miami” director in one take as she strode with an Oscar in hand into Los Angeles’ Union Station and onto the stage.

    Inside the transit hub (trains kept running), nominees sat at cozy, lamp-lit tables around an intimate amphitheater. Some moments – like Glenn Close getting down to “Da Butt” – were more relaxed, but the ceremony couldn’t just shake off the past 14 months. “It has been quite a year and we are still smack dab in the middle of it,” King said.

    Daniel Kaluuya won best supporting actor for “Judas and the Black Messiah”. The win for the 32-year-old British actor who was previously nominated for “Get Out”, was widely expected. Kaluuya won for his fiery performance as the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, whom Kaluuya thanked for showing him “how to love myself”.

    “You’ve got to celebrate life, man. We’re breathing. We’re walking. It’s incredible. My mum met my dad, they had sex. It’s amazing. I’m here. I’m so happy to be alive,” said Kaluuya while cameras caught his mother’s confused reaction.

    With the awards capping a year of national reckoning on race and coming days after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted for killing George Floyd, police brutality was on the minds of many attendees. King said that if the verdict had been different, she might have traded her heels for marching boots.

    Travon Free, co-director of the live-action short winner “Two Perfect Strangers”, wore a suit jacket lined with the names of those killed by police. His film dramatizes police brutality as an inescapable time loop like a tragic “Groundhog’s Day” for Black Americans.

    “Today, the police will kill three people. And tomorrow, the police will kill three people. And the day after that, the police will kill three people because on average, the police in America everyday kill three people, which amounts to about a thousand people a year. Those people happen to disproportionately be Black people,” said Free.

    Best supporting actress went to Yuh-Jung Youn for the matriarch of Lee Isaac Chung’s tender Korean-American family drama “Minari”.

    The 72-year-old Youn, a well-known actress in her native South Korea, is the first Asian actress to win an Oscar since 1957 and the second in history. She accepted the award from Brad Pitt, an executive producer on “Minari”. “Mr. Brad Pitt, finally. Nice to meet you,” said Youn.

    Hairstylists Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” became the first Black women to win in makeup and hairstyling. Ann Roth, at 89 one of the oldest Oscar winners ever, also won for the film’s costume design.

    The night’s first award went to Emerald Fennell, the writer-director of the provocative revenge thriller “Promising Young Woman”, for best screenplay. Fennell, winning for her feature debut, is the first woman win solo in the category since Diablo Cody (“Juno”) in 2007.

    The broadcast instantly looked different. It’s being shot in 24 frames-per-second and in more widescreen format. In a more intimate show without an audience beyond nominees, winners were given wider latitude in their speeches.

    The telecast, produced by a team led by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, moved out of the awards’ usual home, the Dolby Theatre, for Union Station. With Zoom ruled out for nominees, the telecast included satellite feeds from around the world. Performances of the song nominees were pre-taped and aired during the preshow.

    “Husavik (My Hometown)” from “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” was preformed from the Iceland town’s harbor. Others were sung from atop of the academy’s new USD 500 million film museum.

    Pixar notched its 11th best animated feature Oscar with “Soul”, the studio’s first feature with a Black protagonist. Peter Docter’s film, about a about middle-school music teacher (Jamie Foxx), was one of the few big-budget movies in the running at the Academy Awards.

    (It also won best score, making Jon Batiste the second Black composer win the award, which he shared with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.) Another was Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” which last September attempted to resuscitate moviegoing during the pandemic, took best visual effects.

    David Fincher’s “Mank”, a lavishly crafted drama of 1940s Hollywood made for Netflix, came in the lead nominee with 10 nods and went home with award for cinematography and for production design.

    Best adapted screenplay went to the dementia drama “The Father”. “My Octopus Teacher”, a film that found a passionate following on Netflix, won best documentary. Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round” won best international film, an award he dedicated to his daughter, Ida, who in 2019 was killed in a car crash at age 19.

    The red carpet was back Sunday, minus the throngs of onlookers and with socially distanced interviews. Only a handful of media outlets were allowed on site, behind a velvet rope and some distance from the nominees.

    Casual wear, the academy warned nominees early on, was a no-no. Stars, limited to a plus-one, went without their usual battalions of publicists.

    But even good show may not be enough to save the Oscars from an expected ratings slide. Award show ratings have cratered during the pandemic, and this year’s nominees – many of them smaller, lower-budget dramas – won’t come close to the drawing power of past Oscar heavyweights like “Titanic” or “Black Panther”. 

    Last year’s Oscars, when Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” became the first non-English language film to win best picture, was watched by 23.6 million, an all-time low. Sunday’s pandemic-delayed Oscars bring to a close the longest awards season ever – one that turned the season’s industrial complex of cocktail parties and screenings virtual.

    Eligibility was extended into February of this year, and for the first time, a theatrical run wasn’t a requirement of nominees. Some films – like “Sound of Metal” – premiered all the way back in September 2019.

    The biggest ticket-seller of the best picture nominees is “Promising Young Woman,” with $6.4 million in box office.

  • Danish movie ‘Another Round’ wins best international feature film at Oscars 2021

    By Associated Press
    LOS ANGELES: After his film “Another Round” won the best international feature Oscar, director Thomas Vinterberg wiped away tears while dedicating part of his acceptance speech to his late daughter who died a couple years ago.

    “We ended up making this movie for her, as her monument,” a tearful Vinterberg said from the stage at Union Station in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

    Vinterberg said his daughter, Ida, died in a highway accident four days into the project. He said his daughter shared her excitement about film’s story with him in a letter after she read the script a couple months before filming the movie. He added that she was supposed to be a part of the project. “So Ida, this is a miracle that just happened. You are a part of this miracle. … This one is for you,” he continued.

    “Another Round” is the fourth time a film from Denmark has won in the category. The last was “In a Better World” in 2010. The film stars Mads Mikkelsen as one of a group of Danish school teachers who attempted to stay slightly drunk all day to break out of their malaise. “This is a film about letting go of control in life as I lost control of my own,” he said.

    Before Vinterberg accepted the award, he skipped onto the stage with excitement. He called his wife for being the “angel” of the project and thanked several others including his children and the film’s co-writer Tobias Lindholm.

    “This is beyond anything I could ever imagine. Except this is something I’ve always imagined,” Vinterberg said Vinterberg was also nominated for best director, but lost to Chloé Zhao in the category on Sunday night.

    Vinterberg became internationally popular as the co-founder of the filmmaking movement called Dogme 95. He started the movement in 1995 with fellow Danish director Lars von Trier.

  • 93rd Academy Awards: Pixar’s ‘Soul’ wins Best Animated Feature award

    By ANI
    WASHINGTON: The 2021 Oscar for the ‘Best Animated Feature Film’ was taken home by Pixar’s ‘Soul’, becoming the only film ever to win that award without playing in the US movie theatres.

    Last October, with the COVID pandemic having closed most of the nation’s cinemas, Disney announced that it would release ‘Soul’ as a Christmas release exclusively on its streaming service Disney+. The movie centered around a jazz musician who’s trying to reunite his accidentally separated soul and body.

    This marked the first time a full-length Pixar feature had been released for home viewing without first playing in movie theaters.

    Before its win at the Oscars, ‘Soul’ had already made history on other fronts. It was the first Pixar feature to have a Black protagonist, voiced by Jamie Foxx, the first with a predominantly Black cast and the first with a Black co-director Kemp Powers.

    The movie had also swept up Best Animated Feature awards from several critics groups and film societies, including the Golden Globes, BAFTA, the AFI, the Art Directors Guild, among others.

    ‘Soul’ directed by filmmaker Pete Docter, besides Foxx, features the vocal talents of Tina Fey, Phylicia Rashad, Questlove, Angela Bassett and Daveed Diggs. It also features original jazz music by Jon Batiste, and a score composed by Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

    The 93rd Academy Awards are being held at both the Dolby Theatre and Union Station. The ceremony is taking place two months later than originally planned, due to the impact left by the COVID-19 pandemic on the entertainment industry.

    The nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards were announced on March 15 this year. This is only the fourth time in history that the Academy Awards were postponed.

    ‘Mank’ leads the nominations this year after being nominated for 10 accolades while ‘The Father’, ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’, ‘Minari’, ‘Nomadland’, ‘Sound of Metal’ and ‘The Trial of Chicago 7’ have been nominated in six categories.

  • 93rd Academy Awards: Chloe Zhao becomes second woman in Oscars history to win best director

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: Filmmaker Chloe Zhao has scripted history at the 93rd Academy Awards by becoming the first woman of colour and only the second woman in the Oscars’ history to win best director trophy. Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win best director in 2009 for her film “The Hurt Locker”.

    “My entire ‘Nomadland’ company, what a crazy, what a once-in-a-lifetime journey we all had together. Thank you so much, I am so grateful to you,” Zhao said in her acceptance speech on Sunday night. The 39-year-old director, who moved to the US when she was a teenager, said she has been thinking a lot lately of how to keep going when things go hard.

    “I think it goes back to something I learned when I was a kid. When I was growing up in China, my dad and I used to play this game. We would memorize classic Chinese poems and texts and we would recite it together and try to finish each other’s sentences. And there’s one I remember so dearly it’s called ‘The Three Character Classics’,” she recalled.

    Speaking in her native language, Zhao, translated the sentence, which means, ‘People at birth are inherently good’…and those six letters had such a great impact on me when I was a kid. I still truly believe them today. Even though sometimes it may seem like the opposite is true, I have always found goodness in the people I met everywhere I went in the world,” she said.

    “This is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold on to the goodness in each other no matter how difficult it is to do that. And this is for you, you inspire me to keep going,” Zhao said.

    It is only the third film for 39-year-old Zhao.

    She was a clear favourite in the category, which has nominees such as Emerald Fennell for “Promising Young Woman”, Lee Isaac Chung for “Minari”, Thomas Vinterberg for “Another Round”, and David Fincher for “Mank”.

    Based on Jessica Bruder’s book of the same name, “Nomadland” stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a woman who, after the economic collapse of her company town in rural Nevada, packs her van and sets off on the road to explore a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad.

    The filmmaker started her journey as a director with 2015 movie “Songs My Brothers Taught Me”. However, it was her second movie, “The Rider”, that brought critical-acclaim and global attention to her. “Nomadland”, also starring David Strathairn and Linda May, has been praised by the critics for its story and performances by the cast, and for capturing the picturesque scenery of the American West.

    The movie, which has picked up trophies at Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, BAFTA Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, has been produced by Zhao, McDormand, Peter Spears, Mollye Asher and Dan Janvey.

    She has in the past said she has been inspired by the works of cinema legends like Wong Kar-Wai and Terrence Malick. Zhao is currently awaiting the release of her next Marvel Studios tentpole “Eternals”.

    She will also be writing and directing a new take on monster character Dracula, which is being billed as an original, futuristic and sci-fi Western. The Universal Pictures project will also tackle the theme of being on society’s fringes, something Zhao has dealt with in her previous work.

  • 93rd Academy Awards: Emerald Fennell, Daniel Kaluuya declared as early winners

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: Actor-filmmaker Emerald Fennell, “Another Round” and Daniel Kaluuya were the early winners at the 93rd Academy Awards.

    Fennell won best original screenplay Oscar for her #MeToo drama “Promising Young Woman”, while best adapted screenplay Academy Award went to Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller for their Anthony Hopkins-Olivia Colman-starrer “The Father”.

    Daniel Kaluuya won best supporting actor Oscar for his role in “Judas and the Black Messiah”. “Another Round” from Denmark won the Oscar for best international feature film. The film is directed by Thomas Vinterburg and stars Mads Mikkelson.

    “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” won makeup and hairstyling, and costume design Oscars.

  • Catherine Zeta-Jones remembers her Oscar performance

    By ANI
    WASHINGTON: Welsh actor Catherine Zeta-Jones recently expressed her views about the 93rd Academy Awards, which is being held virtually amid the pandemic. Despite the quarantine and scaled-back festivities, the actor thinks the 2021’s broadcast will be ‘a milestone’.

    According to Variety, the 51-year-old multi-nominated actor has not only taken home the Oscar gold but performed for millions on the Dolby stage, twice… once while pregnant. The actor relived her previous Oscar performance in an interview with the outlet and said, “I was pregnant but not just oh you can barely notice. I had my child ten days after the Oscars.”

    Singing the original song penned for the 2003 best picture winner ‘Chicago’ with castmate Queen Latifah, Zeta-Jones had one thought while rising out of the trap door and preparing to sing, “Why am I singing for a billion people right now?”

    The actor quipped so that she should have been lounging and eating chocolate it’s a good thing she appeared because she also took home the Academy Award for supporting actress for her portrayal of death row dynamo, Velma Kelly.

    Ahead of this year’s Academy Awards, Zeta-Jones talked about her performances throughout the years at the Oscars and what the annual Hollywood tradition means to her and her family.

    The ‘Chicago’ star looked back at that 2003 duet with nostalgia and bewilderment.

    Ten years later, she would reprise her iconic Kelly again for a celebratory performance of the musical’s iconic hit ‘All That Jazz,’ which has become a sort of theme song for her.

    When asked if she hesitant to revive the jazz hands so many years later?

    ‘The Mask of Zorro’ star said, “Of course I was nervous. I’m nervous walking down the red carpet at the Oscars let alone getting up on stage and doing a number ten years later when I haven’t touched my toes or put on my dancing shoes and had a baby again!”

    Zeta-Jones shared that the Oscars is more than just an awards show; it’s a meaningful Hollywood tradition for her.

    “I love the history of it all. I love the fact that we can sit back and applaud our peers and acknowledge the work done that year across the board costumes, acting, cinematography. Our industry, it takes a village,” she told Variety.

    Zeta-Jones also said that she never makes dinner plans on the night of the Academy Awards.

    “It never gets old for me to tune in in my pyjamas and watch it with my popcorn and make my predictions on who’s gonna win. And it never gets old for me to walk down a red carpet,” she said.

    In an unprecedented year, the actor stressed the importance of the escapism that Hollywood has provided throughout the pandemic.

    “When those lights go down, we can be taken into another world,” shared the actor. 

  • Oscar nominees, guests will qualify as essential workers to attend ceremony amid COVID-19

    By ANI
    WASHINGTON: Oscar nominees and their guests will qualify as essential workers to attend the upcoming Academy Awards amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

    As per Variety, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced in a letter on Tuesday that those involved in the Oscars ceremony, which will include nominees and guests, will qualify for the essential work purpose waiver.

    They will also be allowed to travel to and from the testing center, rehearsals, and other Academy-organized activities during the lead up to the award show.

    “Those involved in the Oscars production, like nominees and their guest, qualify for the essential work purpose waiver, and therefore are permitted to travel to and from the testing center, rehearsals, and Academy-organized activities during the lead up to the Oscars production, including, of course, the award show. The organizers of the Oscars are implementing a required quarantine to capture the risk of each person attending the event,” the announcement letter read.

    Producers have maintained that the ceremony is being shot like a film so implementing essential worker status follows the protocol for movie and television shoots during the pandemic.

    The organisers also are implementing a required quarantine period for each person attending the event depending on risk assessment. Arrival dates for the Oscars are April 20 for domestic travelers and low-risk international travelers, and April 17 for high-risk international travelers.

    “If you travel into Los Angeles County from outside of California, you need to self-quarantine for 10 days after you arrive and may not interact with anyone during those 10 days except the people in your household, i.e. people with whom you live,” the letter read.

    The letter further stated, “If you travel into Los Angeles County solely for essential work purposes, you still need to self-quarantine (when not working) for 10 days and may not interact with people other than those necessary to conduct your essential work.”

    All the nominees and guests must have a minimum of two COVID-19 PCR tests performed by the Academy’s vendor and a total of three tests in the week leading up to the ceremony.

    The letter also offered travel and testing examples. For instance, someone who flies in from London can arrive as late as April 20. It also included a chart for nominees and guests to best figure out their specific restrictions.

    Apart from these guidelines, each nominee and their guests must present a travel and quarantine plan to the Academy for approval. Information is due no later than April 8, with revisions submitted by April 12. All information will be reviewed by the Oscars’ COVID consultant, Dr Erin Bromage. It will “remain private and be destroyed on or before May 10,” the letter read.

    Produced by Jesse Collins, Stacey Sher and Steven Soderbergh, Oscars 2021 will primarily be held at Los Angeles’ historic Union Station, with additional events at the show’s traditional home, Dolby Theatre. The 93rd Oscars will be broadcast live on April 25 on ABC.