Yosemite is snowed in. The happiest place on earth briefly turned into a winter wonderland. And a weird movie featuring googly-eyed bricks, hot dog fingers, and gun-toting dildos is about to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
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I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter, and the guy who randomly drives around these days looking at those beautiful snow-capped mountains. Talk about a distraction while driving!
Voting for the Oscars has just begun. Let’s take a look at the news…
‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ takes guild trifecta
Between winning top honors at the Directors Guild Awards and the Producers Guild and Screen Actors Guild awards this past weekend, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” crew met Saturday at NeueHouse Hollywood for a final screening of their trippy, sci-fi film in Los Angeles. Angeles. -fi family drama.
The star of the film, Michelle Yeoh, reclined on a sofa in the lobby, having just arrived from London. Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan hugged and exchanged stories about LA’s freakishly cold weather. And the tireless Jamie Lee Curtis walked right up to me, squeezed my hand and, not letting go, introduced herself as a “mass-promotional weapon” and spent the next hour backing up her braggadocio with charming — and almost alarming — force.
“It’s a movie for a generation,” Curtis told the audience during the post-screening Q&A, comparing the reaction to “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to how her time felt about “The Graduate.” “It is literally the best film for a generation.” The room eats this up. “The more often you say the word dear — dear, dear, dear, dear — is a good thing to say right now.”
Curtis isn’t the only one saying it. Over the weekend, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” became the 10th film to win Producers, Guild, Directors Guild and Screen Actors Guild awards, making it the overwhelming favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar on March 12. movies that achieved trifecta that awards season – a list that included “Birdman,” “No Country for Old Men,” and “Argo,” only one, “Apollo 13,” failed to win the Oscar.
Is the best picture Oscar in the bag? What about the acting awards? I pondered these questions in a column while watching the Screen Actors Guild Awards — a column that included a bagel sighting at that last “Everything Everywhere All at Once” event in Hollywood.
The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” ensemble celebrates their SAG Awards cast award.
(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)
Three Oscar voters share their super-secret ballots
The Oscar voting started Thursday and, as all responsible citizens reading this know, you’re not always whole prepared when you come face to face with that ballot. Film school members, including the three who shared their choices with me in a recent column, sometimes make their choices on the spur of the moment and end up looking back on their selections with a mixture of bewilderment and regret.
In other words: Oscar voters…they’re just like us!
Our trio this year — an actor, a producer, and a director — are united on two fronts: They’re thrilled with the nominated films and performances, and they’re feeling a little overwhelmed by the tough choices they have to make in the voting. Read on to see what they thought on the eve of voting.
The Oscar voting is underway. How do the members of the academy lean?
(Lehel Kovacs / For The Times)
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There should be gold in those ‘Tár’ hills
While considering possible titles for this entry, I played with “Justin Chang’s Four-Tár Oscar Vote,” but my friend and colleague only went for Todd Field’s three-category masterful drama, so I scrapped that and went with “that Tár- hills’. which of course comes straight from Justin. But if you know him or have read his mouth-watering puns over the years, you already knew that.
Justin is not a member of the academy, but he does have thoughts – plenty! — about the movies and performances that should award the Oscars this year, and what should have been included. Like him, I still mourn the absence of Park Chan-wook’s romantic noir “Decision to Leave.”
Cate Blanchett, star of ‘Tár’.
(Alex Harper / For The Times)
