Split Decision: “Anora”

Come celebrate Valentine’s Day with the season’s most talked about love story gone wrong. It’s time to discuss Anora in the Split Decision series. Abe Friedtanzer and Juan Carlos Ojano disagree over the merits of this Oscar frontrunner…

ABE FRIEDTANZER: We're starting this conversation one day after one of my favorite films of 2024, Anora, won the Critics Choice Award for Best Picture and nothing else. As you may imagine, I think there's plenty to celebrate about it, and it's a bit strange that it won ONLY the top prize. But it is good to see it back in the awards race after picking up so many critics' prizes and then sort of fading into third or fourth position in most races (like Best Actress). I tried and failed to see Anora at TIFF and then did end up seeing it a few weeks later at a press screening in LA and was quite impressed…

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DGA, CCA, PGA: Has the race changed or was it always a free-for-all?

by Nathaniel R

Chicken or egg? Egg or chicken? Have the last two weeks of the Oscar race and the very recent prizes from the Directors Guild, Producers Guild, and Critics Choice Awards changed the game or were the upcoming 97th Academy Awards always this much of an "anyone's game" free-for-all wherein Anora, The Brutalist, and Emilia Perez all felt possible as the dominant film?  I myself would argue for the latter. The Golden Globes (Emilia Perez dominated with 4 wins) are never the final chapter in any Oscar race, just one of its booziest most memorable chapters.

The dominant story for a week or so was the deflation Emilia Perez's, done in by a social media scandal which opened a very large window for the film's many naysayers to crash through. But it's important to remember that first industry voters loved the trans cartel musical to the breathy tune of 13 Oscar nominations...

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Oh, the long-windedness of Best Pictures!

by Nathaniel R

If THE BRUTALIST wins it will become the third longest Best Picture winner of all time.

Each Oscar chart is now up though details are not yet ironed out on some of them. We've talked about Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor as the charts went up, so now let's talk Best Picture. On the chart you can vote on your favourite daily and you can see the films ranked by all sorts of silly criteria (you're welcome to suggest other criteria) such as MPAA ratings, death count, horniness, release dates, the Bechdel Test, reviews, box office, my personal preference, and of course their running times. 

Oh the longwindedness of our current times! The average length of the Best Picture nominees this year is an astonishing 149 (2 hours and 29 minutes) which is not quite a record but close to it...

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Paul Newman @ 100: "The Sting"

by Lynn Lee

No doubt about it, Paul Newman was at peak stardom when he signed on to The Sting.  But he needed a hit: he hadn’t had one since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and his intervening films had all underperformed.  Fortuitously, he was about to enjoy the biggest blockbuster of his career in the form of a Butch Cassidy reunion with co-star Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill...

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Will any of the PGA Nominees miss the Best Picture list at the Oscars?

by Nathaniel R

A REAL PAIN scores a coveted PGA nod. Can it beat SING SING to the Oscars?

After the BAFTAs the season is coalescing leaving little room for surprise when the delayed Oscar nominations arrive this coming Friday (January 23). The Producers Guild have also announced their nominations. While the PGA leans more 'mainstream' than Oscar, this looks very much like what we can expect on Oscar nom morning. Still history suggests one (or two) nominee(s) could fall to the wayside. But which...

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